Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) 

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

wall based sculpture with an eye at the center

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) 

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

wall based sculpture with an eye at the center

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

wall based sculpture with an eye at the center

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

wall based sculpture with an eye at the center

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops (1964) [detail]

Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood

18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

1964—1966

Radio Cyclops

Robert Smithson
1964
Plexiglass, machine parts, steel, and mirrors on wood
18 x 26 x 1 in. (45.7 x 66 x 2.5 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

In Radio Cyclops (1964), a wide-open eye occupies the center, linked via a circuit to a hot pink band of color. When looking at the sculpture, one sees one’s own eyes looking back, reflected and refracted in the mirrored surfaces. Made at a time when Smithson was experimenting with plastics and developing sculptural ideas from his collages, this wall-based sculpture incorporates Plexiglass, polished blue steel, and mirrors on a wooden support. The Cyclops figure appears earlier in a 1961 drawing on paper and a decade later Smithson returned to the motif in his essay “Art Through the Camera’s Eye” where he imagines a horror film set in a camera store, drawing on the Cyclops myth.

Writing

Writing by Artist
Robert Smithson

[…]  when I walk into a camera store, I am overcome by ener­vation. The sight of rows of equipment fills me with lassitude and longing. Lenses, light meters, filters, screens, boxes of film, projectors, tripods, and all the rest of it makes me feel faint. A camera store seems a perfect setting for a hor­ror movie. A working title might be "Invasion of the Camera  Robots;" it would be based on the Cyclops myth, with the camera clerk Ulysses. A camera’s eye alludes to many abysses. Each click would expose the clerk and his store to partial annihilation. I leave the ending for readers to figure out.

Robert Smithson, Art Through the Camera’s Eye, 1971

Related Info

1964—1966
a wall sculpture with bright neon colors and machine parts interacting with a cutout image of a woman
Honeymoon Machine
Robert Smithson
1964
1964—1966

Robert Smithson’s Honeymoon Machine (1964) is a wall-mounted mixed-media assemblage that reflects his engagement with popular culture's representations of sexuality and technological imagery. The work incorporates photographic imagery of a pin-up female figure, producing a fusion of body and machine. Wires and circuitry connect the figure to a device resembling a generator, suggesting a transfer of energy and blurring distinctions between organic and industrial systems.

1964—1966
a machine on a hot pink background
The Machine Taking a Wife
Robert Smithson
1964
1964—1966

In The Machine Taking a Wife, Robert Smithson expands his use of collage into sculpture. A green-tinged image of an industrial machine sits above a similarly tinted image of a female pinup, framed in a hot pink outline, the two linked by a  rectifier tube - a vacuum tube diode that converts alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) in electronic equipment.

See Also