Minimalism & the Land
Smithson, Spiral Jetty Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 (Great Salt Lake, Utah) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Shana Gallagher-Lindsay http://www.smarthistory.org/earth-artsmithsons-spiral-jetty.html
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- [music playing]
- >>: We're looking at a work by Robert Smithson, and it dates to
- 1970, and it's called "The Spiral Jetty."
- This is a photograph showing it.
- It must have been taken from a helicopter, and it's what you
- call a work of environmental art or land art.
- It's essentially a bunch of dirt and rubble that has been pushed
- out into the spiral form into a lake, into this salt lake in
- Utah.
- >>: It exists in this one place and this one time.
- Could we say it is site specific?
- >>: Right, exactly.
- We call it site specific.
- One of the things that Smithson wanted to emphasize was a kind
- of a distinction between, you know, the site of the work of
- art, and the traditional site of the work, which would be a
- gallery or a museum or private home and kind of breaking down
- barriers, saying, is a work of art only to be contained by
- museum or can we also find it elsewhere?
- And so he is part of a larger movement of artists who are
- specifically locating or situating their work in the
- land, and oftentimes the works have these very, very large
- proportions.
- Like this juts out 1500 feet into the water.
- >>: And can you walk through it?
- >>: You can usually walk on it.
- Well, not necessarily.
- It depends on the height of the water itself.
- So sometimes it is submerged.
- So this photograph shows that there are some people out on the
- jetty.
- >>: Yeah, I see.
- >>: But it has been slightly covered by water.
- Sometimes it's lower or higher.
- It depends on the depth of the water in Utah at the time, and
- it's very a salty lake.
- So it's a work that really is certainly part of the
- environment, but also interacts and changes the environment in
- important ways.
- So you could also maybe categorize it under the category
- of process art because it is something that is forever
- changing.
- You know, he had one idea of it, but then there are things that
- act upon it and will change it for, you know, for as long as it
- is there.
- >>: It is made of things that are so durable, though.
- One gets a sense of existing beyond human life.
- >>: Right.
- And it has such a basic shape as well.
- He is interested in some ancient examples of prehistoric land
- art, mounds that have been found in America and elsewhere, and it
- is sort of inspired by that somewhat abstract quality of a
- lot of those.
- The idea that your vision of it right now as you see it as a
- totality.
- When you are in it of course, you are only experiencing it,
- and it is a very, very different way
- of seeing partial aspects of it.
- >>: What interests me is that you can go into it
- and walk through it.
- >>: Right, usually you are not supposed to touch the art.
- >>: No, right.
- I like that idea of touching it and being inside it.
- >>: He liked it, too.
- Yeah, and --
- >>: -- it is fun.
- It makes it fun.
- >>: Yeah, and he had to use a lot of construction tools,
- massive trucks to drive the rubble down and also to employ a
- lot of people.
- So it really destabilizes our idea that the artist is an
- individual, a single person who is the mastermind.
- Of course he did come up with the scheme, but he never could
- have realized this alone.
- >>: Right.
- >>: And that is such an important idea now.
- Things can be made by groups of people, by factories, people
- that the artist can employ.
- >>: Right.
- And maybe he is going back also to what he thinks ancient art
- was like, that it was not done by a single genius artist but
- rather was a communal thing and then was sort of left open
- for everyone to interact with.
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