Suburban Odyssey: Revisiting Smithson’s Passaic
In the latest edition of Frieze Video, Ellen Mara De Wachter follows Robert Smithson’s journey from New York to Passaic in her contemporary travelogue Suburban Odyssey: Revisiting Smithson’s Passaic.
De Wachter follows a journey made by Smithson on September 30, 1967 when he travelled by bus from New York City’s midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal to Passaic, a small town in New Jersey. Smithson took with him a copy of the New York Times, Brian Aldiss’ science fiction novel Earthworks (1965), and a Kodak Instamatic, which he used to collect images of what he saw as the monuments of Passaic. In December 1967 Smithson’s essay A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic was published in Artforum, illustrated with the monuments he discovered on his journey—including The Fountain Monument, seen above. De Wachter sets out to find the monuments of his time some fifty years later. In the the January 2018 issue of Artforum, Phyllis Tuchman too returns to the importance of Robert Smithson’s Monuments of Passaic (1967) for our times, as did Luc Sante in 1998.
Monuments of Passaic is held in the collection of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway.
Robert Smithson, The Fountain Monument – Bird’s Eye View
Detail of Monuments of Passaic (1967)
Six photographs and cut Photostat map
Total size: 16.55 x 133.39 in. (42 x 288 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
