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.. with every year that passes the accidental death of Robert Smithson in 1973 seems an even greater calamity. Smithson had a natural largeness of spirit. He had big ideas and could carry them through. ( He also had engaging quirks and could blow them up like many colored balloons.) He could talk, he could write, and he could make. And he could communicate his enthusiasm to others. How should we regard him, if not as a loss leader and as a source of energy to suddenly cut off?
In one way and another, Robert Smithson changed the course of art, and there is today a whole gamut of sculpture, from Richard Serra to Carl Andre, that does something to his dynamic into brief presence. -- John Russell, the Fertile Imagination of Robert Smithson - the New York Times
Robert Smithson is a seminal figure in contemporary art. In his work he created a new dialogue between traditional sculpture and its context. He brought into play and be part of the work of art the relationship between the material that composes the work and the material's origin. He was fascinated by science fiction, ecological and geological processes; by the non-space of movie houses, suburbia, abandoned industrial areas, and strip mined lands;and, most important, by the concept of entropy. Just as Jackson Pollock change painting by taking a canvas off the easel so Smithson redefined the limits of sculpture by taking it out of the gallery and into the world.
Condition: oversized softcover, 261 pages including index, 1981 Cornell University press, soiling and scuffing to outside cover interior book in very good condition.
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