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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

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
Artist
Causing
Past
Monument
Seems
Cause
Remember
Seem
Like
Instead
Causes
Forget
Future
Monuments

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Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.
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An emotion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain words.
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Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem
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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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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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Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void.
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Nature is never finished.
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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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Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories.
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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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Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.
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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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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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Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.
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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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The memory of what is not may be better than the amnesia of what is.
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Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.
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As long as cameras are around no artist will be free of bewilderment.
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For many artists the universe is expanding for some it is contracting.
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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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