![]() ![]() įor Smithson, both nature and reason are in a constant state of blending and erosion. Slump, debris slides, avalanches all take place within the cracking limits of the brain. This slow flowage makes one conscious of the turbidity of thinking. This movement seems motionless, yet it crushes the landscape of logic under glacial reveries. Vast moving faculties occur in this geological miasma, and they move in the most physical way. One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason. Smithson’s own aesthetic understanding of entropy destabilizes faith in a progressive rationality that controls and dominates the irrational. ![]() Entropy can be found in the fields of information theory, life sciences, psychology, thermodynamics, chemistry, literature, art, economic theory, and philosophy. The concept of entropy is far-reaching in the sciences and arts. I was particularly captivated by Smithson’s focus on entropy-what Gary Shapiro describes as that “radical alternative to evolutionary and progressive temporality,” and how this notion expands not only into natural systems, but rational systems as well. The extreme conditions make the Jetty always appear differently, highlighting not only the inevitability of the workings of entropy on all objects and systems, but also the beauty and creativeness of deterioration. Considerations, perhaps, for another post). Visitors have since multiplied exponentially, leading me to call it “Art Disneyland” the last time I was there. (I won’t lie, this latter force of “entropy” has become accelerated due to the paving of the road leading to the Jetty. In addition, thousands of people walk on and around it, rapidly contributing to the decomposition of the porous rocks. The rocks which compose the spiral are subjected to the brutal conditions of the Utah landscape, ranging from submersion for years under the saline sea, emersion into the harsh rays of the desert sun, and the chilling conditions of winter. The massive spiral composed of basalt rocks hauled in by bulldozers over the course of one week in 1970 is a performance of entropy, a force Smithson believed to be more originary than reason, order, and permanence. Sticking out from the northeastern shore of the ancient remnants of Lake Bonneville, the Spiral Jetty endures a constant flux of environmental, human, and essential decay. ![]() Smirk all you want about Utah, but we have one of the most important works of art from the 20 th century right in our back yard: Robert Smithson’s famous earthwork, Spiral Jetty. Years ago, I took a sabbatical to write on Simone de Beauvoir, and instead fell down a totally different rabbit hole. I was a bit of an outlier since, well, I’m not really an artist but a writer on art. ![]()
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