In 1943 Smith wrote “The Pattern of Organic Life in America”, lamenting our “lack of any integrating and unifying element, any myth, any bible by which we can relate and interpret the complexity of our vast experience.” This void, he thought, might be filled by abstraction because “the shadow of the underparts of the train—the poles and cross pieces, insulators and wires against the sky—the forms of the factories for crushing stones, etc. the corrals and fences and loading stations for cattle…demand a tremendous abstract form.” Smith shared the modernist enthusiasm for substantial industrial structures. 

I’ve not heard a better way of describing abstraction and the way we relate to it. My task now- to find this “manuscript” or passage by Tony Smith, an American Sculpture and Architect who lived from 1912-1980.