[Introduction to] Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art after Babel

Authors

Gary Shapiro, University of RichmondFollow

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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.

ISBN

9780520212350

Publication Date

1995

Publisher

University of California Press

City

Berkeley

Keywords

Robert Smithson, environmentalism, postmodern criticism

School

School of Arts and Sciences

Department

Philosophy

Disciplines

Philosophy

Comments

Read the introduction to the book by clicking the Download button above.

Recommended Citation

Shapiro, Gary. Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art After Babel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.