In 1968, wrote, “the artist seeks…the fiction that reality will sooner or later imitate”1 His works are known as “”, a type of artwork that removes the work from academic pretentions by placing the work in a natural setting. This is problematic in many senses. For instance, what can be more academic than emulating the works of antiquity like the geoglyphs found in Peru left by the Nazca around 5th century C.E.? Spiral Jetty (1970) though constructed on the North East banks of the in , appears to have a direct, if not entirely derivative relationship with the Great Serpent Mound found in Adams County, Ohio. That work is thought to be the work of the Adena people around first millennium C.E.2

Although the cultural intentions may be different, the stylistic similarities are undeniable as the coil of the spiral in Spiral Jetty is a match for the use of line in Great Serpent Mound and scale as the mound stretches some 1348 ft to Spiral Jetty’s 1500 ft coil. The construction is “Over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth were formed into a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water.”3 Smithson used dump trucks and construction crews to assist in the creation of Spiral Jetty so the entire work was completed in a matter of weeks where the Great Serpent Mound has evidence suggesting that it was created over thousands of years4

Robert Smithson and many of his contemporaries in the mid-twentieth century were products of the Modernity of the early twentieth century. Artists then, as they do now sought to make art work outside of convention and using unconventional materials. In the article “How Fluxus Invented Land Art”, William Poundstone writes that George Macionas, one of the founders of the Fluxus Movement of the mid-twentieth century, claimed Ben Veutier as the true inventor of “Land Art”. Veutier’s works, “Terrian Vague” or Wasteland(1961), interject text with landscape with and series of black and white photographs of industrial landscapes balanced with title and date placards conspicuously left in the frame. The relationship with Land artists like Robert Smithson is in the desire to create near anarchic works pushing the boundaries of orthodox art- making and contemporary culture. While Robert Smithson has this philosophy at the root of his practice, he also shows a reverence for what has preceded his studies. , Smithson’s spouse and fellow artist described Spiral Jetty, “In its scale and

1 Smithson, Robert: A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art 1968 2 Jessica E. Saraceni, "Redating Serpent Mound", Archaeology, 49(6), Nov/Dec 1996, accessed 8 Dec 2008 3http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/59/2155 4"Serpent Mound: A Fort Ancient Icon?", Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 21, No.1, University of Iowa, 1996 ideas, this sculpture embodies the same spirit of some of the great monuments of past civilizations, yet is wholly contemporary in concept and execution”5

Amid contemporaries like Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, and Christo and Jean Claude, Robert Smithson is considered a pivotal artist of the twentieth century whose innovations effect the world of Art to this day.

5 The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt, New York University Press, 1979.