Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson

The Collected Writings

Edited, with a foreword by Jack Flam.

Documents of Twentieth-Century Art

$35.95, £20.95 paperback

978-0-520-20385-3

Available Now

385 pages,
April 1996, Available worldwide
Categories: Art; Art Theory; Social & Political Thought; Popular Culture

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"[Smithson's] writings transcend immediate occasions and achieve significance as the products of an original, gifted, startling mind."—Stuart Morgan, Art Journal

"Smithson read widely and used that reading to create a style of criticism that is unique and deeply personal. 'One must remember,' he says, 'that writing on art replaces presence by absence by substituting the abstraction of language for the real thing.' His own vivid and very beautiful prose often provides some equivalent for that presence."—David Carrier, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

"An argument could be made that Robert Smithson is at least as important as a thinker and critic as he is as an artist, and in the art history of the Seventies, his words are certain to be returned to and returned to. He is one of those figures whose thought at once defines and transcends his own time."—Arthur C. Danto, author of Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe

Since the 1979 publication of The Writings of Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson's significance as a spokesman for a generation of artists has been widely acknowledged and the importance of his thinking to contemporary artists and art critics continues to grow. In addition to a new introduction by Jack Flam, The Collected Writings includes previously unpublished essays by Smithson and gathers hard-to-find articles, interviews, and photographs. Together these provide a full picture of his wide-ranging views on art and culture.

Robert Smithson (1938-1973), one of the most important artists of his generation, produced sculpture, earthworks, drawings, and paintings in addition to the writings collected here. Jack Flam is Distinguished Professor of Art History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His Matisse on Art: Revised Edition (1995) is also available from California.

Recording Conceptual Art: Early Interviews with Barry, Huebler, Kaltenbach, LeWitt, Morris, Oppenheim, Siegelaub, Smithson, and Weiner by Patricia Norvell, by Alexander Alberro and Patricia Norvell, editors
Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art after Babel, by Gary Shapiro
Ant Farm 1968-1978, by Constance M. Lewallen and Steve Seid
Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, by David M. Lubin
Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties, by Suzaan Boettger
The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982), by Constance M. Lewallen