By KAREN WILKIN

New York

In January 1943, Clement Greenberg, reviewing an exhibition titled “American Sculpture of Our Time,” complained that none of the “better work” on view came “close enough to great art”—none, that is, but a steel construction by a young artist named David Smith. “Smith is thirty-six,” Greenberg wrote. “If he is able to maintain the level set in the work he has already done . . . he has a chance of becoming one of the greatest of all American artists.”

Jerry L. Thompson

Smith’s pieces, far from being dispassionate arrangements of geometric elements, retain an eerie sense of presentness, as if they have us fixed in their invisible gaze. From left, ‘Tanktotem VII’ (1960) and ‘Circle IV’ (1962)

Greenberg’s prediction was indisputably accurate, but in the past few years it has been difficult to evaluate Smith’s full achievement. The “retrospective” “David Smith: A Centennial,” organized in 2006 to commemorate the anniversary of the artist’s birth (he died in 1965) and seen at the Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern, was badly skewed. By emphasizing the early Surrealizing sculptures—indeed by emphasizing any work noticeably responsive to European influences—rather than the later, fiercely original works, the show paid homage to Smith’s sculptural intelligence, delicate touch and faultless sense of scale, but ultimately distorted our view of his evolution. The formative pieces are clearly important (full disclosure: in 1980, I organized the first museum show devoted to Smith’s sculptures of the 1930s and ’40s) but not at the expense of the mature work. Now, however, “David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy” redresses the balance.

Selected from a larger exhibition organized by Carol S. Eliel that was seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the current version has been splendidly installed by the Whitney’s Barbara Haskell. The fourth-floor galleries have rarely looked as good, in spite of the peculiar premise of “Cubes and Anarchy,” a phrase Smith attributed to John Sloan, with whom he studied at the Art Students League. The show was apparently conceived to prove that the crisp, rectangular volumes Smith deployed in his later works, especially the stainless-steel “Cubi” series, were part of a lifetime interest in nonreferential geometric form—his association with Abstract Expressionism and the allusive biomorphic elements of his early work notwithstanding. I wouldn’t have thought this needed pointing out, given the variousness of the unstoppably inventive Smith’s work from any period. It can be argued, too, that Smith was never really an abstract sculptor, whether using organic or geometric forms; even the most severe of the vertical Cubis reads as a surrogate for the figure despite the Platonic austerity of its components, and there are countless other examples.

But the thesis can be ignored. “Cubes and Anarchy” is full of terrific sculptures, including masterpieces conspicuously absent from the centennial show, such as the loose-limbed, brushily painted “Zig III” (1961), a paradigm of the unpredictability that distinguishes Smith’s work. As we move around “Zig III,” it unfolds from a tightly packed, vertical assembly of suave curves, projections and a framing circle into a high-stepping structure bridging a horizontal expanse. There’s the great “Untitled (Candida)” (1965), an open, generously proportioned, squared-off “collage” of stainless plates, their surfaces enlivened with scribbles from the grinder. Seen head-on, it’s imposing and ample, while end views are startlingly thin; collage indeed, made aggressively physical. Equally surprising is the mysterious “Black and White Forward” (1961), a vertical plane, nipped delicately at the edges to emphasize its sculptural three-dimensionality, despite its “pictorial” flatness. Pierced by curves and angles of thin metal, the precarious, canted structure is poised on elegant little wheels.

“Zig IV” (1961) was included in the centennial show, but this spectacular, muscular sculpture—part Cubist still life, part antiaircraft gun, part bony personage, with its boldly brushed surface and tipped, implacable plate, above playful wheels—gains from its new context by entering a conversation with “Zig III” and with the exhibition’s paintings, works on paper, and earlier sculptures, all chosen to underscore the continuity of the cranky geometry that informs the larger pieces on view.

A group of slender, watchful Tanktotems, made in 1960, along with other tall, alert works from about the same time, make it clear that even Smith’s most pared-down pieces, such as the uncanny “Tanktotem IX,” a narrow vertical rectangle on a casual tripod, supporting a sliced tank-end, are far from being dispassionate arrangements of geometric elements. They retain an eerie, anthropomorphic sense of presentness; faceless, eyeless, even, bodyless—Smith plays havoc with familiar proportions and divisions—they nonetheless seem to confront us and fix us with their invisible gaze. Like the Zigs and some of the smaller works at the Whitney, the Tanktotems are painted; their engaging polychromy reminds us that Smith famously strove to combine painting and sculpture into what he called “a new art form” that “would beat either one.”

A selection of Smith’s photographs is testimony to this unstoppable artificer’s restless exploration of materials, scales, methods and disciplines. Sometimes he simply recorded works. Occasionally, he tested the potential of the medium with phenomena such as multiple exposures. Most exciting, he used photography to make sculptures, combining existing works into monumental structures by overlapping them in his images, sometimes co-opting elements of the studio setting or of still other sculptures, in the background, into unexpected, new wholes.

Whatever questions we may have about the premise, “David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy” is a delight. The selection of Smith’s works, in just about all of the many media he explored, spanning his life as an artist, from about 1930 to 1965, helps to flesh out our sense of his mastery and originality. It’s easy to see how prescient Greenberg was.

Ms. Wilkin writes about art for the Journal.

Por DAVID B. AGUS

Imagínese vivir robustamente hasta los 100 años o más. No moriría de ninguna enfermedad en particular ni sucumbiría lentamente a un terrible y debilitante mal que se instaló en su cuerpo décadas atrás.

Puede parecer inverosímil, pero es posible vivir una vida larga y libre de enfermedades. Un nuevo método de ver y tratar la salud puede prevenir o retrasar el avance de la mayoría de los padecimientos que nos matan, incluyendo el cáncer y los males cardíacos.

En la actualidad, esperamos a que el cuerpo se quiebre para empezar a tratarlo. Cuando visualizo lo que mis hijos necesitarán para mantenerse saludables cuando lleguen a la adultez en 10 o 20 años, veo un gran cambio del modelo actual.

Los veo capaces de monitorear y ajustar su salud en tiempo real con la ayuda de teléfonos inteligentes y aparatos portátiles —quizá con calcomanías pequeñas e invisibles—, para seguir el rastro de las células. Podrían ver réplicas virtuales de su cuerpo que funcionarían como videojuegos, permitiéndoles saber qué tienen que hacer para optimizar cada aspecto de su salud. ¿Qué pasa si tomo la dosis X frente a la dosis Y? ¿Comer más salmón podría reforzar mi metabolismo y ayudarme a quemar grasa? ¿El vino tinto en verdad reducirá mi riesgo de un ataque al corazón?

De una gota de su sangre, podrán subir información a un biochip personal que les ayudará a crear un plan de acción personalizado, incluyendo medidas preventivas y terapias para padecimientos identificados o señales de problemas de salud. Además de la sangre, otros fluidos corporales, como las lágrimas y la saliva, también podrían servir para las pruebas. Estarán al tanto de problemas como desequilibrios en la concentración de azúcar en su sangre, un factor de riesgo para la diabetes, y el crecimiento incontrolable de células, señal de cáncer. Sus doctores no los examinarían sólo una vez al año sino que los supervisarán constantemente, ofreciendo consejos continuamente.

Lo igualmente emocionante es que la información del paciente se añadiría a una base de datos universal que podría ser combinada por buscadores de Internet potentes como Google y constantemente alimentada de nuevos ensayos clínicos y experimentos, acelerando nuestra comprensión de qué medicamentos son los mejores para personas determinadas. La base datos podría mostrar, por ejemplo, que gente con un perfil genético particular responde a un tipo de tratamiento de cáncer pero no a otro. Conforme más personas añadan de manera anónima su información de salud, la base de datos se convertiría en una herramienta más efectiva de medicina preventiva.

Hoy en día, la mayoría de las personas sigue reglas generales de salud. Por ejemplo, si quiere perder peso, se somete a una dieta que recomienda comer más verduras con fibra y menos azucares procesados. Si quiere reducir su riesgo de cáncer, evita fumar, hace ejercicios con regularidad y se toma en serio la detección temprana.

El problema actual es que no conocemos lo suficiente acerca del cuerpo para practicar activamente la medicina preventiva. Si no sabemos qué estamos tratando de prevenir o cuál es la mejor manera de hacerlo, tenemos que esperar a que un síntoma claro surja para poder actuar. Usualmente tratamos una enfermedad que ha tenido amplia oportunidad de progresar.

Podemos mejorar en ese aspecto. Para empezar, debemos tomar en cuenta que el cuerpo es una red muy compleja, que no entendemos por completo y que entre lo que sabemos hay graves malentendidos.

En 2009, mi colega Danny Hillis —un ex ingeniero de Disney pionero en el desarrollo de las supercomputadoras paralelas— y yo creamos un método para medir 100.000 tipos distintos de proteínas de una sola gota de sangre. Nuestra meta es evaluar y descifrar los complejos procesos internos del cuerpo de manera más dinámica e informada de lo que el ADN puede proporcionar. Las proteínas cambian cada minuto en el cuerpo, dependiendo de lo que está sucediendo adentro. Nuestro objetivo final es desarrollar pruebas, basadas en niveles de proteína, para males como el cáncer. Esas pruebas podrían reemplazar técnicas invasivas como las biopsias.

Cada año que pasa, la tecnología necesaria para esta revolución médica se hace más económica. Hace unos días, Life Technologies de Carlsbad, California, anunció que podrá dibujar un mapa de la secuencia genética de un individuo en un solo día por US$1.000. Exámenes similares hoy cuestan muchos miles de dólares. La habilidad de seguir cambios de un día para otro en las proteínas del cuerpo y los metabolitos no está muy lejos.

El futuro está cada vez más cerca

Entonces, ¿cómo llegamos a este futuro?

Se debe empezar con una recopilación de datos. En 2004, Dell lanzó un programa interno para promover estilos de vida saludables entre sus empleados. Los trabajadores reciben mensajes e información personalizada sobre problemas de salud, incorporando sus resultados en exámenes médicos y tratamientos que les permiten tomar decisiones más informadas. Una persona que es diagnosticada con diabetes, por ejemplo, podría obtener información sobre cómo monitorear el nivel de azúcar en la sangre y estar alerta de problemas circulatorios que usualmente acompañan esa enfermedad.

La medicina personalizada no está tan lejos como lo imagina. Considere lo que ya sucede en el desarrollo de los perfiles genéticos, que ya están disponibles por varios cientos de dólares.

Cofundé una compañía de pruebas genéticas y soy un gran impulsor de la tecnología de monitoreo genético, la que nos permite ver las variaciones del ADN, evaluar el riesgo de ciertas enfermedades y qué medicamentos, y en qué dosis, podrían funcionar mejor según su metabolismo. El hecho de tener una o dos señales de riesgo genético no significa que un paciente desarrollará una condición específica, pero el resultado puede ser influenciado por cambios de comportamiento en el estilo de vida y, en algunos casos, tomando medicamentos.

Con el avance de estas y otras tecnologías será más fácil monitorear y mantener nuestra salud. Lo demás dependerá de nosotros. La promesa de la medicina personalizada dependerá de nuestra determinación de ser pacientes informados y dispuestos.

—Agus es profesor de medicina e ingeniería en la Universidad del Sur de California y cofundador de dos compañías de medicina personalizada, Navigenics y Applied Proteomics.

By ANGUS LOTEN

Amazon.com wants to bring order to the way online retailers collect state and local taxes. And that has Web entrepreneur Stacy Strawn feeling anxious.

Under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, online retailers including her aren’t required to collect sales tax for purchases made in states where they do not have a physical presence.

Amazon is backing new sales-tax proposals but some small businesses are worried it may hurt them in the end, Stu Woo reports on digits. Photo: AP.

But Ms. Strawn, and others like her who operate with just a dozen or so employees, would have to begin collecting and remitting taxes for the more than 40 states that currently charge sales and use taxes, along with thousands of cities and counties across the country, as set forth by a Senate proposal unveiled last month.

That proposal, which has the support of Amazon, includes an exception for small-business retailers with less than $500,000 in annual “remote” sales—a sum so low that it wouldn’t even cover Ms. Strawn’s employees’ wages.

“These are the most small-business-unfriendly measures I’ve seen in years,” said Ms. Strawn, whose Waynesboro, Va., store, Silver Gallery, sells sterling-silver bowls, cups and jewelry. “This is going to cost us big.”

Ms. Strawn isn’t entirely sure what the cost to her business would be. A 2006 PriceWaterhouseCoopers study found local and state tax compliance costs small retailers 13.47% of all sales tax collected, compared to 2.17% for large retailers.

The concerns voiced by Ms. Strawn and other small online retailers highlight a new point of contention in the debate over taxing Internet sales—the so-called small-business exemption in federal proposals is now so small that even many small fry aren’t protected.

“The Internet is the only place where someone like us can be next door to an Amazon,” Ms. Strawn said. “If they don’t do something, the big retailers will eventually take over online shopping. And that would be a huge loss.”

Nearly all of the Silver Gallery’s $3 million in revenue last year came from online sales. The store currently has seven full-time employees, but she may have to cut some jobs as a way to deal with the added costs.

Legislation that would require online retailers to collect state taxes has been proposed in each of the past seven Congresses, including House and Senate bills in 2007 that set the small-business exemption at a much more generous $5 million in annual sales.

Amazon’s willingness to get behind the proposals—combined with pressure from states for new sources of tax revenue, and bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate—has given the movement more traction this year.

Last month, the world’s largest online retailer expressed support for a Senate bill calling for standardized federal rules that would require online retailers to collect out-of-state sales taxes—with a $500,000 exemption for small retailers. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, said at a House Judicial Committee hearing Wednesday that any small-business exemption must be kept low to protect states’ rights to collect taxes, while leveling the playing field between online retailers and their brick-and-mortar competitors that already collect state taxes—typically reflected as higher sticker prices. “No one should want these online sellers to take advantage of a newly created un-level playing field over small Main Street businesses, and no one should want government to pick business-model winners and losers this way,” Mr. Misener said.

“Amazon is prepared to make its technology available as a service to help sellers by collecting sales tax for them,” he added.

Other supporters of the proposals include brick-and-mortar-only retailers who believe the standardization will help create a more level playing field overall in the retail industry. Without a state sales tax, online retailers “have nearly a 10% discount automatically,” contends Maggie Jetter, owner of Tweed Baby Outfitters, a baby goods and apparel store in Nashville, Tenn., that doesn’t sell its wares online. “We’re doing the same thing, offering the same products, so the law needs to be reformed and updated,” she says.

Online retail sales in the U.S. grew 13% to $176 billion last year, and are expected to grow by 12% to $197 billion in 2011, according to Forrester Research.

The University of Tennessee estimates that states and local governments will lose up to about $12 billion in 2012 from uncollected sales taxes.

Tod Cohen, vice president, eBay Government Relations, said in testimony Wednesday that the company believes the U.S. Small Business Administration should be the one to determine which small business retailers would be exempt. Forcing small businesses to take on the same costs and tax burdens as national retail businesses is unrealistic, unfair and will “unbalance the playing field” between giant retailers and small-business retailers on the Internet, Mr. Cohen said at Wednesday’s hearing.

The SBA defines most small retailers as those making less than $7 million in annual revenue. In some categories, businesses such as women’s clothing, book and games stores are considered small businesses if they have revenue of less than $25 million, according to the agency.

Some small and midsize retailers argue they may have to raise their prices to cover the costs of complying with a slew of new state taxes, under the proposed standardized federal rules. The risk is that shoppers looking for the best prices may then move their purchasing to larger sites that can absorb the added costs, said Joe Sponholz, president of BabyAge.com, a Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based online baby products retailer with 29 full-time employees.

“It’s not the start-ups or the Amazons of the world you have to worry about here. It’s all the guys in the middle,” said Mr. Sponholz, whose company recently built a distribution center in Nevada rather than California, to avoid paying state sales taxes. He says the $500,000 sales limit will only help very small retailers who have yet to develop a truly national reach.

A House bill introduced in October is also limited in the number of small businesses it would exempt. It makes an exception for those whose out-of-state sales are less than $100,000 in any one state, or a total of $1 million nationwide.

—Stu Woo contributed to this article.

Write to Angus Loten at angus.loten@wsj.com

By RAJEEV MANTRI

Speculating whether India can spawn innovative companies like Apple and Google is a favourite parlor game among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

It’s clear that there is staggering talent and creativity in the country, and it seems more a question of when and not if, provided the proper environment is created. Young entrepreneurs and engineers are bubbling with enthusiasm and energy and spending time with them fills one with optimism about the country’s future.

Rajeev Mantri

On the other hand, a casual scanning of the daily news can be rather depressing. Riots, murders, suicides, mass protests, corruption, political scandals have become so commonplace that they are no longer a surprise. Human tragedies have been turned into mere statistics. While India is touted as a growth engine for the world economy, it also has the largest number of children suffering from malnutrition and among the highest incidences of crimes against women

Businesspeople and entrepreneurs are said to make up “India” while farmers, laborers and other low-income groups form the other India, known as Bharat.

The government tries to put the interests of Bharat before India, calling for inclusive growth and championing job creation programs.

How can India and Bharat be bridged?

In a few days, Cupertino, California-based Apple’s hotly-anticipated iPad will hit the market. Led by the legendary Steve Jobs, Apple has upended many industries in the last decade, including personal computing, entertainment, wireless telecommunications and retail. His vision continues to guide strategy and product development at what is arguably the world’s most innovative company. His personal story is just as illuminating for how economic and individual freedom catalyze innovation.

Steve Jobs was born in 1955 to a Syrian immigrant father at the height of the post-War Baby Boom. Before co-founding Apple in 1976, Jobs dabbled in calligraphy, electronics and psychedelic drugs, even travelling to India in search of spiritual enlightenment in 1974 after dropping out from college. Back then, electronics and computers had no serious hope of becoming as mainstream as they are today, and were the exclusive preserve of hobbyists.

The vanguard of this group was a motley set of people who styled themselves as the Homebrew Computer Club, which would probably qualify as the first industry association for the computer and electronics business. Steve Jobs was among the early members. From unlikely beginnings, Jobs co-founded the company that became the vanguard of the computer revolution. He did not go to an Ivy League college, nor did he come from an affluent family. In fact, Jobs recounted recently how he’d travel to the local Hare Krishna temple every weekend while in college because he didn’t have enough money to eat.

It’s not for nothing that America is known as the land of the free. Steve Jobs is one of the best-known examples of how a culture of freedom and openness in America has allowed individuals to prosper based on ability and effort. That culture cannot be replicated quickly or easily. The first step is to boost economic freedom. Much to the disappointment of venture capitalists and others in India Inc., job creation and not economic liberalization has been high on the agenda of the government.

“Much to the disappointment of venture capitalists and others in India Inc., job creation and not economic liberalization has been high on the agenda of the government”

The distinction between job creation and income growth is not as well understood as it should be. Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman once visited China at the height of Communism, and was taken to a construction site. He asked why the contractors were not using machinery and modern equipment, and was told that the project was part of a government job creation program. Friedman replied that the spades used by the labor force should be replaced with spoons, and that would increase employment even more! The lesson is that it is easy to “create” jobs, but harder to grow incomes because incomes rise only when productivity increases. Productivity increases when companies compete and innovate.

If we are serious about creating jobs, we should focus on creating an environment where people like Jobs prosper. Bharat will become more like India.

In the current regime, India is being turned into Bharat. Well-intentioned policies that claim to employ the poor are distorting the labor market by incentivizing people to migrate back to villages from cities. The country must urbanize if it has to develop economically, it cannot continue to live in villages.

Much has been made of India’s demographic dividend. An average of nearly 1 million people will be entering the work force every single month for the next 20 years, a scale unprecedented in human history. The only comparable event is the post-World War II Baby Boom in the US. This is an opportunity, and can be a huge challenge, because all those people will want to be well-fed, educated and productively employed. It would be futile for the government to even try employing so many people. If harnessed properly, this talent pool can transform the Indian economy. If the creativity of this human pool is allowed to flourish, it can change the world. India can produce many Apples and Googles.

Otherwise, the country will remain impoverished and torn by social strife in coming decades, and will naively celebrate the success of its diaspora, for the best and brightest will simply migrate in search of a better life.

Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of the Reliance group, famously said once that it was imperative to manage the environment when doing business in India. The environment should be changed so that entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs can create jobs and businesses can focus on managing innovation instead of the environment.

—Rajeev Mantri is executive director of Navam Capital, based in Kolkata