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Espace Sculpture

Spiral Jetty A Critical Challenge Stephen Eric Armstrong

Terra Ceramica Number 27, Spring 1994

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Cite this article Armstrong, S. E. (1994). Spiral Jetty: A Critical Challenge. Espace Sculpture, (27), 47–49.

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Stephen Eric Armstrong

was equally alive and well in the heyday of industrialism—the Eiffel Tower is a perfect example. Sentimentality has absorbed the rustic and the pastoral into its degraded understanding of beauty. This leaves the desolate, the spoiled, and the industrial as possible sites for the picturesque. Joseph Masheck claims that Spiral Jetty forces us to contemplate the biological- human place in the unimaginable continua of space and time. «Perhaps what the super­ ficial landscape is to sentiment, Smithson's geologic landscape is to the intelligence».3 Masheck's proposal is consistent with seeing the picturesque as an aspect of sentimen­ tality, and implies that the jetty is more sub­ lime than picturesque. When Beardsley and Masheck are con­ sidered together, the old distinction between the picturesque and the sublime disappears. obert Smithson's short career began in essays, and illustration-references in English- For Beardsley, Smithson redeems the pictu­ 1960 and ended when he was killed in language North American magazines and resque; for Masheck, Smithson writes it off. an airplane crash in 1973. At the time journals alone. Although a great deal has There is not much difference calling natural R of his death, he had gained an interna­ been written about it, strangely, there is no desolation or industrial scarring either pictu­ tional reputation as an earthworks artist but consensus of opinion. The various articles resque or sublime: the definitive idea is an was, and still is, associated with the 1960s- show that Spiral Jetty remains compelling, aesthetic response without sentimentality. 1970s American art category of Minimalism. but they do not lead to an understanding of Minimalism and Conceptualism can be Smithson's Spiral Jetty of 1970 is by far his how the jetty does its job as a work of art. A seen as the logical apotheosis of Modernism. most renowned work. It is a 15-foot wide, semiotic approach, for example, Suzanne K, Henry Martin states that the Minimalist con­ 1500-foot long spiral of rock and gravel Langer's theory, leads to new insights and text is the source of meaning in Smithson's extending from the shore of Rozel Point into creates a synthesis of many of the opinions. work.4 However, John Coplans, along with Great Salt Lake, Utah. The work is most usu­ Langer's semiotic theory of art will be con­ Lawrence Alloway5, disagree, «Robert ally encountered in Smithson's own film sidered after a selected review of the critical Smithson was a problem from the beginning. about it, which was shown at the Dwan Gal­ literature. ... his sculpture looked eccentric compared lery, New York City, November, 1970, and John Beardsley claims that Smithson has with the prevalent notion of the Minimalist in a limited number of photographic images called up the picturesque, «We are too cor­ style».6 Coplans and Alloway are convincing of Spiral Jetty which have been widely dis­ rupt, Smithson implied, too responsible for for two reasons: First, Smithson's sculptures tributed through the art-world media. There the degradation of the earth, to try to seem to concern the actual material of their have been few first-hand experiences recreate even an artificial Eden. Smithson's construction more than most Minimalist because the site is extremely difficult to visit picturesque is thus not of the rustic or the sculpture (Judd or André, for example). The and, at present, the lake level has risen and pastoral but of the post industrial».1 It should objective qualities of the substances (espe­ submerged the work. be pointed out, however, that pretty well cially entropy) interest Smithson while the Spiral Jetty is both chal- every one involved with Modernist or avant- perceptual-phenomenal qualities are more garde thought has shared Smithson's under­ relevant to Judd and André. Second, most Robert Smithson, le"?in? and ^ photogenic, Minimalist work is limited to arrangements Spiral jetty. I970. and< slnce the debut of standing of the picturesque; so-called "post- Great Salt Lake, Smithson's film, there have industrial" picturesque is a response to the of parallel lines and 90 degree angles (in Utah (USA). been more than 100 reviews, aesthetic age of bourgeois ascendancy2 and retrospect it is like the employment of "Mon-

ESPACE 27 PRINTEMPS / SPRING 1994 47 drian — restrictions" analogous to writing a Smithson would find Breton's view and complex. Various writers have found all sonnet in the Petrarchian form). Smithson's agreeable: Coincidence is fundamentally these things in Spiral Jetty. Jeremy Gilbert- sculpture, on the other hand, often involves important to Smithson's work but he has Rolfe observes, «Smithson's activation of the odd acute angles, curves, and natural selected entropy as the principle common to landscape is indeed that, a situation in irregularities. both worlds. They really only differ in the which it is that which surrounds the work John Coplans considers Spiral Jetty to orientation of coincidence. Breton's coinci­ which is activated by it... A situation in be outside of the Minimalist discourse, «Not dence is horizontal and parallel to the phys­ which it is hard to describe meaning as until the building of Spiral Jetty in 1970 did ical and psychic continua: Coincidence is either constructed, or subtracted, but which Smithson's usage become clearer; the spiral created or selected in the physical world is rather a context in which meaning comes is related to his notions of entropy and irre­ and is understood to be the same as, or sim­ to one as articulated without being inter­ versibility».7 Like Martin, Coplans sees the ilar to, coincidence and metaphor in the preted».12 This idea alludes to Langer's con­ jetty as imputed with meaning by the artist psyche. Smithson's Coincidence is vertical cept of significant form (an apt concept for but, for Coplans, the meaning cannot and oblique to the physical and psychic Spiral Jetty, as will be seen shortly). "abandon" the work (as Martin claims) since continua: coincidence is created or selected Donald Kuspit refers to the symbolical its context includes, along with the historical across the two continua (Spiral Jetty for aspects of Spiral Jetty, «The coincidentia style, the actual object and the geographical instance, is understood to be entropie and oppositorum conveyed by the coimplication location, the artist's intentions. Rather, thus (coincidentally) similar to, or the same [sic] of physical sensation and symbolic Coplans tends to embrace the possibility of as, our minds). It is like a parody of rational form ... puts clearly before us Smithson's symbolism. meaning: creating coincidental similarities mode of viewing the world. Smithson was Willis Domingo points in the symbolic between the psychical and the physical, and knowingly dialectical. For him, the spiral direction when he says, «for Smithson, intentionally not discriminating co-relation was best described in dialectical terms, in abstraction has gone so far that it has over­ from cause. terms of what he calls "a bipolar rhythm turned into a sort of naive realism».8 Naive To the extent that Surrealism is "make- between mind and matter" (Nancy Holt realism here, is not the usual technical term believe", or "magic-talk", I would agree with (éd.), The Writings Of Robert Smithson, New 13 (the epistemological position that we have Smithson's affinity. The most interesting Sur­ York, 1979, p. 112)". Besides having a unmediated knowledge of the external realist works have a just-so-ness about them closeness to Surrealism and mythological world) but rather that Smithson feels his art —they are metaphysical statements as God thinking, the convergence of mind and embodies his ideas so perfectly that the idea would make them. In other words, the state­ matter once again points to Langer. actually exists in the thing. Domingo con­ ment is the creation: this confound of mind Langer develops a theory of art as a non- tinues that Smithson's work is heroic and and matter results in truth by causality. Of discursive symbol of feeling; that is, as a mythological. This locates the jetty in a pri­ course, for mere mortals such as ourselves, morphology of feeling, or as the perceptual mordial dream-time, as a component of a ontogenetic articulations only happen in our aspect of feeling. For Langer, art is not an cosmology or myth. dreams. To the extent that Smithson was articulation which makes reference (in agree­ This dream-like, surreal quality is also modifying the world to make it congruent ment with Gilbert-Rolfe's articulation without commented on by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, with his ideas, rather than modifying his interpretation), nor is art a synthesis of pre­ «Smithson's juxtaposition of sculpture and ideas to make them congruent with the existing elements (such as language): She landscape, like Barnett Newman's identifica­ world, Smithson was acting as a Surrealist calls it a "significant form" (perhaps the same tion of scale and size, relies at some level on with Spiral Jetty. as Kuspit's symbolic form). She states, «In the Surrealist's idea of the work as that in Donald Kuspit states that Smithson creating an emotive symbol, or work of art, which the dream and the everyday— and dialectically restores, «the lost but not com­ the creator articulates a vital import which he by extension, the thought and the thing, the pletely forgotten faith in the eternal, which could not imagine apart from its expression, object and its perception — may occupy the now no longer can be understood as an and consequently cannot know before he 14 same space».9 Michael Fitzgerald also points order of things—although, in the entropie expresses it». Coincidentally, Smithson out an affinity with Surrealism, «Smithson structures Smithson admired, it first appears claimed that he conceived a spiral jetty only 5 and [André] Breton both rejected a formalist as such — but rather as an interruption or an when confronted with the future site.' definition of art... Both artists acknowl­ intervention in the apparently existing order Langer elucidates three conditions for edged the limitations of reason and wished of things»." This leads to an aesthetic art: (a) it must have otherness—be estranged to substitute natural orders, but in interest in the "spaces between supposed from actuality and engage in abstraction; (b) Smithson's work the intervening void is less "things", very reminiscent of Stéphane it must manipulate expressively and have definitely bridged».'0 Mallarmé. Smithson and Mallarmé have plastic freedom; and (c) it must be trans­ All the same, I disagree with Fitzge­ many themes in common including the lack parent and have expressiveness. Langer's rald's caveat, and would claim that of thingness about things (they would prob­ first condition is closely related to Kant's Smithson bridges all putative "voids" just as ably both hate Heidegger); the mystery of claim that the aesthetic sense, in opposition thoroughly as Breton. The gap for both art­ spaces and gaps; the possible identity of to reason, finds delight in an object while ists is between psychic natural orders and objects and ideas; and the contingency of taking no interest in either the existence of physical natural orders. Both agree that the world on our making it as it is the object or the practical use which it may reason is only one possible common (Nietzsche's thought is in the background of have. As Langer describes it, «The knowl­ ordering and that coincidence is more ger­ all these themes). edge that what is before us has no practical mane to our existence than reason. For The generating principles in Smithson's significance in the world is what enables us Breton, coincidence is just as semantically work include more than just formalism: to give attention to its appearance as 16 charged as metaphor, and coincidence is there is a Surrealism which commingles such». found in both the mental and the material thoughts and things, and a symbolism which Langer's second condition of "plas­ worlds. Breton replaces reason with coinci­ synthesizes them. Apparently true symbols ticity" is made possible by the first condition dence as the common principle which are aesthetically received as sublime, and of estrangement. As she states, «The second bridges the gap between the psychic and the poignant symbols are felt as picturesque. thing is to make it [the work of art] plastic, physical. Considerations of the symbolic are difficult so it may be manipulated in the interests of

48 ESPACE 27 PRINTEMPS / SPRING 1994 expression instead of practical signification. quite humanly scaled (it was obviously built Artforum, January 1971, p. 73. This is achieved by the same means — with dump trucks and bulldozers). The 4. Henry Martin, "Venice 1982: Or, Is The Biennale Sinking?", in Art International, September-October uncoupling it from practical life, abstracting human sizing is a poignant inversion of 1982, p. 90. 17 it as a free conceptual figment». Smithson's explicit goal of producing work 5. Lawrence Alloway, "Robert Smithson's Langer's third condition of art is trans­ outside the biological metaphor. Smithson's Development", in Artforum, November 1972, p. 53. parency. In her definition of art as symbol, use of form is therefore highly plastic—all 6. John Coplans, "The Amarillo Ramp", in Artforum, April 1974, p. 36. form and feeling become aspects of each conventional meanings of the motif have 7. Ibid. other—there is no signifying relationship. been negated and it stands as a free form 8. Willis Domingo, "Galleries", in Arts Magazine, Thus, the idea of "content" as distinct from embodying its own expression through size, December 1970 - January 1971, p. 57. form becomes absurd; the form is the con­ shape, material and location. 9. Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, "Gallery Reviews", in Artforum, tent. Transparency is that quality of an art Spiral Jetty is also transparent. The September 1974, p. 79. Also, Smithson tended to a monism of mind and matter, cf. A Museum of work which allows the perception of its form spiral stands with a stark, eloquently mute Language on the Vicinity of Art, in Nancy Holt (éd.), to lead immediately to understanding its presence because the form (which in an The Writings of Robert Smithson: New York, New idea (similar to the "naive realism" suggested earth-work includes the site) negates all the York University Press, 1979, pp. 67-78. by Domingo). culturally conventional meanings which 10. Michael Fitzgerald, "Certain Vagaries: Robert Smithson, Science, and Surrealism", in Arts Without a doubt, Spiral Jetty possesses have accrued to the spiral form as a motif. Magazine, May 1983, p. 126. And Smithson "The Langer's quality of otherness. Beardsley, Its "is-ness" has a searing quality, enhanced brain itself resembles an eroded rock from which Masheck, Domingo, Gilbert-Rolfe, Fitzge­ by its placement in the hot, clear, dry sun­ ideas and ideals leak", A Sedimentation of the Mind: rald, Kuspit agree that the jetty has other­ shine of a desert. The form has been con­ Earth Projects, ibid. Holt (éd.), p. 90. ness. The work is formed like a single ele­ trived to make all conventional readings of 11. Donald Kuspit, "The Pascalian Spiral: Robert Smithson's Drunken Boat", in Arts Magazine, the motif impossible. The viewer is forced to ment from a decorative-border pattern, yet it October 1981, p. 84. is made from the material of geographical see the jetty as a (semantically) bleached 12. Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, "Sculpture as Everything Else, features. Although it has one size, it has form and, therefore, must contemplate its Twenty Years or so of the Question of Landscape", in many scales: a small decorative motif, the obdurate existence and create a new articu­ Arts Magazine, January 1988, p. 75. beginning of a border to decorate the shore­ lation to replace the lost conventional mean­ 13. Ibid., D. Kuspit, p. 83. 14. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of ings. There is no Saussurian langue to pro­ line of the Great Salt Lake (making the lake a Art, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953, p. 389. map of itself ), an enormous geographical vide meaning, it must come entirely from 15. Ibid., N. Holt (éd.), The Spiral Jetty, p. 111. feature, a tiny crystal structure, a solar flare, the viewer and fit the work, as if by coinci­ 16. Ibid., p. 49. or a spiral galaxy. This zoom effect of scales dence. Perhaps, among other things, Spiral 17. Ibid., p. 60. 18. Smithson had an abiding interest in maps and makes is truly dizzying and it is intentional on Jetty tells us that discreet objects are the dec­ reference to a fictional map in the scale of 1:1 (cf. A Smithson's part: «The scale of Spiral Jetty oration of cognition and decoration, instead Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art, in ibid. tends to fluctuate depending on where the of being ancillary, is actually the vehicle of Holt (éd.), p. 76). viewer happens to be. Size determines an meaning (a somewhat Nietzschean episte- 19. Ibid., Holt (éd.), The Spiral Jetty, p. 112. All the same, object, but scale determines art. A crack in mology). As Oscar Wilde apparently said, «It Smithson's theorizing on scale is slightly bogus. It is true that one can fabricate an object which enhances the wall if viewed in terms of scale, not size, is only shallow people who do not judge by or even induces the experience of scale change, but 19 could be called the Grand Canyon». appearances. The mystery of the world is the at bottom, scale is entirely a viewer's discretion. It is, 20 The form releases other ambiguities visible, not the invisible.» I believe, an extremely common experience: After all, besides scale. A spiral jetty creates a spiral Langer's theory of significant forms isn't scale changing involved whenever a child plays with a toy? bay; thus, there is confusion whether the appears to be applicable to Smithson's 20. Cited by Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, New work is in the figure or the ground. Addition­ Spiral Jetty and is, in fact, very helpful for York: Dell Pub., 1966, p. 7. It is claimed to be ally, the jetty is a separate artefact but it understanding how the jetty produces its excerpted from a letter but no detailed reference is remains continuous with the surrounding effects. Langer's theory on the semiosis of given. geography. This last ambivalence suggests art does not exhaust Spiral Jetty, or any many oppositions such as discreet other work of art for that matter, but she has On a diversement interprété l'oeuvre maîtresse du object/continuum; intentionality/ random­ developed some useful heuristics which regretté Robert Smithson, cette Jetée en spirale longue ness; mind/matter; culture/nature; percep­ deserve acknowledgement. Talk of feelings de 4S0 mètres qu'il fit construire, en 1970, en bordure tion/sensation; reason/coincidence and; and form and plasticity rings of early Mod­ du Grand Lac Salé dans l'Utah. Associé au courant readability/visibility. Spiral Jetty seems futile ernism and is somewhat unpleasant to the minimaliste américain, Smithson voyait dans son and useless, only existing to exist (as if we, late modern ear: it is too optimistic and oeuvre un rapport dialectique entre l'esprit et la ourselves, had any better reason to be here). ambitious—I think we are jealous of the matière. Bien qu'elle soit aujourd'hui recouverte par Spiral Jetty also possesses plasticity. The simplicity of revolution. I have hopefully l'eau, Spiral Jetty a alimenté une vive critique (plus de spiral motif is a conventionalized sign in the demonstrated that tolerance of the middle cent articles dans les journaux et revues) qui est loin decorative arts where it makes "natural" ref­ past can produce useful insights. As for d'être consensuelle. D'abord, d'où vient qu'elle soit erence to living, growing, expanding, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, it has suffi­ sacrée oeuvre d'art? Et, que signifie-t-elle ?... C'est contracting, swirling, flexing, moving cient complexity and poignancy to interest avec l'aide d'éminents critiques - dont John Beardsley, (abstractions from ferns, vines, snakes, whirl­ people for a long time to come. I suspect Joseph Masheck, Henry Martin, John Coplans, pools, intestines, etc.). Smithson's use of the that essays on the jetty will be published Lawrence Alloway, Willis Domingo, Jeremy Gilbert- form completely cancels all the conven­ regularly for the forseeable future. -•». Rolfe, Michael Fitzgerald, Donald Kuspit et Suzanne K. tional meanings of the motif. Spiral Jetty is Langer—que l'auteur de l'article dresse un état des hard, inflexible, barren, and immobile; it 1. John Beardsley, "Traditional Aspects of New Land", lieux de la pensée critique entourant cette oeuvre. Au prevents the free movement of the water and in Art journal, Fall, 1982, p. 231. terme d'une randonnée de haute voltige qui fait it is situated in a lifeless saline lake in an 2. cf., Clement Greenberg, Avant-Carde and Kitsch in intervenir des noms aussi prestigieux que André arid climate. Besides, I cannot think of any Art and Culture, Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1965, Breton, Stéphane Mallarmé, Heidegger et Nietzsche, natural spirals in the size-neighbourhood of pp. 3-21. Greenberg's distinction between art and Armstrong plaide finalement pour une plus grande popular culture includes the fundamental idea that the jetty. Most natural spirals are either good art is aesthetically inconsistent with sentiment. tolérance, le respect des différentes approches étant le much bigger or much smaller: the jetty is 3 . Joseph Masheck, "Review of the Spiral Jetty Film", in moyen le plus sûr d'enrichir le débat

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