Richard Smith

Slot Machine

1962

© Richard Smith Foundation

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Not on display

Artist: Richard Smith 1931–2016
Medium: Oil paint on canvas, wood and paperboard
Dimensions: Object: 569 × 505 × 85 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, courtesy of Henry Geldzahler 1989
Reference: T05528

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After Smith left the Royal College of Art in 1959 he lived in New York for two years. He produced abstract paintings which drew on British and American advertising, popular culture and consumer packaging. Experimenting with different ways of presenting the medium of painting, Smith created three-dimensional works, such as Slot Machine. Smith said he wanted to keep as close to the feeling or ‘ethos’ of objects as possible: ‘An awareness of the product is necessary to read the painting. Is it a pill or a boulder? A realisation that it could be both alters the spectator’s reading of the painting.’

Gallery label, September 2018

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