Robert Smithson and the American Landscape

by Ron Graziani

Overview

This volume comprises a social history of Robert Smithson's earthworks and their critical reception. In his analysis of the artist's personal writings and art works, Ron Graziani demonstrates how the earthworks were part of an aesthetic and civic fault line that ruptured in the 1960s. Moreover, Graziani reveals how Smithson's earthworks formed part of the "new conservationism" in the late 1960s and how it gave material form to the contradictions of a sociological issue, inseparable from its economic legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521827553
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2004
Series:	Contemporary Artists and Their Critics S
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	7.13(w) x 10.04(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Grounding art history; 1. Blasted landscapes; 2. Prospecting for culture; (n)onsite inspections; 3. An aesthetic foreman in the mining industry; 4. Lunar pastures; Conclusion: Nature with class.