ROBERT+SMITHSON

Julia Belamarich 3/7/10

Robert Smithson Robert Smithson is best known as the leader of the Earthworks movement. He primarily worked in sculpture, using natural materials as well as recyclable materials and human trash. He was born on January 2, 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey. He studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York. Smithson’s early work was primarily in collage, influenced by magazines, science fiction and pop art. Originally he identified himself as a painter, but in 1964 he became a began to experiment with minimalist art. He used materials such as glass sheet and neon lighting tubes in his sculptures, and explored visual refraction and mirroring. An example of this stage in his work is his sculpture “Enantiomorphic Chambers” Much of his early work explored the concept of applying mathematical impersonality to art. He was also a writer and art critic, and wrote many essays and reviews for Arts Magazine and Artforum. Smithson wrote several essays about 18th and 19th landscape architecture, which later influenced his earthworks art. Smithson was first inspired to create earthworks in 1967 after exploring industrial areas around New Jersey. He was fascinated by the dump trucks excavating earth and rock, and began creating ‘non-sites’ in which earth and rocks collected from a specific area are installed in a gallery as sculptures. He began promoting this land art in an essay titled “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” which was published in //Artforum// in September 1968. Earthworks is an art form created in nature using natural materials such as stones, leaves, or soil, and left to change under natural conditions. Smithson’s earthworks pieces were made using sticks, dirt, rocks, and other natural things. He divided his work into two categories: ‘sites’ and ‘non-sites’. In 1972, in a footnote to “The Spiral Jetty,” Smithson listed properties associated with the two states:

SITE: 1. Open Limits 2. A Series of Points 3. Outer Coordinates 4. Subtraction 5. Indeterminate Certainty 6. Scattered Information 7. Reflection 8. Edge 9. Some Place (physical) 10. Many || NONSITE: Closed Limits An Array of Matter Inner Coordinates Addition Determinate Uncertainty Contained Information Mirror Center No Place (abstract) One ||

One of Smithson’s first earthworks piece was a ‘site’ installation called “Partially Buried Woodshed” in Kent, Ohio in January 1970. He created this piece while staying at Kent State University for a week as a visiting artist. Dirt was dumped on an empty shed by a backhoe until the center beam of the wood and stucco shed cracked. It is intended to illustrate entropy. Today a few pieces of the foundation remain, hidden in the trees. In April 1970, Smithson created his most famous piece “The Spiral Jetty” in Great Salt Lake, Utah. The jetty is a 1500’ feet long, 5’ wide coil jutting from the shore. 6,550 tons of rock and dirt were moved into the lake using two dump trucks, a large tractor, and a front end loader. When it was built, the water level in the lake was unusually low due to a drought. A few years later, the water level returned to normal and submerged the jetty. In 2004, a drought exposed the jetty again for about a year. However, the lake level rose again in spring of 2005 and the Jetty is now partially submerged. Smithson built “Broken Circle” in Emmen, Holland in the summer of 1971. “Broken Circle” is formed by two mirrored semi-circles—half on land, half on water, half canal, half jetty. An ancient boulder lies in the center, which could not be moved. “Spiral Hill” was also built in Emmen, Holland in 1971. It is a counterclockwise spiral cut into a large mound of dirt. The spiral is covered by white sand, contrasting the black topsoil on the hill. The work was preserved as a park by the people of Emmen. Smithson died in a plane crash in 1973. His earthworks were monumental and unprecedented, exploring the relationship between a piece of art and its environment. He was influenced by other minimalists and land artists of his time, such as Nancy Holt (his wife), Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt. His work influenced many other land artists, such as Walter de Maria, Hans Haacke, Alice Aycock, Dennis Opperheim, Michael Heizer, Andrew Rogers, and James Turell.


 * BIBLIOGRAPHY:**

"Earthworks." //Robert Smithson//. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. . Hobbs, Robert. //Robert Smithson: Sculpture//. New York, NY: Smithmark Pub, 1981. Print. "Robert Smithson." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. .