Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (42.7 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (42.7 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony Shafrazi posing for a photo after the completion of Smithson's Amarillo Ramp, 1973.
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony Shafrazi posing for a photo after the completion of Smithson's Amarillo Ramp, 1973.
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Constructed to emerge from the base of an artificial lake, Amarillo Ramp now lies in a dried-up basin, its original structure altered by erosion. It is Smithson’s final earthwork; while surveying the site in 1973, Smithson was killed in a plane crash alongside pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Richard I. Curtin. The sculpture was posthumously completed by Nancy Holt and artists Tony Shafrazi and Richard Serra. Overgrown with mesquite, its once-defined edges sloping into the earth, Amarillo Ramp is a solemn illustration of entropy. Continued efforts for its restoration and preservation as a ruin speak to the lasting impact of Smithson’s legacy.
The Making of Amarillo Ramp is one of a series of moving image works made by Nancy Holt that focus on an earthwork by Robert Smithson. The site of Amarillo Ramp is seventeen miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas on the edge of the Tecovas Lake—a constructed dam, that today is dry.
