Wow, I must say I have read many articles and essays dealing with contemporary art since this class has began, but I have never felt more entranced and hypnotized than I have while reading Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty.” Before moving on the primary thesis or idea Smithson’s Spiral Jetty creates, I just have to comment on the language and diction he used in the making of this essay. Almost as if inspired by color, his words seem to mesh words and picture into one. If I were to listen to this essay via recording, while my eyes were closed, I am almost certain I could assemble an image in my head almost identically resembling the Spiral Jetty without ever having seen it. That to me is what made this piece such an enjoyable reading. Now, as for the premise of Smithson’s piece in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, I believe I have a firm understanding of what he was trying to convey. If my understanding is in error, than what I next say is what I appreciate about this singular work of art.

Smithson was immediately taken by, before adding the materials necessary for creating a legitimate Jetty, that deposit of mud and salt flats which seemed to have a beauty unlike no other he had seen before. The way in which he described it was in itself and explanation for its meaning. He merely built on top of it so a person could truly experience what he saw while looking down upon it. The Spiral Jetty’s existence seemed to have an indefinite placement. Smithson stated that is was as if the boarder between water and land was non-existent, the mass just seemed to remain in a peaceful purgatory, not of sea but not of land. With the disappearance of clear separation between these two environments (water and rock), one has to throw aside all other notions of categorization or compartmentalization because as he said, there were none on this Spiral Jetty.

In conjunction, while on the Spiral Jetty, one also could not associate scale with size, an appreciation for scale is developed as perception of the size of Jetty depended on your point of view and differed to everyone at every point. Finally what I believe to be most interesting is his description of the water as blood of vein and artery in the human body. While on the Jetty, all human instincts compelling us to break things down into categories and labels with ignorantly obstinate definitions for all matter are gone and so we are brought back to our original form as simple organic life forms floating in the sea. One could make the argument the Spiral Jetty’s purpose is for us to transport ourselves to an ancient and forgotten time when everything in our world was floating in the same and abstraction, conceptuality, thought did not exist because we did not. It is truly a purifying experience and one I hope to enjoy first hand one day.