Quote

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.

Robert Smithson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ideals
Conditions
Fact
Artist
Facts
Nature
Parks
Ideal
Condition

More quotes by Robert Smithson

Image
Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence.
Robert Smithson
Image
From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline.
Robert Smithson
Image
Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.
Robert Smithson
Image
Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.
Robert Smithson
Image
Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories.
Robert Smithson
Image
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.
Robert Smithson
Image
As long as cameras are around no artist will be free of bewilderment.
Robert Smithson
Image
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
Robert Smithson
Image
I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.
Robert Smithson
Image
Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void.
Robert Smithson
Image
Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
Robert Smithson
Image
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
Image
Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought.
Robert Smithson
Image
Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning.
Robert Smithson
Image
Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.
Robert Smithson
Image
The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.
Robert Smithson
Image
For many artists the universe is expanding for some it is contracting.
Robert Smithson
Image
An emotion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain words.
Robert Smithson
Image
Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum.
Robert Smithson
Image
Nature is never finished.
Robert Smithson