Time scale becomes Spiral Jetty’s transcendent theme, an arts theme-the “Vanity of Human Wishes.” Imposed unnatural forms succumb to inexorable natural powers. It would then express a potent environmental ethic-the reconquest of human works by persistent natural process. This fade to white may qualify as part of the disappearing eco-act he had in mind. We learn that Smithson, who died in 1973 in a plane crash while searching for new sites, seems to have wanted the work to disappear, through natural entropy, a concept he discussed extensively. The environment yields to the fiats of the engineer geometer, Daedalus in Utah.īut that original contrast between the spiral’s black rocks and the wine-colored water has softened as time has encrusted the jetty with salts. However, on closer inspection of the spiral-building video, it’s as if we are close-up, eye-level witnesses to the formation of something meta-natural, an archetypical absolute commanded into shape by a master builder and his crew. I doubt permission to construct it could be granted today, even on private land. Using rudimentary engineering, Smithson traced out the spiral with flags and hired a reluctant construction company to fill it in with local soil and black basalt rock. This further separates Smithson’s jetty from the natural world. The gap between the spiral’s curves is kept constant, so it’s an Archimedean spiral, not the logarithmic one usually found in nature, as in a chambered nautilus, a popular symbol of organic growth. But it’s a deliberate unnatural contrast with the land and algae–reddened water is what stands out: It resonates with nothing.Īt the current MOCA exhibit, we can view Smithson’s own film of the construction process of unloading tons of rock and soil into the simple form this inscribes the site with the familiar anonymous mark, “I am here!” Man overrides irregular, messy Nature with a perfect arithmetic figure. It’s inert and quite drab, isolated, somewhat elegant in its blunt simplicity, but essentially pointless, though it does somewhat humanize the remote and desolate site. However, little environmental consciousness seems involved in Spiral Jetty. The water at this shallow, dead-end corner of the lake has become polluted and extra salty from runoff, so it seems nothing’s damaged here from the spiral’s intrusion. It’s a minimalist flat form imposed on the lake, visible when the level’s low-a useless berm, a raised driveway, a widget on a stalk. Like much Earth art, Spiral Jetty is a tribute to the daring and imagination of the artist who goes from concept to actual product-the fact that it is done at all is often what constitutes its significance. It’s 15 feet wide and coils for 1,500 feet near the lake edge. He left his mark with a massive earthwork sculpture on the northeast edge of the Great Salt Lake. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in 1970 put the modern Earth-art movement in high relief. In this and the following three issues of American Scientist I explore these works and attempt to answer that question. And, two recent events in Los Angeles prompt me to make such an assessment: the installation of Michael Heizer’s rock, Levitating Mass, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a complementary retrospective, Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). However, a question arises these days about how environmentally aware and conscientious are land- or earth-artists? Four major figures and four key works help us assess the evolving role of environmental consciousness in earth art. Or it may be a form of creative play, now augmented by machines. This may signal ownership, dominance, or an attempt to connect or infuse nature’s power into the human creature. That’s what human beings had done to the Earth for millennia-left their mark, indelible or not. In the early 1960s some artists abandoned the wall, the gallery, and the museum for altering the landscape outside. It poses many more questions than it provides answers, not least of which might be whether its construction would even be allowed today.Ĭhangeable, perhaps even erasable, by time, how permanent should Earth art be? Spiral Jetty, built by Robert Smithson in a remote corner of Great Salt Lake, is an early example of the sort of Earth art that took hold in the 1960s. Robert Chianese in American Scientist Magazine 2013 Jan-Feb. Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson, Fair Use Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty from the series How Green Is Earth Art?
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