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

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Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.
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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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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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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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A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.
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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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Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence.
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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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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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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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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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Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum.
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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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Nature is never finished.
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Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories.
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