ART BUT NOT RELIGION : NED SMYTH: BELIEF IN CONCRETE AND MOSAICS

Wandering around European monuments with his art historian parents, Ned Smyth never guessed that his childhood art experiences would so strongly influence his work as an adult sculptor. What his parents taught him about cathedrals, piazzas and villas went in one youthful ear and out the other, but the experience of those environments as “places of reverence” made such an indelible impression that he never got it out of his system.

“My work is about reverence, not necessarily religious but an expression of reverence as a personal ideal,” Smyth said during a recent interview at Cal State Long Beach. An exhibition of his work opens today at the University Art Museum and runs through Oct. 18. Called “Ned Smyth: Three Installations,” the exhibition represents a 10-year evolution in concrete sculpture and panels of mosaic and terrazzo.

Smyth’s early period takes shape in the first installation, a room of cast concrete arcades, fonts and columns. “I was interested in how the early Italians defined space, in the idea of a piazza, the way we look at a facade through an object in front of it,” said the 39-year-old New York sculptor. (Originally assembled as an environment to walk through, the heavy components are currently displayed as formal objects because of the fifth-floor gallery’s weight limits.)

The second sculptural group consists of expressionistic, figurative columns of colored, sculpted concrete. The idea came from a series of heads, called “Concrete Spirits,” that he later put together in “moralistic relationships.” Pairs of writhing figures on each column portray such conflicts as “Master/Slave,” “Closeness Through Loss” and “Sibling Rivalry.”

Intricate mosaic and terrazzo panels compose the third installation. Grisaille mosaic figures on colorful backgrounds strike histrionic poses as they act out themes of “Temptation and Judgment.”

The change from one room to another dramatically illustrates the evolution of Smyth’s work. The colored columns and mosaics mark an abrupt departure from a spare, neutral, Minimalist aesthetic to a narrative approach incorporating the human figure and seething emotion. But the columns also differ abruptly from the mosaics. When Smyth originally showed them in the same gallery, some viewers assumed they were done by different artists.

“It’s left brain/right brain stuff, and they seem to attract different audiences,” Smyth said. “The mosaics are classical and cool. They are rationally done even though the content is highly emotional. The columns are totally intuitive, tactile, almost grotesque. When I saw them together, it became clear that I wanted to bring the whole thing together.”

That revelation has been in process for at least 15 years. As an art major at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, Smyth made the usual exploratory rounds of design, color theory and painting. “But when it came to making art on my own, I returned to what was ingrained in me,” he said.

Remembering Europe’s great stone buildings, he began to work in cast concrete; recalling the ambiance of historic places that are “socially revered,” he tried to create environments that would instill a sense of quietude and awe.

But he also had Carl Andre’s brick sculptures and Frank Stella’s black paintings firmly in mind when he arrived in New York in the early ‘70s--at the height of Minimalism. Merging the prevailing aesthetic with art history, he began to construct environments that were spare, gray and modular but also alluded to architecture. “I thought it was the next thing to do. For me, Minimalism was not an end in itself but a means,” he said.

While Smyth enjoyed the moral support of some artists, others thought his work was reactionary or in the service of religion. He says that occasional visitors have walked into his shows and proclaimed the art “Catholic,” though he is not a Catholic and has no interest in promoting any religious faith through his art. It’s the reverent “feel” that he’s after.

Perhaps a stickier problem is Smyth’s insistence on genuine emotion at a moment when cynicism is fashionable.

His “Reverent Grove,” done in 1978 as a commission for the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse Courtyard in Charlotte Amalie, the Virgin Islands, has been interpreted as ironic commentary. But this bouquet of beauty in a “super-sterile” environment “was not done as a joke,” he said. “People are uncomfortable with real belief.

“If I lived in Europe, I wouldn’t make this kind of art,” he continued, explaining his contention that the United States is woefully short of “humanistic spaces where people can be moved by beauty.”

That conviction has remained constant as Smyth has moved from cool abstraction to emotional figuration and moralistic narratives. His desire to create “places of reverence” and “communicate” with people who are not programmed to interpret art according to the latest theory have led him toward public and private commissions. At this point, he has completed 15 such works across the country--and he has another four proposals in the works.

Smyth will present a public lecture on his work Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. in the University Theatre. Information: (213) 498-5526.