![]() ![]() This resulted in the series of 'non-sites' in which earth and rocks collected from a specific area are installed in the gallery as sculptures, often combined with mirrors or glass. In 1967 Smithson began exploring industrial areas around New Jersey and was fascinated by the sight of dump trucks excavating tons of earth and rock that he described in an essay as the equivalents of the monuments of antiquity. He eventually joined the Dwan Gallery, whose owner Virginia Dwan was an enthusiastic supporter of his work. Some of Smithson's later writings recovered 18th- and 19th-century conceptions of landscape architecture which influenced the pivotal earthwork explorations which characterized his later work. As a writer, Smithson was interested in applying mathematical impersonality to art that he outlined in essays and reviews for Arts Magazine and Artforum and for a period was better known as a critic than as an artist. Smithson became affiliated with artists who were identified with the minimalist or Primary Structures movement, such as Nancy Holt (whom he married), Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt. Smithson did not see entropy as a disadvantage he saw it as a form of transformation of society and culture, which is shown in his artwork like his non-site pieces. His ideas on entropy also branched out into culture, “the urban sprawl and the infinite number of housing developments of the post war boom have contributed to the architect of entropy”. ![]() Smithson used the idea of entropy to explore ideas of decay and renewal, chaos and order, non-sites and earthworks, trying to find equilibrium between these opposites. He said that in the ultimate future the universe will burn out into an all encompassing sameness. In Smithson’s eyes entropy was the second law of thermodynamics, which exploits the range of energy by telling us that energy is easier lost than obtained. Crystalline structures and the concept of entropy became of particular interest to him, and informed a number of sculptures completed during this period, including Alogon 2. Instead he began to use glass sheet and neon lighting tubes to explore visual refraction and mirroring, in particular the sculpture Enantiomorphic Chambers. His new work abandoned the preoccupation with the body that had been common in his earlier work. He primarily identified himself as a painter during this time, but after a three-year rest from the art world, Smithson emerged in 1964 as a proponent of the emerging minimalist movement. His early exhibited artworks were collage works influenced by "homoerotic drawings and clippings from beefcake magazines", science fiction, and early Pop Art. He studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York from 1955 to 1956 and then briefly at the Brooklyn Museum School. When Smithson was nine his family moved to the Allwood section of Clifton. In Rutherford, William Carlos Williams was Smithson's pediatrician. Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and early on lived mostly in Rutherford. ![]() Throughout, the artist describes the history, coordinates, and processes that informed the evolution of this historic project.Robert Smithson (Janu– July 20, 1973) was an American artist who used photography in relation to sculpture and land art. Smithson’s film Spiral Jetty records the siting and making of the sculptural work, interspersing imagery of maps, aerial views of the lake, and footage of Smithson driving through the Utah landscape. Since 1999, Dia Art Foundation has owned and stewarded Spiral Jetty.īecause of Land art’s often remote locations and temporary durations, works were documented through notes, photographs, video, and film. For the past 20 years, it has been mostly accessible and many have made pilgrimages to experience the work in person. ![]() Indeed, Spiral Jetty has been vulnerable to the natural forces of its location: from 1972 to 2002, the work was submerged due to the lake’s rising water levels. A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.”1 As Smithson wrote soon after completing Spiral Jetty, “Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. The movement also represents the pursuit of new locations to display art beyond the traditional spaces of museums and galleries. It reflects artists’ interest at that time in rethinking some of the oldest conventions in art, notably permanence: given their materials and outdoor settings, these works were inherently subject to deterioration and decay. A branch of Conceptual art from that period, Land art encompasses work made and sited in the landscape with natural materials. Spiral Jetty is one of the best-known works associated with the 1960s and ’70s movement Land art. 16 mm film on video, color, sound 35 min. ![]()
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