Robert Smithson - Research documenting space
Robert
Simthson was an American artisit who presented sculpture and land art mainly
using the medium of photography. He initially defined himself as a painter
regarding his early work. From 1964, he became a proponent of the emerging
'minimalist' movement. Smithson's interest in 'temporal' is explored through
the rediscovery of the idea of 'picturesque' and he recovers the issues of 'site specificity' and' human intervention'
as dialectic landscape layers, experiential multiplicity, and the values of
deformations manifest in the picturesque landscape.
By re-interpreting and re-evaluating
anti-aesthetic and anti-formalist logic, Smithson was able to broaden the
temporal and intellectual context for his own work, and to offer renewed
meaning for Central Park as an important work of modern art and landscape architecture.
Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture
constructed in April 1970, considered to be his central and most notable work.
Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film
also titled Spiral Jetty.
Spiral Jetty
Spiral Jetty
Spiral Jetty
