Art’s Free Radical

Entropy. William S. Burroughs. Earth as art. These source materials did more than influence artist Robert Smithson: They opened an unexplored sphere of philosophical understanding regarding the world’s perpetual flux and our role within it. Life’s output — rocks, text, trash — affected the minimalist artist, leading him to reinterpret...

By Jamie Laughlin

January 16, 2014

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Entropy. William S. Burroughs. Earth as art. These source materials did more than influence artist Robert Smithson: They opened an unexplored sphere of philosophical understanding regarding the world’s perpetual flux and our role within it. Life’s output — rocks, text, trash — affected the minimalist artist, leading him to reinterpret mathematics and laws of energy for a macro level. He did that through photography, sketches and gargantuan land formations like Utah’s Spiral Jetty, which mimics Euclid’s golden ratio as a relocated earthwork, venturing out to sea. Smithson suggested several Texas projects before his death 40 years ago, and those are being celebrated at the Dallas Museum of Art (1717 N. Harwood St.) in the free, aptly named exhibition Robert Smithson in Texas. Thursday, you can learn more about energy’s greatest visual translator at Robert Smithson: Texas and New Jersey, a conversation between DMA’s consulting curator Leigh Arnold and curator for the upcoming East Coast exhibition, Robert Smithson: New Jersey Earthworks, Phyllis Tuchman. Tickets cost $5 for this 7:30 p.m. lecture. Visit dma.org.
Thu., Jan. 16, 2014

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