Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson coined the phrase "earthworks" which included Land art and Earth art. This was a revolution in it's time, when art was taken out of the galleries and into more natural surroundings.

In this the landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked using natural materials such as soil, rock (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (logs, branches, leaves), and water with introduced materials such as concrete, metal, asphalt, or mineral pigments. Works are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation. On completion they are frequently left to change and erode under natural conditions, with time only existing as video recordings or photographic documents.

Spiral Jetty, Smithson's most famous work, was typical of this type of work. Constructed in 1970 it is a fifteen-hundred-foot-long, fifteen-foot-wide spiral of stone that extends out into the Great Salt Lake, in Utah. Smithson videoed and photographed the construction and the resulting work, and today, after 44 years the work is now only visible when the lake levels are very low.

Smithson building Spiral Jetty

Spiral Jetty 1970

Spiral Jetty as seen on Google Maps in 2014

Smithson employed the phrase "entropy" in his concepts. He quotes:

" ... it's a condition that's irreversible, it's a condition that's moving towards a gradual equilibrium and it's suggested in many ways. Perhaps a nice succinct definition of entropy would be Humpty Dumpty. Like Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. There is a tendency to treat closed systems in such a way"

Another work, more permanent in nature is "Broken Circle Spiral Hill".

However entropy also comes into play here too as nature has now taken over. Smithson at the time wrote a series of recommendations to ensure that his work would survive the test of time well. However, it no longer has the form of old, the lake water covers roughly the pier and Spiral Hill is in turn covered with evergreen plants.

Back in the gallery, Smithson brought land art inside to try and encourage viewers to seek out the origins of the work. He called these works "non-sites", and offered the following explanation in his writings:

"The Non-Site (an indoor earthwork) is a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site. It is by this dimensional metaphor that one site can represent another site which does not resemble it - this The Non-Site. To understand this language of sites is to appreciate the metaphor between the syntactical construct and the complex of ideas, letting the former function as a three dimensional picture which doesn't look like a picture."

Rocks and mirror square II

Smithson died in a plane crash is 1973, however many artists have paid homage to his works since.

In 2005, the Whitney Museum collaborated with Minetta Brook, Robert Smithson's estate, and James Cohan Gallery to sponsor the construction of Robert Smithson's "Floating Island", a floating island of parkland tugged around New York Harbor, inspired by a 1970 drawing by Robert Smithson, entitled "Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island". The island, complete with living trees, was pulled by a tugboat.