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A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.

Robert Smithson

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Robert Smithson
Age: 35 †
Born: 1938
Born: January 2
Died: 1973
Died: July 20
Art Theorist
Artist
Conceptual Artist
Draftsperson
Drawer
Geologist
Land Artist
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Passaic
New Jersey
Robert I. Smithson
Work
Charge
World
Object
Surface
Outside
Objects
Disengaged
Becomes
Portable
Loses
Gallery
Art
Placed

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Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future
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Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head
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Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence.
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A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence.
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The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
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For many artists the universe is expanding for some it is contracting.
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From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline.
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Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem
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Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control
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Photographs are the results of a diminution of solar energy, and the camera is an entropic machine for recording gradual loss of light.
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Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
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A camera is wild in just about anybody's hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction.
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When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us
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As long as cameras are around no artist will be free of bewilderment.
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Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void.
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Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.
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Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum.
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Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning.
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Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.
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Nature is never finished.
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