Focus on this artwork and discuss the Description.
During the spring of 1976 She Who Must Be Obeyed was installed on the east plaza of the newly constructed Department of Labor building—subsequently named the Frances Perkins Building—in Washington, D.C., not far from the east wing of the National Gallery of Art.
Using the jargon of a master builder, which he had been, Smith explained that his sculpture “is the cross-section of a space frame made up of tetrahedral and octahedral. It’s called simply a rhombus.”For various reasons She never became one of the artist's better-known sculptures. One possible reason:  until 2009 it was not easy to see She.  The work was placed in an outdoor corner of the t-shaped Frances Perkins Building near Second Street NW, set back—and difficult to see—from the street.  Access to the work was made easier after it was restored in 2008–2009, and reinstalled on the other side of the Perkins Building, on a grassy plaza close to the intersection of Third and C Streets NW.
The construction is also an anomaly in the artist's career: instead of being painted black like most of Smith's other works, or even yellow, like a select few, it is bright blue.  Initially, the artist had wanted She to be the color of pool cue chalk.   In comparison to the artworks published in the pages of the Museum of Modern Art catalogue that accompanied the retrospective curated by Robert Storr in 1998, it is reproduced in black and white, not color.Because Tony Smith's early structures, works like Die and The Elevens Are Up, were monochromatic, smooth-surfaced, and straight-edged, the older artist was referred to, during this phase of his career, as a Minimalist. His closest friends and colleagues, however, included Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. His work straddles both genres.
Barnett Newman Frances Perkins Building National Gallery of Art Tony Smith Jackson Pollock pool cue master builder Museum of Modern Art