David Smith 'The Inspiration of Music' Washburn Gallery 20 West 57th Street Manhattan Through March 25

Genius has nothing to do with taste. These 1945-46 paintings by the sculptor David Smith show just how tacky Surrealism could be. A female harpsichordist is turned into a praying mantis, extending long splayed fingers and teeth (teeth!) to the keyboard. In "Untitled (Euterpe and Terpsichore)," pink-and-gray boxy figures contort before a yellow-green oval backdrop: the colors alone demand a double martini.

These alarming paintings also make it clear how Smith became a great sculptor. In "Piat," a blue giant reclines across a vast deserted plain, playing a huge pink cello: the landscape is littered with baby cellos. Not a promising subject, you might think. Smith reduces the blue giant to abstract forms in a second canvas. He then turns the composition into a sculpture, "Cello Player"; the streamlined struts of the musician's shoulders and arms now form a poignant, twisted cage around the pregnant mass of the cello. Nearby stands the sculpture "Song of a Landscape," a masterpiece from 1950. Its swooping lines in space, festooned with cubes and cylinders and little metal spurs, clearly recall those of the 1946 cello player, although the literal reference has vanished, leaving Surrealism behind like an outgrown toy. PEPE KARMEL