Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings [Paperback]

Robert Smithson (Author), Jack Flam (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: Documents of Twentieth-Century Art | Publication Date: April 10, 1996

Since the 1979 publication of The Writings of Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson's significance as a spokesman for a generation of artists has been widely acknowledged and the importance of his thinking to contemporary artists and art critics continues to grow. In addition to a new introduction by Jack Flam, The Collected Writings includes previously unpublished essays by Smithson and gathers hard-to-find articles, interviews, and photographs. Together these provide a full picture of his wide-ranging views on art and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is the poster child for the antiformalist Earth Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. A coil of earth, salt, and stone that Smithson built into Great Salt Lake, Utah, the piece is a tribute to the movement's scale and engineering as well as to its visionary union of art and nature. Smithson's questioning of the conventional attitudes of art and culture did not stop with the creation of objects and images; he was committed to exploring of attitudes and ideas as a critical component of his work. A revised and expanded version of The Writings of Robert Smithson, this book is a charged combination of articles and images in which the author demystifies the distinction between theory and practice.

Review

"Smithson read widely and used that reading to create a style of criticism that is unique and deeply personal. 'One must remember,' he says, 'that writing on art replaces presence by absence by substituting the abstraction of language for the real thing.' His own vivid and very beautiful prose often provides some equivalent for that presence." -- David Carrier, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

"[Smithson's] writings transcend immediate occasions and achieve significance as the products of an original, gifted, startling mind." -- Stuart Morgan, Art Journal

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Product Details

• Paperback: 385 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (April 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520203852
• ISBN-13: 978-0520203853
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ---------, January 13, 2003

By 

Matthew Sepielli (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Paperback)

The interviews are what stand out more than anything. The conversation between Smithson and Kaprow is really worth checking out. Anyone who will be having a show of their own should at the very least flip through this book. Also sheds some light into Smithson's early work (some text based things and a few paintings and so forth). Who would have thought that it would be a fun read too?
This is the kind of collection you can return to again and again.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars essential, May 6, 2010

By 

mmngl (Colombia, South America) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Paperback)

This book is an essential source for one of the leading figures of contemporary art practice in the second half of the twentieth century. In a different way, it is a compilation of writings that prove a successful interest and experimental approach towards the implications of artist's writings: a challenging focus on art-writing and writing as art: a blurring of categories of many sorts.
It is important to say that Smithson's qualities as a writer are comparable to his qualities as an artist. It is one of the most important books I own, and it is definitively an excellently compiled source for anyone (...even if barely) interested in the work of Robert Smithson.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, September 6, 2010

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floeck - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Paperback)

The book is in great condition and it is a great book.

There was something strange about the first page in the book, though not exactly easy to describe. The first page was glued both just a little at the seam of the binding onto the inside of the paperback cover and the next page in the book. When I went to push that first page where it had been glued at the binding off the cover it somewhat disattached the book from the binding because the reason that page had been glued just a little to the back of the cover was because it was holding the pages of the book to the cover. That first page was not important to me anyway, and I removed it, and glued the whole next page onto the inside back of the paperback cover to hold the book to the cover to secure the binding, and it holds nicely. I had to do some work, though. The book is worth it.