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Spiral Jetty, stills from Spiral Jetty Film.

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Larger Image	Larger image may be viewed by UofL faculty, staff, and students only (log-in required using ULink username/password) at: http://echo.louisville.edu/login?url=http://vrc-web.louisville.edu/Jpegs/460/461-40.jpg
Title	Spiral Jetty, stills from Spiral Jetty Film.
Creator	Smithson, Robert (American sculptor and conceptual artist, 1938-1973)
Date	1970
Cultural Context	American North American
Style/Period	Modern (styles and periods) Modernist
Theme	Environmental art Earthworks (sculpture) Sculpture (visual work) Ecological art Avant-garde Jetties (erosion protection works) Spirals Industrial sites Industrial landscapes Industry (economic concept) Industrialization Oil fields Wasteland Land use Entropy Ecology Nature Natural landscapes Landscapes (environments) Bodies of water Lakes (bodies of water) Salt lakes Aerial views Bird's-eye views Bird's-eye perspectives Film stills Motion pictures (visual works) Documentaries Documentation (function) Maps Roads Streets Books
Subject	Sculpture Jetties Industrialization Industry Petroleum industry Land use Ecology Nature Bodies of water Lakes & ponds Aerial views Bird's-eye views Film stills Motion pictures Maps Dirt roads Roads Streets Books
Description	Documentation of film stills from Spiral Jetty, 1970. "These are frames from Smithson's half-hour-long film based on his Spiral Jetty. Shots taken of the dusty road on the way to the site of the work were intercut with images of the blazing sun, the earth-moving equipment used to create the structure, images referring to pre-history (models of dinosaurs), sections of maps, and aerial views of the Jetty itself (bottom right). The deliberately disorienting effects were compounded by filming from a circling helicopter." (Caption, p.173); "Smithson had strong political motivations and, in line with Haacke or Buren, he talked in 1972 of wishing to explore the 'apparatus' he was 'threaded through'. By this he meant the gallery system with its hunger for artistic 'commodities', but he saw this as merely an extension of the larger post-industrial phase of capitalism. Whilst he fell in with American sculpture's orientation towards 'anti-form' or process, in dialogue with Minimalism's fixed structures, his synoptic viewpoint prevented him from perceiving this as simply another aesthetic step 'forward'. If anything, it represented a move backward. Process for him was annexed to entropy, the principle whereby ordered systems undergo exponential deterioration or unraveling. Minimalism's geometries were thus placed under an ecological spotlight. In order to feed the needs of increasing consumer turnover, the industrial order that Minimalism had fetishized sanctioned the despoliation of more and more land. Smithson's response was to create impermanent earthworks in sites blighted by industrial waste, drawing attention to cyclical interactions of order and disorder. Reversing Arte Povera's alchemical logic, he nurtured a vision of a return to base matter, a reassertion of nature's rights over man's. […] His most famous work, Spiral Jetty (1970), embodies these entropic principles. It grew out of wasteland at the edge of the Great Salt Lake in Utah where unsuccessful attempts had been made to extract oil from tar deposits. At a cost of about 9,000 dollars, provided by New York's Dwan Gallery, a crew of workmen with trucks extended a strip of the mainland into the lake's pinkish water, forming a spiral measuring 1,500 by 15 feet. Photographs foster the impression that the structure still exists, but it is now submerged. In any case its location was never physically accessible to spectators. […] This was a paradox which Smithson exploited. He underlined the fictive dimension of the piece by reconstituting it in various registers ranging from written and photographic documentation to a film." (Excerpt, p. 172)
Location Depicted	Great Salt Lake (Utah) Utah
Measurements	3 parts; part I: 64.1 x 110.5 cm
Technique	Filmmaking
Inscription	Far left center frame reads: DINOSAUR MUMMY; Top right frame is a map indicating the location of THE SPIRAL JETTY.
Work Type	Environmental art Earthworks (sculpture) Sculpture Film stills Motion pictures
Repository	Museet for Samtidskunst [National Museum for Contemporary Art] (Oslo, Norway)
Source	Hopkins, David. After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2000. (p.173, fig.88).
Rights	Reproduced in Hopkins courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York. © Estate of Robert Smithson/VAGA, New York/DACS, London, 2000.
Digital Publisher	University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center
Format	image/jpeg
Digital File Name	VRC 461-40.jpg
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