Thank you Carter, for reminding us of Smithson's work, mind, and brief yet boldly powerful presence in the art world... and the art he left us with. Entropy, at large, has taken on a whole new level these days, I wonder what he would think of it.
I think he would have felt a grim glee at the spectacle of our moment. Somewhere he wrote about the carnival atmosphere that filled New York in the aftermath of the first big blackout.
Ann Reynolds in her book on RS reports that he owned more books by or about Samuel Beckett than by or about anyone else, which makes we wonder about his commitment to “unknowability,” as asserted here, and the morose “grain of his being.” For Beckett always clung to a thin hope that words might one day express, that being’s challenge to form might one day be met, and that in any event “you must go on.” There is some good comparative scholarship on the two artists that I must revisit. Thanks
Smithson's morose nature never precluded wit or even hilarity. Beckett, too, was witty but always pretty grim, too. And the need to write, to be an artist, shows that a certain optimism was in both figures mixed in with a kind of optimism--the will to "go on," as you note . . .
"in the Roman Coliseum", or before ancient sculpture of figures weather faded, we all experience the same feeling as his works. The group of earthworks from that period are so potent. Somehow the particle accelerator of art marketeering sped past them.
So, lets build up the Jetty again for several years !
many dinners with bob and nancy you and phyliss might have been at a couple. I got a drawing from him on a movie bet that he lost. I gave them one of my burnt floor pieces because I was so fond of them both. Its now in the collection of the Whitney. Bob ruled over Max's at a table and if he invited you to sit, you were in. I recall many drunken nights with him there.
I remember those dinners. It's great that Bob and Nancy donated your piece to the Whitney. I was not a real of habitue of Max's, but I spent a few evenings with Bob there.
Smithson shows we are nothing if we aren’t entropic.
True, though most of our effort is devoted to allotropy or the hope of it . . .
Thank you Carter, for reminding us of Smithson's work, mind, and brief yet boldly powerful presence in the art world... and the art he left us with. Entropy, at large, has taken on a whole new level these days, I wonder what he would think of it.
I think he would have felt a grim glee at the spectacle of our moment. Somewhere he wrote about the carnival atmosphere that filled New York in the aftermath of the first big blackout.
Ann Reynolds in her book on RS reports that he owned more books by or about Samuel Beckett than by or about anyone else, which makes we wonder about his commitment to “unknowability,” as asserted here, and the morose “grain of his being.” For Beckett always clung to a thin hope that words might one day express, that being’s challenge to form might one day be met, and that in any event “you must go on.” There is some good comparative scholarship on the two artists that I must revisit. Thanks
Smithson's morose nature never precluded wit or even hilarity. Beckett, too, was witty but always pretty grim, too. And the need to write, to be an artist, shows that a certain optimism was in both figures mixed in with a kind of optimism--the will to "go on," as you note . . .
"in the Roman Coliseum", or before ancient sculpture of figures weather faded, we all experience the same feeling as his works. The group of earthworks from that period are so potent. Somehow the particle accelerator of art marketeering sped past them.
So, lets build up the Jetty again for several years !
Yes, the amazing works inspired by Smithson's love of entropy deserve to be rescued from entropy's relentless workings . . .
many dinners with bob and nancy you and phyliss might have been at a couple. I got a drawing from him on a movie bet that he lost. I gave them one of my burnt floor pieces because I was so fond of them both. Its now in the collection of the Whitney. Bob ruled over Max's at a table and if he invited you to sit, you were in. I recall many drunken nights with him there.
I remember those dinners. It's great that Bob and Nancy donated your piece to the Whitney. I was not a real of habitue of Max's, but I spent a few evenings with Bob there.