Dia Art Foundation's "Artists on Robert Smithson"
This spring Dia Art Foundation publishes the fifth volume in their Artists on Artists series of books with Artists on Robert Smithson. This lecture and publication program was established in 2001, and it invites artists working today discuss in-depth artists whose work is held in Dia’s collection.
The contributors to Artists on Robert Smithson engage with Smithson’s work in myriad ways. Matthew Buckingham’s essay highlights Smithson’s preoccupation with the ways histories of the earth are constructed and contested, while Abraham Cruzvillegas considers Smithson’s work with broken glass and architecture. Through a playful, didactic approach Mark Dion's piece recounts, from prehistoric times onward, the conceptual and evolutionary conditions that led to the artist's birth and development. Teresita Fernández confronts the dominant histories of place, art, and concepts of the monumental and Trevor Paglen considers Smithson’s iconic spiral and his fascination with natural history. Rayyane Tabet, the most recent lecture in the collection, weaves together a history of basalt that reveals themes of colonialism, surveillance, and strife. Finally, engaging with the science-fiction canon and its cinematic conventions, Diana Thater provides a close reading of Smithson’s Spiral Jetty film.
