I'm doing quite a lot of
reading in the midst of my current phase of research and creative
meditation. Paintbrushes are being
wielded on a small scale but in reality, most of my current activity is taking
place between computer screens, camera lenses and the pages of sketchbooks and
literature.
One book that's already
making an impression, despite my being only part way in, is 'Robert
Smithson: The Collected Writings' , edited by Jack Flam. [1.] It was recommended to me by
Andy Smith when we exhibited in Birmingham last November and my good friend
Suzie was kind enough to buy me a copy for Christmas. Thanks to them both; it's already providing plenty of food for
thought.
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| Smithson With 'Spiral Jetty' Work In Progress. Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni, 1970 |
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| Film Still From: Robert Smithson, 'Spiral Jetty', 1970 |
I knew Smithson as a leading
light of the 1960s and 70s American Land Art movement and for his 'Spiral Jetty' constructed in Utah's Great Salt Lake but hadn't really considered the
conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of his practice. As the writings demonstrate, a wide
range of serious and original thought lay behind his Minimalist Sculpture and
later interventions in the physical landscape. So far, two pieces have really chimed with my own interests,
reflecting, as they do, an identifiably American Psychogeographical attitude to
specific locations.
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| Robert Smithson, 'Untitled', Mirrored Plastic & Steel, 1964 |
'The Crystal Land' [2.] is Smithson's account of a geological expedition to the quarries of his
native New Jersey, made with the Minimalist artist Donald Judd and their wives
in 1966. It fascinates me how
Smithson switches focus between microscopic, macroscopic and personal spaces
and between factual descriptions of the area's mineralogy; reflections on the
aesthetics and mood of the region; anecdotes about the day's events and a
meditation on the inconsequential details of their car's interior. In one paragraph he describes
excavating quartz crystals; in the next he discusses the area's middle-income
housing developments, listing pretentious names and cheesy colour schemes, then
explains how,
"The highways
crisscross through towns and become man-made geological networks of
concrete. In fact, the entire
landscape has a mineral presence.
From the shiny chrome diners to glass windows of shopping centres, a
sense of the crystalline prevails." [3.]
A subsequent account of their
ice cream break quickly becomes a discussion of the structure of ice crystals
before Smithson embarks on the following description,
"My eyes glanced over
the dashboard, it became a complex of chrome fixed into an embankment of
steel. A glass disc covered the
clock. The speedometer was broken. Cigarettes were packed into the
ashtray. Faint reflections slid
over the windshield. Out of sight
in the glove compartment was a silver flashlight and an Esso map of Vermont. Under the radio dial (55-7-9-11-14-16)
was a row of five plastic buttons in the shape of cantilevered cubes. The rearview mirror dislocated the road
behind us. While listening to the
radio some of us read the Sunday newspapers. The pages made slight noises as they turned; each sheet
folded over their laps forming temporary geographies of paper. A valley of print or a ridge of
photographs might come and go in an instant." [4.]
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| Robert Smithson, 'Untitled', Mirrored Plastic & Steel, 1965 |
Everything before that
beautiful, pivotal paragraph relates to the theme of crystals, whilst
everything after involves the dismal qualities of the wider landscape. Slag heaps; quarry equipment; pylons;
railways and fences predominate over "partially demolished" [5.] vegetation. A neighbouring region of swamps, motels
and garbage fires suggests a Martian film location. Finally, the image of mineral structure returns as they re-enter
New York City amongst the repeating square tiles of the Lincoln Tunnel.
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| Robert Smithson, 1962. Photographer Unknown |
The second document 'A Tour Of The Monuments Of Passaic, New Jersey (1967)' [6.] describes a later,
solo expedition into the artist's home state and opens with him boarding a bus
and perusing newspaper surveys of New York galleries and a S.F. novel by Brian
Aldiss, (Entitled 'Earthworks') appropriately enough.
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| 'The Bridge Monument Showing Wooden Sidewalks,' Photograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
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| 'Monument With Pontoons: The Pumping Derrick', Photograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
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| 'The Great Pipe Monument', Photograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
The 'monuments' that that
Smithson visits in Passaic are of the most mundane variety. The first is a river swing bridge of
seemingly utilitarian design that he photographs repeatedly with his cheap
camera. I'm instantly reminded of
my own current habit of standing in the cold to photograph railway bridges and
cement hoppers with a thoroughness verging on obsession. Then follows an investigation of a pumping derrick, pipeline and a water outfall system in which Smithson suddenly shifts from
factual description to sexual metaphor and wild free association.
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| 'The Fountain Monument, Birdseye View', Photograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
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| 'The Fountain Monument, Side View', Photograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
I'm struck by how dazzling
sunlight affects the photographer Smithson's relationship to his surroundings
and,
"…cinema-ized the
subject, turning the bridge and the river into an over exposed picture. Photographing it…was like photographing
a photograph. The sun became a
monstrous light-bulb that projected a detached series of 'stills' through my
Instamatic into my eye." [7.]
The ways in which our
experience of reality's continuum is modified once we interpose a lens between
it and our eye is something that always fascinates me during my own
photographic forays.
And so the piece progresses,
through workaday streets and the sublime vacancy of car lots; amongst suburbs
and an urban centre that actually feels very uncentered. At each step the most conventionally
unpromising of material provides the stimulus for associative thought, ideas
generation and philosophical discourse.
Viewing a partially constructed road triggers a meditation on how
suburbs grow, constructing a supposedly utopian future without any historical
foundation. He starts to see the
future as,
"…lost somewhere in the
dumps of the non-historical past;" [8.],
and observes that,
"…Time turns
metaphors into things and stacks them up in cold rooms or places them in the
celestial play-grounds of the suburbs." [9.]
Passaic appears full of holes
to the artist, - spread thin in comparison with the density of urban New
York. These qualities of
insubstantiality and anti-historical, vacant neutrality are, I think, a
recognisable quality of those transitional zones often called 'Edgelands' today [10.]. Smithson's impressions of
Passaic's lack of substance leads him to re-imagine it as a map of itself with
himself standing on cardboard, not earth.
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| Robert Smithson, 'Negative Map Showing Region Of The Monuments Along The Passaic River', 1967 |
The piece ends with an almost
metaphysical discussion of the nature of entropy, - itself triggered by his
observation of the final monument, - a simple sand pit that he likens to a "model
dessert" [11.]. It becomes the hypothetical
arena for an experiment to prove his theory on the subject.
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| 'The Sandbox Monument', Phtograph: Robert Smithson, 1967 |
I love these pieces, not
least for the quality of Smithson's writing, but also because they seem to
validate my own habitual view of the world and, (to others - possibly
baffling), behaviour. He exhibits
an approach that is simultaneously intelligent, intuitive and imaginative and I
applaud his ability to find visual delight and profound significance in the
most overlooked of subject matter.
I'm inspired by his example to write more creatively in accompaniment of the photographs from my own expeditions.
[1.]: Robert Smithson, Jack Flam (Ed.), ‘Robert
Smithson: The Collected Writings’, Berkeley,
University Of California Press, 1996
[2.] - [5.]: Robert Smithson, ‘The Crystal Land’, 1966, In: Robert Smithson, Jack Flam (Ed.), ‘Robert
Smithson: The Collected Writings’, Berkeley,
University Of California Press, 1996
[6.] - [11.]: Robert Smithson, ‘A Tour Of The
Monuments Of Passaic, New Jersey’,
1967, In: Robert Smithson, Jack Flam (Ed.), ‘Robert Smithson: The Collected
Writings’, Berkeley, University Of
California Press, 1996
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