Sculpture: Infinity in Eight Minutes

Into place atop a pedestal in front of the Smithsonian Institution’s new Museum of History and Technology last week went an 8-ft.-high, stainless-steel piece of abstract sculpture designed by New York’s José de Rivera, 62, and executed with the aid of fellow New York Abstractionist Roy Gussow, 48. In terms of institutional oneupmanship, the work gives the Smithsonian the distinction of placing the first abstract sculpture on the capital’s Mall, which will eventually be blooming with them: Hostess Gwen Cafritz is donating an Alexander Calder stabile-mobile that will be installed in midsummer, while the Hirschhorn Collection is planning to install a whole garden full of modern works from Rodin to George Rickey.

The Smithsonian had originally intended an orrery, the globular celestial map made of intersecting rings and developed for the 17th century Earl of Orrery, for the front of the new building; but its architect, Walker O. Cain, called on De Rivera instead. De Rivera has titled his 20th century piece Infinity, explaining modestly that he named it that solely to prevent the U.S. Government from giving it a still more pretentious name. He made its swooping, stainless-steel lines by extruding a rod of steel and welding its ends together, alternately heating and hammering it like the village smithy—and he has become partly deaf as a result of years of this kind of work.

The finished work is designed to revolve once every eight minutes and is powered by a hidden ¼-h.p. motor whose reduction shaft is embedded be low its 8-ft.-high triangular base. In mathematical terms, Infinity is based on the Möbius strip, named for the 19th century German mathematician A. F. Möbius. It consists of a loop twisted on itself so that it contains one continuous edge and one plane. As the great form revolved majestically for the first time last week, the early spring sun glinted off its evolving planes, creating an impression of perpetual motion, a release of boundless and elemental energy.