Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson remains one of the most influential and original artists of modern times who has had a major impact on artists of his generation, and continues to do so today. Smithsons inflammatory full treatment, made in the mid-sixties to early seventies, redefined the language of sculpture. He was one of the founders of the art form know as earthworks or land art, and is most well known for the Spiral Jetty, 1970, located in the huge Salt Lake, Utah. This monumental earthwork was inspired in part when Smithson saw the Great Serpent Mound, a pre-Columbian Indian monument in southwestern Ohio.The earthworks were a substructure departure from making formal objects situate in a gallery setting. The Spiral Jetty embodied one of his goals which was to place work in the land rather than situated on the land. Smithsons earthworks defined an entirely original notion of landscape art. dissatisfied with the art of this time, Smithson did not limit himself to any one form or style of ar t. He travel beyond modernism by abandoning rules and conventional art materials.Smithson defied convention and produced works that could not be soft categorized. He used non-traditional art materials such as language, mirrors, maps, dump trucks, abandoned quarries, hotels, contractors, and earth to produce his radical sculptures, photographs, films, and earthworks. PARTIALLY BURIED WOODSHED Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Jan, 1970 one woodshed and twenty truckloads of earth 186 x 102 x 45 Smithson explored ideas involving spoil and renewal, booby hatch and order with his Earthworks.He spoke at great length in interviews and essays on putrefaction and his notion of time. Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970, Kent State University, Kent State, was a paper Smithson created on site during an invitational humanistic discipline festival. He located an abandoned woodshed and poured earth on to the structure until it cracked. This work is a prime pillow slip of Smithsons personal idea s approximately the importance of decay and time, leaving it to be subject to weathering, which should be considered part of the piece.This quote is from a statement Smithson signed when he donated the work to Kent State University. Smithson developed a commodious variety of photographic works none of which dealt with traditional composition. One such work, Spiral Jetty take on Stills, 1970, is a three-paneled work of black and white images that were taken during the making of the Spiral Jetty. Other photographic works incorporated collage with text or maps. His photographs are both artwork and documentation and are not traditional images of the landscape in artistic terms.In 1970 Smithson moved his work outside of the gallery walls to focus on entirely on earthworks such as the Spiral Jetty, Partially Buried Woodshed and Amarillo Ramp. At this time a small group of artists were rethinking their ideas about art in relationship to the land. These endeavors in the land helped Smi thson to explore chaos and order - how natural forces such as wind, rain, heat and cold, would affect the work over time. Nancy Holt, Smithsons wife and an artist in her own right, has said of the Spiral Jetty In its scale and ideas, this sculpture embodies the spirit of nearly of the great monuments of past civilizations yet it is wholly contemporary in concept and execution. The earthworks enabled Smithson to express his ideas about art existing in the landscape, while simultaneously producing an art form that was non-commercial, existing outside of the traditional viewing spaces. It could not be owned or seen easily. The earthworks are known by most lonesome(prenominal) through photographs. HOMEWORK TASKComplete a conceptual framework analysis on a work of your choice created by Robert Smithson. DO NOT select an artwork that features in this booklet. A vertical place to start is www. robertsmithson. com/index_. htm This is the official website of the artist. Once you have sele cted your work use the Internet to locate besides information about the work, you will need this to complete your conceptual framework. Use the conceptual framework on the following page to record your information. Print an image of the work with a full citation which toilette be glued into your artbook.