Robert Smithson

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Born: 1938

Died: 1873

Summary of Robert Smithson

However, despite his youthful age of 35, Robert Smithson influenced more new painters than most of the 1960s generation. It’s no surprise that his passions included everything from Catholicism to minerals to science fiction. To begin, his work was mostly in the form of paintings and collages, but by the early 1960s, he had shifted his concentration to sculpture as a way to engage with the movements of minimalism and conceptualism. Spiral Jetty, a magnificent rock coil built in the colourful waters of the Utah side of the Great Salt Lake in 1970, is the Earthwork or Land art for which he is most known. He was killed in an aeroplane accident in 1973 while doing site surveys in Texas for another Earthwork.

Smithson is a key figure in the Post-Minimalist movement that arose in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Minimalism’s use of industrial materials and focus on the sensation of space surrounding art objects (in addition to the art itself) influenced Post-Minimalism, which aimed to do away with even more of classical sculpture’s conventions in their work. Typical of this group, Smithson used a variety of approaches, such as using strewn materials to build his sculptures, using mirrors and scales to confuse the viewer’s perception of sculpture, and making references to places and objects outside the gallery to make the viewer wonder where the art object actually belonged.

Smithson’s work was heavily influenced by his fascination with entropy, the second law of thermodynamics that predicts the inevitable depletion and collapse of every system. Geology and mineralogy piqued his curiosity, and he found proof of earth’s slowing and cooling in rocks and debris. In his famous essay Entropy and the New Monuments (1969), he draws comparisons between the quarries of New Jersey and the strip malls and tract homes there, suggesting that ultimately the latter will also perish and return to rubble. But the idea also influenced his outlook on culture and civilization more broadly;

There were substantial contributions to the Land art discourse in the 1960s from Smithson’s conceptions of Site and Nonsite – one a physical place, the other a collection of artefacts and documentation – both of which were beyond the gallery. After the practise of memorial public sculpture died away, his writings on monuments and ruins inspired many to consider what role art may play in the environment.

Childhood

From an early age, Robert Smithson showed a strong passion for the arts. In the mid-1950s, while still a high school student in Clifton, New Jersey, he took evening painting lessons in New York City. He attended The Art Students League in New York for two years and The Brooklyn Museum School for a shorter time.

Smithson became captivated by the Abstract Expressionists as a result of his education and training, particularly David Smith, Tony Smith, Jackson Pollock, and Morris Louis in particular. The artist Robert Smithson later said that he was fascinated by David Smith’s sculpture because of the use of unnatural materials (such as steel) that had been weathered by the passage of time and the action of nature (i.e. rust, decay, and discoloring). Smithson’s interest in Minimalism, Conceptual art, or dealing with the natural environment dates back many years before he became interested in any of those movements.

Early Life

Art dealer Virginia Dwan initially became aware of Smithson in the late 1950s, and in 1959 he was allowed his first solo exhibition at the Artists’ Gallery in New York City. As a result of his exposure to Abstract Expressionism, Smithson used gouache, crayon, pencil, and photography in his paintings, drawings, and collages (he hadn’t started sculpting yet). Although his works were multidisciplinary, they were still two-dimensional artworks.

Smithson met numerous important artists and sculptors of the early 1960s Minimalist art movement via his association with Dwan, including Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, and Smithson’s soon-to-be wife, Nancy Holt. Smithson and Nancy Holt married in 1961. In 1963, Holt and Smithson became husband and wife. Smithson’s career would take off when these new connections were formed.

He made a number of early 1960’s collage works that were still very much in keeping with an abstract and expressionist aesthetic, but they clearly show the artist’s growing fascination with earth as an inspirational resource and his interest in themes of permanence, natural and unnatural materials, and site-specific art. These collages include Untitled (Tear) (1961-63), Untitled (Conch Shell, Spaceship and World Land Mass) (1961-63), Algae (c. 1962).

Smithson began sculpting in 1964, influenced by Minimalism, which was becoming popular at the time. The fact that Smithson never felt completely at home in the studio was obvious from the start. He visited quarries and industrial wastelands in New Jersey numerous times in the mid-1960s. It was during these travels that he developed a fascination in deserts and vast expanses of terrain that seemed to have been untouched by human activity.

Mid Life

Smithson’s sculptures from the mid-1960s have striking similarities to Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris’ Minimalist installations of the same era. Industrial materials, geometric shapes, and a limited palette were used in pieces including Plunge (1966), Alogon #2 (1966), and Terminal (1966). They were made to be shown inside, and that’s exactly what they were designed to be.

Using mirrors and natural materials, Smithson created a new kind of three-dimensional work in Sites and Non-sites by 1967. Smithson travelled extensively for his Sites projects, spending time in countries including New Jersey, Mexico, England, and West Germany with his wife Nancy Holt and art dealer Virginia Dwan. Smithson shot the freshly transformed landscapes while putting up a series of mirrors in natural settings in the selected locations (barren wastelands, salt flats, and forested regions). The end product was both beautiful and unsettling because of the use of so clearly artificial materials in such a natural environment.

Smithson used mirrored surfaces to create phantom entrances in his Non-sites installations. The natural elements Smithson had scavenged from his travels, like as mica, essen dirt, red sandstone, limestone, sand, and gravel, contrasted sharply with the reflective mirrors in the installation. These Non-site creations often mirrored his Sites, as in Chalk Mirror Displacement (1969), a single work that was placed in two separate locations: its original quarry site in Oxted, England (Site) and subsequently in the exhibition space (Non-site). Sites/Non-sites was a unique creative undertaking since Smithson first altered the terrain before transferring the show components from the location into the gallery.

Along with Sites/Non-sites, Smithson was also working on a series of pieces titled Photo-Markers (1968), which were polar opposites to Smithson’s earlier work. It was found that Photo-Markers used a new approach to investigate the impacts of human influence on natural landscapes. Using a camera, Smithson would capture photographs of certain locations before enlarging and re-placing them in the actual settings they showed. To create an unusual contrast between natural and recreated elements inside the same frame, he re-photographed each scene. It’s as if nature is referencing itself.

These site-specific concepts were all Smithson had to work with when he initially started on Earthworks. His designs from 1969 and 1970 show several ideas in various stages of completion, including some that never materialised. His fascination in entropy and abstraction influenced early Earthworks like Asphalt Rundown (1969) and Glue Pour (1969), in which materials were poured and cooled to produce hardened abstract shapes as a consequence of heat loss. Moreover, they showed Smithson’s developing interest in industrial places and the use of wastelands by humans.

Spiral Jetty was his crowning accomplishment and most well-known piece of art (1970). Eventually, Smithson found a piece of land on the Great Salt Lake’s northern side in Utah and built a gigantic spiral out of 6650 tonnes of dirt before plunging it into the violet-red lake. There was synergy between the Jetty and its surrounding natural environment, unlike earlier Earthworks. It is an artificial extension of the natural landscape, even if it had been disturbed by industry, careless urbanisation, or nature’s own destruction as described by Smithson. Smithson continued Earthworks projects in the years that followed, all of which reflected his creative philosophy. Following the completion of Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in a quarry in Emmen, the Netherlands, in 1971, he went to the United States to work on his last project, which he would never see through to completion personally.

Late Life

When Smithson flew to Amarillo, Texas, in the summer of 1973, he was scouting the area for his next big construction project, Amarillo Ramp. They were on an aircraft when it went down, and he was one of three people killed in the accident. Despite the fact that Smithson was denied the chance to finish Amarillo Ramp before his death, his wife Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and others worked together to complete the project soon after his passing.

Artist and critic, Smithson was also a brilliant theorist and writer. He produced fascinating views on the convergence of earth, language, and art in his articles for Artforum and Arts Magazine, especially between 1967 and 1970. He penned the following in an article for Artforum magazine in September 1968: “Sediment comprises a text full of restrictions and bounds that defy logical order and societal systems that restrict artistic expression. To understand the rocks, we need to understand geologic time and the layers of ancient material buried in the Earth’s crust that have been preserved through time.”

Smithson’s words and work are replete with references to time, as seen by the passage above. Through his work, he grew more intrigued by the concept of time and humanity’s recurrent efforts to manipulate it. It was all a waste of time, according to Smithson. In his opinion, attempting to manipulate time amounted to depreciating it completely and depriving the planet of its inalienable right to exist. In Kent, Ohio, he created an Earthwork Half Buried Woodshed in 1970, which included a woodshed partially buried under 20 truckloads of soil. This artwork was “built” to show the ravages of geologic time and how it would eventually consume all human undertakings. The sea around Spiral Jetty and other big works like it finally absorbed them (for a while).

By coining the phrase “Land art,” Robert Smithson not only started the whole movement. As it turns out, Smithson’s untimely death may have helped to hasten the growth of the Land art movement. Installation, Conceptual art, and environmental consciousness came together in this movement, inspiring a new generation of artists to make work outside the studio. While Smithson’s work is known for its enduring quality, many of his pieces are made with the intention of being devoured by the passage of time and the forces of nature. For a long time before Smithson came around, artists wanted to achieve nirvana by producing works of art that would easily outlive their own lives. In a way, Smithson was aiming for the polar opposite. To demonstrate the vulnerability of nature in the industrial world, he made excursions into wastelands and no-land man’s to demonstrate the strength of nature’s defences against such assaults.

Famous Art by Robert Smithson

Blind in the Valley of the Suicides

1962

It’s possible that Dante’s Divine Comedy inspired Blind in the Valley of the Suicides, which shows a person converting into a tree. Drawings from 1960 to 1962 deal with eyesight and blindness, and this one is from that period. Smithson’s subsequent work would continue to explore the idea of vision, especially in works utilising mirrors, although he quickly abandoned figurative drawing. Images from science fiction and Catholicism (his mother’s faith) dominated this period of his career, which is seen in works like this.

Plunge

1966

With its focus on geometry, repetition, and industrial materials, Smithson’s Plunge was created while the artist was still mostly confined to his studio for much of his creative life at that time. Many reviewers who visited Smithson’s first solo exhibition at the Dwan Gallery in 1966 dubbed him a prominent Minimalist after seeing this piece. Plunge, on the other hand, deviates significantly from the aesthetics of well-known Minimalists like Donald Judd. To be more specific, the piece is composed of a succession of gradually increasing (or decreasing) size stepped units; this feeling of development differs greatly from Judd’s sculpture’s plain repetition. When it comes to size and proportions, Judd’s work is usually up front about them. However, Smithson’s Plunge’s shifting scale makes it impossible to judge the magnitude of its separate components, and this effort to confuse the observer is characteristic of Smithson’s work.

Chalk Mirror Displacement

1969

The Mirror Displacement series started soon after Smithson finished his Site/Non-Site pieces. The Mirror Displacements, in contrast to the Site works, employed items dropped on the floor and split up by mirrors rather than using materials brought in from outside the gallery, such as boulders and debris. The Mirror Displacement sculptures, on the other hand, did not necessarily include a component that was within the gallery; in this case, it was at Oxted Quarry in England. To put it another way, Smithson distinguished between two types of work: “The container was firm and the substance amorphous in other Non-sites. The container here is amorphous, but the mirror is a hard object.” Smithson was interested in how material, or another location, may be represented in the Displacement series; might the materials in the Displacement be considered to “mirror” their existence elsewhere?

Asphalt Rundown

1969

In a quarry on the outskirts of Rome, Smithson constructed Asphalt Rundown, his first massive Earthwork to be viewed outdoors. In order to chill and solidify the mixture as it fell, it was placed onto an asphalt dump truck and then discharged down the quarry’s sides. The asphalt mixture eventually seemed to merge with the quarry’s walls as it dropped. By “root it in the contour of the land, so that it’s permanently there and subject to the weathering.” it in the land’s natural contours, Smithson meant to make sure it would be exposed to the elements for the rest of time. Gravity and energy loss are crucial to the process of creating the art, and this illustrates how important entropy was to him.

Spiral Jetty

1970

When the Southern Pacific Railroad built a causeway over the Great Salt Lake in 1959, it cut off freshwater supplies to Smithson’s chosen location for Spiral Jetty. This aided in the water’s unusual red-violet hue by encouraging the growth of salt-tolerant bacteria and algae in large numbers. Smithson was especially fond of the colour scheme since it conjured up images of a desolate and polluted future scene. With the Jetty, Smithson drew attention to environmental degradation by using local materials and putting it into the damaged part. However, he also aimed to make a point about how time erodes and transforms our surroundings. Because of the piece’s coiled shape, which was inspired by crystal growth patterns, the landscape seems both ancient and futuristic at the same time.

Amarillo Ramp

1973

It’s a tragedy that Smithson had no hand in building Amarillo Ramp, but his creative philosophy and body of work are honoured in the posthumous sculpture he designed. A gradual eroding process has taken place since the ramp was built; along with Smithson’s whole body of mature Earthworks, it too will ultimately succumb to the elements, much as natural landscapes do. As well as Ant Farm’s Cadillac Ranch (1974) and numerous other artworks scattered around his 200 square acres of property near Amarillo, Stanley Marsh initially commissioned the ramp. Amarillo Ramp is a 140-foot-diameter granite ring that rises from flat ground to a 15-foot height. The ramp used to emerge from Tecovas Lake, a man-made body of water that has since dried up.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

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• However, despite his youthful age of 35, Robert Smithson influenced more new painters than most of the 1960s generation.
• It’s no surprise that his passions included everything from Catholicism to minerals to science fiction.
• To begin, his work was mostly in the form of paintings and collages, but by the early 1960s, he had shifted his concentration to sculpture as a way to engage with the movements of minimalism and conceptualism.
• Spiral Jetty, a magnificent rock coil built in the colourful waters of the Utah side of the Great Salt Lake in 1970, is the Earthwork or Land art for which he is most known.
• He was killed in an aeroplane accident in 1973 while doing site surveys in Texas for another Earthwork.
• Smithson is a key figure in the Post-Minimalist movement that arose in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.
• Minimalism’s use of industrial materials and focus on the sensation of space surrounding art objects (in addition to the art itself) influenced Post-Minimalism, which aimed to do away with even more of classical sculpture’s conventions in their work.
• Typical of this group, Smithson used a variety of approaches, such as using strewn materials to build his sculptures, using mirrors and scales to confuse the viewer’s perception of sculpture, and making references to places and objects outside the gallery to make the viewer wonder where the art object actually belonged.
• Smithson’s work was heavily influenced by his fascination with entropy, the second law of thermodynamics that predicts the inevitable depletion and collapse of every system.
• Geology and mineralogy piqued his curiosity, and he found proof of earth’s slowing and cooling in rocks and debris.
• In his famous essay Entropy and the New Monuments (1969), he draws comparisons between the quarries of New Jersey and the strip malls and tract homes there, suggesting that ultimately the latter will also perish and return to rubble.
• But the idea also influenced his outlook on culture and civilization more broadly;There were substantial contributions to the Land art discourse in the 1960s from Smithson’s conceptions of Site and Nonsite – one a physical place, the other a collection of artefacts and documentation – both of which were beyond the gallery.
• After the practise of memorial public sculpture died away, his writings on monuments and ruins inspired many to consider what role art may play in the environment.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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