When New York-based artist
Robert Smithson devised his
Spiral Jetty, a construction of rocks embedded into a salt lake in Utah in 1970, the artist’s gesture prevented the work from being exhibited in a gallery or a museum. In addition to Smithson’s use of silt, crystal, and rock, the piece’s fixed location outside and the its dependence on the lake’s water levels in order to be viewed—it was visible for two years after its creation until it became submerged, resurfacing only occasionally—countered the characteristic preciousness placed on the art object-as-artifact. Though Smithson died in a plane crash in 1973 at the age of 35, he made critical contributions to the legacy of land art.
