Spiral Jetty in an age of mechanical reproduction
Most people have seen the iconic photographs of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty," a staple of art-history books:
The classic portrayal
In her recent travelogue-cum-art-criticism book, "Spiral Jetta" (University of Chicago), Erin Hogan, director of publicity for the Art Institute of Chicago and a lapsed art historian feeling at loose ends, sets out in a battered Volkswagen to see "Spiral Jetty" and other classic examples of American environmental art, or Land Art, in the wild.
After an increasingly rural drive into the desert from Salt Lake City--one filled with fears of a ruptured gas tank and visions of strangers finding her dehydrated body on a side road after she makes a wrong turn-- she finds herself face-to-face with Smithson's work. "My first impressions? Much smaller than I expected, and much whiter. A long ways from the water, barely rising from the salty silty surface of the lake bed."
Hogan's view
The arty, aerial, unpopulated photographs of the work, Hogan argues, the images art students grow up on, give an utterly misleading account of its character …
The classic portrayal
In her recent travelogue-cum-art-criticism book, "Spiral Jetta" (University of Chicago), Erin Hogan, director of publicity for the Art Institute of Chicago and a lapsed art historian feeling at loose ends, sets out in a battered Volkswagen to see "Spiral Jetty" and other classic examples of American environmental art, or Land Art, in the wild.
After an increasingly rural drive into the desert from Salt Lake City--one filled with fears of a ruptured gas tank and visions of strangers finding her dehydrated body on a side road after she makes a wrong turn-- she finds herself face-to-face with Smithson's work. "My first impressions? Much smaller than I expected, and much whiter. A long ways from the water, barely rising from the salty silty surface of the lake bed."
Hogan's view
The arty, aerial, unpopulated photographs of the work, Hogan argues, the images art students grow up on, give an utterly misleading account of its character …