ART CITIES:N.York-Robert Smithson

For over fifty years Robert Smithson’s work and ideas have influenced artists and thinkers, building the ground from which contemporary art has grown. An autodidact, Smithson’s interests in travel, cartography, geology, architectural ruins, prehistory, philosophy, science-fiction, popular culture, and language spiral through his work. He was fascinated by concepts of duality, entropy, and questions of how we might find our place in the world.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Abstract Cartography” focuses on a crucial five-year period in Robert Smithson’s development: 1966 to 1971, a time when his “inklings of earthworks” began. This careful selection of artworks traces Smithson’s radical rethinking of what art could be and where it could be found. In 1966 Smithson was part of a symposium at Yale University, where he discussed the idea of the city as a crystalline network. In the audience was a representative of the architectural consulting firm Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton who was working on a proposal for a new Texas regional airport between Dallas and Fort Worth. Right after the talk, Smithson was invited to join the team. An autodidact, Smithson’s interests in travel, cartography, geology, architectural ruins, prehistory, philosophy, science fiction, popular culture and language spiral through his work. From his landmark earthworks to his ‘quasi-minimalist’ sculptures, Nonsites, writings, proposals, collages, detailed drawings, and ecologically charged earthworks, Smithson’s ideas are profoundly urgent for our times. By exploring the conceptual and physical boundaries of landscape Smithson raised questions about our place in the world, their relevance heightened as the dangers of global warming move ever closer.   In the South Gallery of Marian Goodman, “Abstract Cartography” brings together a laboratory of sculptural thinking, sculptures exploring crystal geometry and distorted perspective, and key works showing Smithson’s exploratory research into what an airport might be. Smithson was interested in possibilities of artists collaborating with other disciplines, and he was committed to art being a necessary and urgent part of society. His proposals for airport buildings echo his geometrical sculptures that, in turn, were informed by the potential of aerial art. His plan was to place earthworks at the edges of the terminal complex, that were viewable from the air and would become two-dimensional when looked at from an ascending aircraft. The earthworks would be broadcast live to television screens installed in a museum at the center of the terminal, an invitation to watch time pass while waiting. Airports have no centers; they are transitory zones between places. For Smithson, the fringes were locations for fertile thought – and far more interesting than the center. The exhibition presents in the North Gallery a wall of maps, a collection of charted conceptual islands and continents, and the film “Mono Lake” (1968/2004), made with Nancy Holt. Mono Lake is concerned with a journey and destination. It documents Smithson, Holt, and Michael Heizer as the three artists explore one of the oldest lakes in North America on 28/7/1968. They are seen on the road, rustling maps and consulting rock hounding guides, and Smithson gathers from the site material for “Mono Lake Nonsite (Cinders Near Black Point)” (1968).

Photo: Robert Smithson, Shift, 1967, Painted metal, 23 x 30 x 32 in. (58.4 x 76.2 x 81.3 cm), Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th street New York, NY, USA, Duration: 24/6-20/8/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.mariangoodman.com