CHAMBERLAIN, John

Taking from David Smith a taste for industrial materials and a competence in welding, Chamberlain made sculptures composed initially of iron pipes and then of crushed automobile parts, usually preserving their original industrial colors. Even with materials as culturally resonant as cars, he finds formal qualities rather than social comment, the compositional syntax of his sculpture reflecting de Kooning's interpretation of Cubism. Though Chamberlain later worked with other materials,...