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What is left to be said about the mid career. In the early days of his career Smith was oft referenced as a machine, descriptors like "profligate," "hyper" "overproduction" of "meaninglessness." This is what made him interesting or critical or novel, what ascribed value, or, at least, what people talked about. It was the Guyton Walker Price Smith era - the production was point.
What was with our fetish then for exaggerated manufacture remains a question, for in the era since we've grown tired of "zombies" that Smith and the gang had some hand spawning. Guyton, Walker, Price, a group for whom production was theme: recycling, automation, dispersion and Smith's prolificacy spamming himself into consciousness, beating his name and himself in the head. That Smith is now making painting that are fine, pleasant even, a sort of radical gesture of normalcy...Now they are just Zwirner paintings. Just paintings. Smith's paintings were always impressionist flowers, dumb stupid arbitrary. But now death rides a bicycle. As a "Live fast, die young" analogy for Smith's slapdash, it is the first time the content seems anything but non-sequitur. But really it is a leisurely journey toward death.
