What I Like About Robert Smithson

I'm still making my way through the SFAI library and I got my hands on some Smithson books which are always curiously "missing" from the SF public library! I think artists steal the books because Smithson is famous and dearly loved (although if you don't have some kind of art degree you probably haven't really studied him, which makes me think about his 'real' value, but lets not go into that!)

He was hugely successful, highly respected, not institutionally educated (like, no B.A. degree), and very young when he died (35?). He was also with Nancy Holt, they are known for being the founders (?) or major practitioners of a kind of art called 'earthworks'

Here is the piece he is widely known for. This is the Spiral Jetty, its in the great salt lake. Its huge. You often see images of this from the 70s, when it was made. But its actually covered in salt crystals now, in 2011, and that was part of the piece, and that's prettier.

Nancy Holt is famous for this awesome piece:

"Sun Tunnels" In Utah. Beautiful. The sun shines through a series of holes in these cement pipe things.

They also did collaborations.

But anyway, I can't tell you how many times I've heard him referred to in one article, talk, conversation or another. Thankfully, I finally figured out why people love him so much. He gives everyone permission. He basically modeled this idea that art is open-ended and privileges conversations and questions over the more traditional making of objects (but he also made objects, so people who make paintings and stuff, ehem, can still like him). There's other reasons though - ideas he came up with and bodies of work grounded in issues contemporary to our time.

He worked in a huge range of media and his work (in his mere 15 years of production) is all over the place. But he also wrote a TON. It wasn't that he was a total genius, he just was hungry and kept thinking. He had this unabashed commitment and confidence about his work and mind, that's really inspiring. Sometimes he seems somewhat calculated and self-important, but I love how he combines deep thinking about American life, philosophy, and the enviroment with science fiction, geometry, and personal weirdness. Like "Proposal for a Monument at Antarctica"

For instance, What is memorialized here and why at Antarctica, where no one will ever see it? There's a story here that I don't know, but I don't really need to. I think he's just going off on the idea of Antarctica... on exploration, on memorials, on industry, on freezingness - combining them in his own personal weirdo fantasy.

And more in this Antarctica vein, he wants to make an island out of broken glass (on the right) and put weird mirrors in glacial crevices:

I also like these weird collages he did (Check out the image in the center, its from that weird Mannerist portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrees)

He was also really into the grid and geometric shapes, which is a nice reference point for some drawings I'm working on. Although in his world the grid was a "crystalline structure"

Someone in charge of his estate must have realized the rampant library theft issue, because Most of his writings and work can be found here: www.robertsmithson.com.