![Robert Smithson's asphalt rundown on a hillside](/sites/default/files/styles/featured_1x_715_x_y_/public/2022-10/Smithson-Asphalt_Rundown-07-2048pxWc.jpg?itok=ZcHvimEL)
Asphalt Rundown
In 1969 and 1970, Robert Smithson created three “pour” sculptures that demonstrated his mastery of a difficult and deadly medium: entropy. In all three, an industrial material was prepared and poured downhill at a remote or neglected site and left to solidify. The first of these sculptures, Asphalt Rundown, was a dramatic release of hot, viscous black material down the shorn crags of the defunct quarry, intended—and perceived—as a “powerful, annihilating gesture,” in the words of Frank Stella.1