Robert Smithson’s aesthetics and the future of Earth Art
From Firenze University Press Journal: Aisthesis
Mariya Veleva, Departamento de Alemán, Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Santiago de Chile
Environmental pollution is a global problem today, and together with urbanization closely intertwined with the current pandemic and the challenges facing humanity. This text, based on Robert Smithson’s aesthetic theory and production, intends to show that Earth Art could provide a critical comprehension of industrial culture, could oppose its Gestell (the city may also be seen as Gestell), and sensitize society to the current environmental problems. I also discuss Smithson’s multi-stratified art works, his preference for processes over objects and his critical reflection on museums and galleries as closed and traditional spaces.
I suggest that Earth Art has the potential to redefine the relationship between outside and inside, optic and haptic, as well between a «distal, disembodied approach» on one hand and «immediate body experience» on the other. It could be developed more intensively in the future, inas-much it attracts public to open spaces, thus avoiding possible contagion.
Industrialization, dense urbanization and environmental pollution are part of human civilization and directly related to the current pandemic. We can take this crisis as an opportunity to rethink and rede-fine our relation to the environment and industry, as well to industrial culture (in terms of Adorno); art may help us in this intention. The statement that art could mediate between industry, ecology and society was developed by Robert Smithson during the 1970s. This text, since it is based on Smithson’s aesthetic theory, will follow the evolution of his particular artistic attitude concerning environment, industry and industrial culture.
The emphasis is put on his aesthetic sensitization to altered environments through special body experience. I will try to show that this complex body experience was the necessary condition for his ecological turn in his later Earth Art projects. Smithson’s critical thinking on society and technology as well his interest in entropy, together with this complex body experience of the sites, defined important aspects of his oeuvre and aesthetic theory.
I will also stress some of these genuinely realistic, anti-idealistic, anti-romantic, anti-utopian aspects in Smithson’s work and thinking, intending to demonstrate how art could help society to recover from its current disease.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Aisthesis-12477
Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/12477
