From Library Journal
A work's difficulty may be physical or philosophical, geographical or generational, but achieving access must be worth the effort. Smithson's art, writing, and complex but important role in postmodern aesthetics and criticism seem to many to be purposely inaccessible. In this sympathetic, lucid interpretation, Shapiro makes the game of revelation well worth the candle. The transparency of language, the return to the groundwork beneath the false structure of contemporary art, the philosophical implications of environmental concerns and site-specific creations?all are explored with a view to marking the artist's place in the intellectual legacy of modern aesthetic discourse. Smithson's biography is still to be written, and his eventual place in art history is yet to be determined. Until then, this book is a splendid analysis of this powerful thinker and a valuable addition to the literature on contemporary artists.?Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
The death of Robert Smithson in 1973 robbed postwar American art of an unusually creative practitioner and thinker. Smithson's pioneering earthworks of the 1960s and 1970s anticipated contemporary concerns with environmentalism and the site-specific character of artistic production. His interrogation of authorship, the linear historiography of high modernism, and the limitations of the museum prefigures key themes in postmodern criticism while underscoring the uniqueness of Smithson's own work as an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Gary Shapiro's elegant and incisive study of Smithson's career is the first book to address the full range of the artist's dazzling virtuosity. Ranging from Smithson's best known works such as Spiral Jetty and Partially Buried Woodshed to his photographs, films, and theoretical readings and writings, Shapiro's masterful book analyzes Smithson's art in relation to the legacy of American art of the 1960s and central philosophical themes in its contemporary reception.
