Robert Smithson and Apocalyptic Architecture

Throughout  his  career  American  earth artist  Robert  Smithson  (1938-73)

developed   what  he   called  "language-matter   dialectics."  Commentators

generally ascribe the desire to "dematerialize" the art work in the 1960s to

the influence of both conceptual art and the emerging stucturalist theories.

However  the  yearning  to  bridge  the  spiritual and  material  worlds  is

definitely  a  legacy of  the  religious  tradition, including  the myth  of

Creation  by the word  and the esoteric  concept of  the Book of  Nature. As

Smithson's  landscapes  conjure up  biblical  and  exegetical episodes  (the

Deluge, Babylon,  the Dead Sea, Dante's Hell,  Bunyan's Valley of the Shadow

of  Death),   so  his   "new  monuments"  evoke   scriptural  architectures,

Apocalyptic mostly.

Smithson  viewed  "the slurbs,  urban  sprawl,  and the  infinite number  of

housing developments of the  postwar boom" as the "architecture of entropy."

He  overvalued the impermanence  of the  material world and  exacerbated the

decaying process of entropy,  as if to anticipate the outcome of an ethereal

(abstract) Millennium.  For instance,  his 1962 drawing entitled  Iron shows

the  ruins of  a  Greek temple  disintegrating into  vegetation, unicellular

organisms,  and  finally  letters.  Smithson's short-lived  1964-65  minimal

sculptures made  of neon, mirror,  and transparent plastic ( The Eliminator,

1964;   Enantiomorphic  Chambers  ,  1965)  call  to  mind  the  crystalline

description  of  New Jerusalem  in  the  ultimate chapters  of  the Book  of

Revelation. His later "entropic landscapes" remind one of the destruction of

Sodom and Gomorrah or  the Tower of Babel (Partially Buried Woodshed, Island

Project, 1970). On  the other hand, Smithson attempted to materialize words.

Considering  language "printed  matter," he  executed a number  of wordworks

such as A Heap of Language, a pyramid made of 21 handwritten lines of text.

Smithson's  allegedly unreferential,  avant-garde projects  therefore reveal

themselves as secularized adaptations  of traditional theological themes and

imagery. They  also echo the general  mood-and architectonic visions-of Beat

and science-fiction literature in the 1950s and 1960s. Besides, the artist's

tendency  to  linger  on  ruins and  cataclysms  is  reminiscent of  Puritan

hermeneutics and the American  tradition of the jeremiad. On the occasion of

the 30th anniversary of Smithson's early death, this paper pays tribute to a

major  artist  and  essayist  who deplored  "the  categorizing  of art  into

painting, architecture, and sculpture."