From the way he writes about it, Robert Smithson was a man inspired when he created Spiral Jetty, the almost “modern Prehistoric” landscape artwork in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. But just what is it?
Well, basically Spiral Jetty is a landscape sculpture built on a site, in a bizarre combination of the categories of Rosalind Krauss’ “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” diagram. Yet, this doesn’t really do much to answer my first question. Sure, from a formalist perspective it does, but that does nothing to answer what was Smithson’s motivation behind it or why he talks about it the way he does. The answer to this question lies in his own writings on Spiral Jetty.
In his writing, Smithson talks about this work with almost a religious fervor, like a Christian or Jew talking about Jerusalem or a Muslim about Mecca. By building this work on the coast of a salt lake, he has given the site a real power, and in describing the process he illustrates this concept very well. When constructing Spiral Jetty (which was built with the help of a construction company, in the post-modern style with the destruction of artistic “genius”), he mentioned how it seemed as though the landscape was fighting back against the construction of it, the mud in the lake actually interfering with the process at one point. The way Smithson framed it was almost like Gutai art, focusing on the opposition of man and nature, but without the ability for man to possibly win (as such names as “Challenging Mud” would evoke, challenge implying that man could win against nature). He initially described the salt lake like some mythic creature with the power to resist all facets of modern interference with it, as in the untapped tar/oil pits that cannot be used because the salt air is “corrosive” and damages the equipment among other things like the impassibility of recreational boats on the salt water. The lake actually resists mankind. So, to reiterate, Smithson recognizes the almost Prehistoric power of the site, and respects it as such. It almost seems as though he is paying homage to a “primordial” god of some sorts, and giving the opportunity for man to get a taste of the power of this mythic figure from on the water, actually placing the viewer inside the spiral which extends onto the site which resists all types of modernization and remains grounded as a relic of an ancient world where nature was once dominant over man.