Art on the Rocks
How is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty like a homeless person? -both are unhoused. The iconic monument to the earthworks art movement has spurred the conscience of culture critics since its inception. Like an in-grown hair, it irritates, and won't go away. It both cannot be ignored, and it cannot be buffed.
If it ever could be said that pictures don't do justice, it could be said about Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Images abound. If you've seen one you've seen them all. Visualization is better left to the imagination, as Smithson intended. Earth art was a genre of Conceptual art. It was art of the mind. That was before reactionary trends in the art market, that is, and a more pragmatic approach to art-as-commodity.
Seeing Spiral Jetty in-person is likewise optional. Dedicated admirers make the pilgrimage. It is an adventure, itself. Their reflections on the experience scarcely conceal disappointment. Again, that is as Smithson intended. It was always a notion—an idea—Smithson, and his followers, had to get out of their system.
Spiral Jetty is like a howl in the wilderness. It's not an outburst of futility—of desperation—but of relief, of the freedom to do exactly what Smithson wanted to do -without any other consideration. He takes matters to the edge, utterly alone, where none can hear him, or oppose him, or restrict his freedom in any way. It goes beyond rugged individualism. Smithson is a prophet.
Movie culture provides dramatic instances of that heart-rending scene of a castaway washed-up on a desert island, alone, stranded, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Spiral Jetty is such a castaway awaiting rescue by a passing ship. It is a shipwreck, a derelict, run aground on a forlorn shore. Spiral Jetty is best viewed from the air.
It is grimly ironic that Smithson died in a plane crash surveying the site of a planned work from the air. That fact, and the aesthetics of Smithson's earthworks, situates Spiral Jetty firmly in the historical super-genre of Romanticism. Pilgrimage to the site is likewise Romanticism. The intermediate genre of Conceptualism was an attempt to escape the limitations of the physical in art, an alternative, escapism being almost the definition of Romanticism.
The physical underpinnings of Spiral Jetty are, despite being mostly ignored—and never analyzed—an inconvenient truth. Spiral Jetty is founded on land leased from the State of Utah. The original lease would be an interesting document to examine. Does the deed still exist? Published references quote the original price as $100. I discover nothing specific about the rate. Was the lease agreement monthly? Yearly? In perpetuity?
State of Utah archive documents would show if the fee was actually paid, or, if it was nominal. Spiral Jetty was created in 1970. Smithson died in 1973. It was donated to the Dia Art Foundation in 1999 by Nancy Holt and the Estate of Robert Smithson. Paying rent on the installation must have been the duty of the executor of Robert Smithson's estate during the intervening 26 years. There was never a threat of eviction. The plat is certainly more valuable today.
Returning, thence, to what has been said about Spiral Jetty being like a homeless person, I merely wish to dispel the notion of perfect freedom in the situations of both. They may differ in the details. Both exist within a context. Neither can claim a natural right to be there. There is no land for taking anywhere in the U.S.A. Nowhere is "Squatter's right" more than a myth. All property that is not privately owned is controlled by the government. Everything—and everybody—that occupy physical place is either there by consent (or not).