Why is spiral jetty important

Children's Books. Decorative Arts. Fashion and Culture. General Non-Fiction. Artspace Art and Design Objects. Prints and Editions. Whereas the archaic works were presumably meant to be durable monuments, the Jetty already suggests and anticipates its own ruin. Smithson was fascinated by the form of the ruined monument. From early on he showed an interest in pyramidal ziggurat forms, constructing both glass versions e.

Mirror Strata , drawings, and cardboard spiral models. In an earlier essay, a somewhat parodic take on the monumental genre, he spoke of buildings that "don't fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. Smithson's concern with ruins is related to his interest in entropy. According to physical theory, the overall organization of any closed system can only decrease over time.

This is illustrated by irreversible changes such as scrambling an egg it can't be unscrambled or mixing two differently colored batches of sand in a sandbox Smithson's example. On this view of time, things can only run down, a tendency suggested perhaps by the Jetty 's counter-clockwise orientation seen from shore. Although Smithson sometimes criticized the artificiality of "the gardens of history," the Jetty shares at least one characteristic with works like those of the British picturesque: it invites the observer's mobility.

As he said in an interview, an important dimension of experiencing the work is walking it in both centripetal and centrifugal directions.

In contrast to what he called "gardens of history" the Spiral Jetty can be considered as a "site of time. The protagonist travels back in time from a dystopian postwar future, only to return as the victim to a murder scene he'd witnessed on a linear jetty as a child. In one the artist describes the work of emerging Minimalist artists as "new monuments" that lead us to "forget the future" rather than remembering the past and have the effect of fragmenting and spatializing time.

Smithson also liked this location because of its blatant anti-pastoral beauty and industrial remnants from the Golden Spike National Historic Site nearby, an old pier, and several unused oil rigs. That was enough of a reason to go out there and have a look. Smithson was pretty familiar with the West, having come from the East Coast with his family earlier for vacations, then later trekking around the state.

He frequently traveled to the West to gather specimens and images for his projects. That meant that not only would he create a spiral, but the waters of the lake would act like an inverse spiral and a mirror simultaneously.

The water of the lake could reflect the spiral, as well as reflect the surrounding site and the sun, turning the landscapes into themselves. The original concept of the piece was a spiral with an island at the center. The idea of an island at the center of the spiral was to be maintained throughout the many revisions the project underwent until nearly the end. However, the spiral was always the main plan.

Before the start of construction, Smithson spent a few weeks in Utah exploring the ideal site to construct his Earthwork. Part of the letter read:. This project will resemble a jetty in the shape of a spiral. The structure will be made of rock and gravel. The purpose of placing the rock on the mudflat area will be to induce salt crystals on the rock and gravel as incrustations that will develop over a period of time. This will contrast with the red color of the water. Its purpose is purely aesthetic, and it can be viewed from an airplane or the road.

The artists occasionally supervised the construction of the project from a helicopter, at which he was quoted saying et in Utah ego , which a counterpoint to the pastoral Baroque painting by Nicolas Poussin titled et in Arcadia ego.

The rock used in constructing the piece was moved into the lake by Bob Phillips from nearby Ogden, Utah, who utilized two dump trucks, a huge tractor, alongside a front-end loader. The stones weighed about 6, tons. The constructor almost turned down this unusual proposal from Robert Smithson, and he had to be convinced thoroughly by the artist. Login Register. Page 20 DOI: Bibliography Dia Foundation. Preservation collaboration. Smithson, Robert. Entropy and the New Monuments. American Scientist Comment Policy Stay on topic.

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