Night Launch for the Rocket Club
Artist
Lee N. Smith III
(American, b. 1950)
CultureAmerican
DateFebruary 1986
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 42 x 72 in. (106.7 x 182.9 cm)
InscribedOn verso: Night Launch for the Rocket Club | L.N. Smith III | 2/86
Credit LineGift of the family of Joel B. Cooper, in memory of Mary and Dudley Cooper
Object number2002.26.10
Not on view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas depicting a childhood scene, in bright neon. There are four green-skinned boys in bright blue outfits in a bedroom: three boys play together with a model rocket while one boy sits alone holding a parachute; next to him on a table is a green cage housing a pink mouse. The room is primarily orange and yellow.Label TextLee N. Smith III American (b. 1950) Night Launch for the Rocket Club, February 1986 Oil on canvas In memory of Mary and Dudley Cooper from the family of Joel B. Cooper 2002.26.10 ~ In 1956 Lee Smith's family moved from New Orleans to Dallas, where they settled in a suburb near open farmland. As a boy, he played constantly in the nearby fields, where he and other neighborhood boys formed The Warriors, a secret club with its own initiations and rituals. As Smith explains, most of his paintings are based on his childhood experiences: My pictures deal with a certain time and place. It was a time when all was ruled by parents, church, and school. The place was the very edge of known suburbia. Through the front door there was row after row of almost identical houses - measured spaces which comprised the world of expected behavior. Through the back gate, escape was easy as we stepped across the Dallas city limits into the unexplored regions of endless hay fields. The simplicity of the landscape allowed us to see with our imaginations. Night Launch for the Rocket Club depicts such a childhood scene. Three boys play together indoors with a model rocket, the favorite toy of the space-race generation of the 1960s. One boy sits awkwardly alone, lost in reverie; on the table nearby is a caged mouse. Does the mouse symbolize the artist's childhood sense of entrapment in his suburban neighborhood? Or, will the animal become the "astronaut" in the boys' unfolding experiment with "space travel?" Smith's Day-Glo®, almost science-fiction colors create an eerie, hallucinatory sense of displacement. The boys' green faces and bodies seem like those of aliens from another planet. An intensely orange sunset streams through the window illuminating the darkened room. ProvenanceLee N. Smith, III, February-July, 1986; Joel B. Cooper, Norfolk, Va., July 1986 - December 2002; Gift in memory of Mary and Dudley Cooper from the family of Joel B. Cooper to Chrysler Museum of Art, 2002. Exhibition History"Lee N. Smith III: Recent Paintings," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Tx., December 6, 1986 - January 25, 1987. "Oneiric," Semaphore Gallery, New York, Ny., June 11 - July 25, 1986. "The Bold 1980s: A Collector's Vision," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., March 19 - October, 2003. Published ReferencesEllen Handy, "Oneiric," _Arts Magazine_ 61 (September 1986): 122. Emily Leland Todd, _Lee N. Smith III: Recent Paintings_, exh. cat., Contemporary Arts Museum., Houston, Tx., 1986.
