Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22069

Robert Smithson (1938–1973), an artist of paramount importance in postwar America, created radical new perspectives for landscape architecture, photography, art criticism, and site-specific installation. His Spiral Jetty—a 1,500-foot-long coil of rock built in 1970 at the edge of the Great Salt Lake—is widely appreciated as one of the most significant art projects of the twentieth century. Less well known is the connection between the Jetty and the nearby Golden Spike National Historic Site, location of the completion of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. The link between these two monuments is but one facet of an entire complex of historical reference and reflection that structures Smithson's work. close analysis of the artist's working model of history and featuring comprehensive case studies of three of his most influential works: The Monuments of Passaic, Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, and the Spiral Jetty. Incorporating abundant new material from Smithson's personal papers and library, Jennifer Roberts offers surprising new interpretations about the artist and his responses to the social, ideological, and material contradictions of his time.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date May 2004 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300094978

EISBN 9780300266856

Illustrations 82

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

List of illustrations

Robert Smithson's passport
Spiral Jetty
East and West Shaking Hands at Laying [of] Last Rail
Spiral Jetty
Creeping Jesus
Christ Series: Christ in Limbo
Illustration showing cross section of a nemertean
Man of Ashes
Jesus Mocked
Fallen Christ
Alive in the Grave of Machines
Yard
Tear
Entombment
Gyrostasis
Untitled
Illustration of thin crystals of paraffin hydrocarbons
Electron micrographs of paraffin hydrocarbons
Mirrored Ziggurat
Chalk-Mirror Displacement
Illustration of left- and right-handed quartz crystals
Enantiomorphic Chambers
Man of Sorrow 1 (The Forsaken)
Man of Sorrow 2 (The Forsaken)
Green Chimera with Stigmata
Illustration of crystal characters
Secor surveying satellite
Proposal for a Monument on the Red Sea
Proposal for a Monument at Antarctica
Illustration of crystals
A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (cube monument)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (small fountain monument)
Area of Robert Smithson's tour through Passaic, New Jersey
Supplemental photograph taken in connection with Ultramoderne project
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (square spirals)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (crystalline grate on The Bridge Monument)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (road closed)
The Bridge Monument Showing Wooden Sidewalks, from The Monuments of Passaic
Untitled snapshot from Points on the Edge of a New Jersey Swamp project (fence)
Untitled snapshot from Points on the Edge of a New Jersey Swamp project (railroad)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (traditional monument)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (concrete form)
Plate 3 from Perspective
Plate 7 from Geometria et Perspectiva
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (parking lot)
Asphalt Rundown (Rome)
Untitled snapshot from Monuments of Passaic project (alternate view of The Sand-Box Monument)
Stela at Copán
Idol at Copán
Portion of a Building, Las Monjas, Uxmal
Untitled (illustration of surgery for strabismus)
The Course of Empire: Desolation
Installation of Stephens Stones
Robert Smithson setting up Yucatan Mirror Displacement #1
Yucatan Mirror Displacement #1
Yucatan Mirror Displacement #2
Idol and Altar at Copán
Yucatan Mirror Displacement #7
Yucatan Mirror Displacement #5
Yucatan Mirror Displacement #4
Hotel Palenque #7
The Last Spike
Centennial reenactment of the driving of the Golden Spike
Northern Great Salt Lake area
Replica engines used for reenactments of The Wedding of the Rails
Advertisement for the Golden Spike Motel
Plan for Museum Concerning Spiral Jetty near Golden Spike Monument
Abandoned oil tank and jetty near Spiral Jetty
Abandoned truck near Spiral Jetty
Rozel Point showing Spiral Jetty (left) and straight jetty from abandoned oil extraction operation (center)
Untitled (Construction of Spiral Jetty)
Spiral Jetty, detail
Granite Cañon, Black Hills
Spiral Jetty
Illustration an an ear
Spiral Jetty
Spiral Jetty
Spiral Jetty, detail
Spiral Jetty, detail of salt crystals
Electron micrographs, detail

Free

Contents

Contents

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22070

Read

Free

Acknowledgments

~~This book began, many revisions ago, as a dissertation in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. I first thank my mentors there for giving the project the generous support, and the critical scrutiny, that allowed it to develop as it did. I am especially grateful to Jules D. Prown: not only for his...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22071

Read

Introduction

~Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty was built in the spring of 1970 along a remote portion of the northern shoreline of the Great Salt Lake (fig. 2). The Jetty’s physical monumentality (6,650 tons of rock and mud forming a spiral over a quarter-mile long) is matched by its art-historical...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-10

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.1

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22072

Chapter subject tags:HistoriographyEarthworks (Art)--United StatesSmithson, Robert. Spiral JettyGolden Spike National Historic Site (Utah)

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

History in Smithson’s Religious Paintings

~~In 1961 Smithson was twenty-three years old, living in New York on Sixth Avenue in what he described as “the hinterlands between the Garment district and the Village.” Having felt alienated, misunderstood, and bored by the...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.12-35

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.2

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22073

Chapter subject tags:MysticismJesus Christ--ArtIconoclasm--HistoryCollage, AmericanKaprow, AllanGreenberg, Clement, 1909-1994

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

The Deposition of Time

~One of the canonical specimens of Italian Mannerist painting, known for the audacity with which it challenges the conventions of its high Renaissance predecessors, is Pontormo’s Deposition altarpiece (1525–28) in the Capponi...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.36-59

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.3

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22074

Chapter subject tags:Mannerism (Art)--ItalyChristian art and symbolismMirrors in artFourth dimension

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Forgetting Passaic

~On Saturday, September 30, 1967, Smithson took a bus ride from the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan to the city of Passaic, New Jersey. With Instamatic camera and notepad in hand, he spent the better part of the day exploring the downtown district of the...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.60-85

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.4

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22075

Chapter subject tags:Historic preservation--Law and legislationSatire in artRace relations

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Smithson and Stephens in Yucatán

Robert Smithson and John Lloyd Stephens were both New Jersey-born residents of Manhattan, wherefrom each embarked on a well-publicized excursion to the Yucatán Peninsula. One departed from New York on Monday, October 9, 1841, aboard the cargo ship Tennessee; the...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.86-113

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.5

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22076

Chapter subject tags:Yucatán PeninsulaStephens, John L., 1805–1852Earthworks (Art)--United StatesStelae (Archaeology) in artIndians of Central AmericaLévi-Strauss, Claude

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Spiral Jetty/Golden Spike

~There were many photographs taken of the driving of the Golden Spike in 1869, but Andrew J. Russell’s iconic East & West Shaking Hands at Laying of Last Rail (see fig. 3) is unquestionably the most famous. Among the reasons for this, I would suggest, is that the photograph’s visual structure...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Smithson, Robert. Spiral JettyGolden Spike National Historic Site (Utah)Railroads--United States--History--19th centuryGreat Salt Lake (Utah)Earthworks (Art)--United StatesMorelli, Giovanni, 1816-1891

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.114-139

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00282.6

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22077

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.