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By that time, the artist was also creating earthworks--actual sites on the surface of the planet. His first two were immense paintings on the earth. Asphalt Rundown (1969) in Italy was a smear of asphalt down an incline. Glue Pour (also 1969) in Canada was just what the title describes: a large spill of glue over rough dirt. Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) for Kent, Ohio involved piling dirt onto an old shack until it collapsed into decay. Smithsons last four earthworks are his signature pieces. Spiral Jetty (1970), Broken Circle (1971), Spiral -Hill (1971) and Amarillo Ramp (1973) are, as their names suggest, curving geometric forms writ large on the earth. These are visually arresting pieces, working their poetic magic on most viewers by virtue of their stunning scale combined with the awesome conceptual reach that lay behind their inception. They are so large as to humble the viewer who has direct experience with them. (Which, of course, most of us do not--Smithson depended on film and photography to document and circulate images of his earthworks.) The artist did not configure his earthworks in a void. Smithson was inspired to begin Spiral Jetty after seeing the Native American earthwork Serpent Mound in Ohio. Like Picasso, Matisse and other Eurocentric Modernists, Smithson was drawn to the art of the Other, to what the previous generation of Europeans had called primitive art. Like them, he took a primitive structure out of cultural context, neglecting its complex significance to its makers, and appropriated it as his own. In doing so, he was--however inadvertently--colluding with the historical subjugation of the non-European Other that characterized European colonial practices. Rather than seeking to invent original forms (as Modernism strove to do), Postmodernism eclectically mines all kinds of cultural histories for its hybrid combinations. In doing so, these histories are often emptied of political specificity and applied as decorative equivalences. Such a practice may well seem liberating from the purview of privilege. But we must ask: Do the oppressed see it as innocent? Or does it effectively deny the histories of colonial domination and oppression? In the end, we must interrogate the politics of representation engaged by Smithson's appropriation of Native American ritual forms for his personal fame and profit. |