Guild Hall's Spring Plantings Include a Ned Smyth Sculpture

There's a lot more than just tulips and daffodils sprouting from the ground these days. On Saturday, Guild Hall planted a gigantic abstract sculpture on its front lawn.

With its hulking grace and size, Ned Smyth’s “Male Torso,” from 2015, resembles a colossal Rodin figure that has been badly eroded. It also looks as if it would weigh a ton, with its dark glossy surface resembling cast bronze or basalt.



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In fact, the 12-foot-high sculpture is made of Styrofoam with a painted urethane hard-coat surface. It was installed in the place where sculptures by Julian Schnabel and John Chamberlain have stood in recent years and will stay there through October.

Mr. Smyth, who now lives and works on Shelter Island, was part of the SoHo art scene of the 1970s. His work has been influenced by contemporary artists such as Richard Serra, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Carl Andre as well as by the classical Italian art and architecture he saw in his youth when traveling with his father, Craig Hugh Smyth, a Renaissance art historian and scholar.