In this graphite drawing Island of Ashes, Robert Smithson presents flames rising from a smoldering pile of logs, sited in a body of water set to a mountain range backdrop. The handwritten note explains their purpose is produce a heap of ash. Smithson frequently turned his attention to islands, interested in their scale and their situation as networks of relations. He described how “scale depends on one’s capacity to be conscious of the actualities of perception. When one refuses to release scale from size, one is left with an object or language that appears to be certain. For me scale operates by uncertainty.”

Island of Ashes belongs to a larger series Smithson called “Hypothetical Islands,” which he created in the early 1970s: drawings depicting imaginary islands as concentrated sites of natural and industrial materials. He was interested in the dialectic islands illustrate in their form as both finite and infinite sites. In a 1970 interview Smithson reflected on Manhattan—an island within the limits of Greater New York. “…Manhattan Island has a limit to it. It is not an infinite thing, though within it you never find out all the infinite things within the finite area. Within an island you have all kinds of particles, but at the same time the awareness is a scale thing—it contracts and makes you more aware of the possibilities within that confinement. The Earth is an island. Everything is confined, whether it is indoors or outdoors. It is the degree of awareness of the ratio between the two.”