UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title A Cinematic Atopia: Robert Smithson and the Filmic Afterlife of the Soviet Avant-Garde Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kn4f5g8 Author Rottman, Zachary Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles A Cinematic Atopia: Robert Smithson and the Filmic Afterlife of the Soviet Avant-Garde A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Art History by Zachary Rottman 2020 © Copyright by Zachary Rottman 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A Cinematic Atopia: Robert Smithson and the Filmic Afterlife of the Soviet Avant-Garde by Zachary Rottman Doctor of Philosophy in Art History University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor George Baker, Chair This dissertation reconsiders the legacy of American artist Robert Smithson (1938–73) through his reception of Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), famed Revolutionary Soviet filmmaker. From his early canonization, Smithson has been virtually synonymous with the emergence of aesthetic postmodernism. Radically redefining sculpture as plural and dispersed (as in his nonsites) or else site-specific, subject to physical deterioration, and mediated by film and photography (as with his signal earthwork Spiral Jetty), Smithson’s practice has been consistently positioned as a rigorously logical, programmatic critique of Greenbergian modernism and the idealism subtending its values of autonomy and opticality. To that end, Smithson’s work is understood, too, as “postminimal,” extending the anti-aesthetic provocations that Minimalist objecthood ii inherited from the Soviet avant-garde precedent. In focusing narrowly on Constructivist sculpture of the early 1920s, however, accounts of this generation’s revival of that avant- garde have ignored the Revolutionary cinema to which it gave rise. Such an oversight is especially significant given that Eisenstein’s films were undergoing widespread reassessment beginning in the 1960s, during which time they were rapidly assimilated by Smithson, an artist exemplary of his generation for being not only a sculptor but also a cinephile and filmmaker. Taking seriously Smithson’s cinephilia and filmmaking practice, as well as his manifest interest in Soviet cinema specifically, this dissertation reconsiders a canonical postmodernist through the radical model of Eisenstein’s films. In particular, it shows Eisenstein’s theory of dialectical montage to be teeming amidst Smithson’s work and animating the paradoxes, binaries, and discontinuities that proliferate through his entire practice, even, or perhaps especially, when that practice does not take recourse to the physical material of film. In doing so, an unfamiliar Smithson emerges—not the quintessential logician of postmodernity but, following the libidinal subtext of Eisensteinian montage, an artist concerned with hellish monstrosity, perversion, sexuality, and violence consistent with his reading of Georges Bataille. The destination may no longer be Revolutionary utopia but what Smithson described in 1971 as a “cinematic atopia”—an entropic nether-place of razed boundaries, ruined hierarchies, and obliterated categories that will come to define the artist’s devolutionary “montage” of sculpture and film. iii This dissertation of Zachary Rottman is approved. Miwon Kwon Steven Nelson Megan Luke George Baker, Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv For Moldy Boy v Contents Abstract ii List of Figures vii Acknowledgments xiv Vita xix Robert Smithson and the Radical Aspiration 1 1. To Hell with Modernism: Smithson’s Mannerist Eisenstein 77 2. From Work to Sext: Erotic Travel through the Yucatán 143 3. Devolution from Above: Sculpture and Cinema, Montaged 228 Robert Smithson, Underground 332 Figures 350 Bibliography 449 vi List of Figures FIGURE 0.1. Ivan’s banquet. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 0.2. Ivan expertly plumbs Vladimir for secrets. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 0.3. Ivan’s mock coronation of Vladimir. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 0.4. Vladimir, in the Tsar’s regalia, leads the assembly to the cathedral, where he is murdered. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 0.5. Advertisement promoting the New York City premier of Ivan the Terrible, Part II, in 1959, as printed in the New York Times on November 24, 1959. FIGURE 0.6. Selection of advertisements promoting screenings of Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II, at the Bleecker Street Cinema. From the New York Times, February 16, 1964; March 10, 1965; September 13, 1965; and December 8, 1965 (from left-to-right and top-to-bottom). FIGURE 0.7. Robert Smithson’s typescript for “From Ivan the Terrible to Roger Corman, or Paradoxes of Conduct in Mannerism as Reflected in the Cinema,” c. 1967. Accessed in the Archives of American Art, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt Papers, Box 3, Folder 4. FIGURE 0.8. Artforum masthead featuring Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye, September 1971. FIGURE 0.9. Aleksandr Rodchenko, No. 17, 1921 (left) and Carl Andre, Pyramid, 1959 (photo by Hollis Frampton) (right) FIGURE 0.10. Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919–20 (left) and Dan Flavin, "Monument" 1 for V. Tatlin, 1964 (right) FIGURE 0.11. Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter-Relief, 1915 (left) and Robert Morris, Untitled (Corner Piece), 1964 (right) FIGURE 1.1. Ivan returns to Moscow and confronts the traitorous Boyars. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 1.2. The “fiery furnace” performance. From Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part II, released 1958. FIGURE 1.3. Tsar Eisenstein during the filming of October, 1927. FIGURE 1.4. A child celebrates the Bolsheviks’ seizure of the Winter Palace. From Sergei Eisenstein, October, 1928. vii FIGURE 1.5. Denouement montage that metaphorically links massacre to slaughter. From Sergei Eisenstein, Strike, 1925. FIGURE 1.6. The coronation sequence from Ivan the Terrible, Part I, 1945, that Roland Barthes analyzes. FIGURE 1.7. Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck, 1534–40. FIGURE 1.8. Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1534–41. FIGURE 1.9. Robert Smithson, Conversion, 1961. FIGURE 1.10. Robert Smithson, Untitled (Second Stage Injector), 1963. FIGURE 1.11. Smithson, Untitled (Pink Linoleum Center), 1964. FIGURE 1.12. Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures, 1962–63. FIGURE 1.13. Hannah Höch, Dompteuse, c. 1930. FIGURE 1.14. Robert Smithson, Four-Sided Vortex, 1965. FIGURE 1.15. Robert Smithson, Mirror/Vortex, 1965. FIGURE 1.16. Robert Smithson, Alogon #2, 1966 (rear) and Plunge, 1966 (foreground). Installation view, Dwan Gallery, December 1966. FIGURE 1.17. Robert Smithson, Pointless Vanishing Point, 1968 (left), Leaning Strata, 1968 (center), and Shift, 1968 (right). Installation view, Dwan Gallery, March 1968. FIGURE 1.18. Exhibition poster for Smithson’s second solo show at Dwan Gallery, 1968. FIGURE 2.1. Roberto Montenegro, Reconstrucción (detail), 1930–31. FIGURE 2.2. Roberto Montenegro, Reconstrucción, 1930–31. FIGURE 2.3. Diego Rivera, History of Mexico (detail), 1929–35: Cortés battling Aztec warriors. FIGURE 2.4. Diego Rivera, History of Mexico (detail), 1929–35: Aztecs subduing their revolting slaves. FIGURE 2.5. Diego Rivera, History of Mexico (detail), 1929–35: Cortés and La Malinche. FIGURE 2.6. José Clemente Orozco, Cortés and La Malinche, 1924–26. FIGURE 2.7. Nancy Holt, photograph of Smithson in Agua Azul, Mexico, 1969. viii FIGURES 2.8. and 2.9. Robert Smithson, First Mirror Displacement (left), and Second Mirror Displacement (right), 1969. FIGURE 2.10 and 2.11. Robert Smithson, Third Mirror Displacement (left), and Fourth Mirror Displacement (right), 1969. FIGURES 2.12 and 2.13. Robert Smithson, Fifth Mirror Displacement (left), and Sixth Mirror Displacement (right), 1969. FIGURES 2.14 and 2.15. Robert Smithson, Seventh Mirror Displacement (left) and Eighth Mirror Displacement (right), 1969. FIGURE 2.16. Robert Smithson, Ninth Mirror Displacement, 1969 FIGURE 2.17. Hans Arp, Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1917. FIGURE 2.18. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Prologue” of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.19. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Prologue” of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.20. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Sandunga” episode of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.21. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Maguey” episode of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.22. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Fiesta” episode of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.23. Sergei Eisenstein, stills from the “Epilogue” of ¡Que Viva México! FIGURE 2.24. Robert Smithson, Tar Pool and Gravel Pit (model; destroyed), 1966. FIGURE 2.25. Robert Smithson, A Non-Site (Indoor Earthwork), 1968. FIGURE 2.26. Robert Smithson, A Non-Site (Indoor Earthwork) (detail), 1968. FIGURE 2.27. Smithson’s second solo show at Dwan Gallery, 1968: Sinistral Spiral, 1968 (left); Leaning Strata, 1968 (center); Gyrostatis, 1968 (right). FIGURES 2.28. and 2.29. Georges Braque, Still Life with Violin and Pitcher, 1910 (left) and Georges Braque, Portuguese, 1911 (right) FIGURE 2.30. Robert Smithson, photographs of Coyle Field (presumed), ca. 1968, in “Non-Site, Pine Barrens, New Jersey, 1968-1969,” Box 5 Folder 8, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt Papers, Archives of American Art. FIGURE 2.31. Eisenstein atop