Smithson, Robert

Smithson, Robert (1938–1973). American sculptor and experimental artist. He was born at Passaic, New Jersey, and studied at the Art Students League, New York, 1955–6, and then briefly at the Brooklyn Museum School. In the 1960s his work belonged mainly to the category of Minimal art; he was interested in mathematical impersonality and as well as making block-like steel sculptures he experimented with reflections and mirror-images. From the late 1960s he turned to Conceptual art; he expressed his ideas mainly through Land art and became the best-known artist working in this field. In 1968 he began a series of ‘Sites’ and ‘Non-Sites'. The latter consisted of photographs and plans of locations he had visited (particularly derelict urban or industrial sites) displayed with specimens of rock or geological refuse he had gathered there, arranged into random heaps or in metal or wood bins: ‘Instead of putting a work of art on some land, some land is put into the work of art.’ Smithson then moved on to large-scale earthworks, the best-known of which is the enormous Spiral Jetty (1970), a spiral road running out into Great Salt Lake, Utah (it has periodically become submerged and then reappeared with changing water levels). He was killed in a plane crash when he was surveying a work in progress, Amarillo Ramp in Texas. It was completed according to his plans by his wife Nancy Holt (1938– ), also a sculptor and Land artist, and his friends Richard Serra and Tony Shafrazi. Smithson wrote many articles expounding his views on art: The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt, was published in 1979.