Tuesday Texts: Chapter Four

a truck dumping black asphalt onto an earthen hillside

Our Scholarly Text Program commissions and publishes new writing on single artworks by Holt and/or Smithson, which are then shared digitally through Tuesday Texts. Each Chapter of Tuesday Texts is published through a weekly announcement on Holt/Smithson Foundation's website and social media.

Chapter Four

Serena Solin, "Asphalt Rundown"

André Leal, "Bingham Copper Mining Pit—Utah / Reclamation Project (1973) and Robert Smithson’s 'land ethic'"

Ali Karimi, "Three Desert Monuments: Revisiting Robert Smithson’s 1966 Collages"

William T. Carson, "Electrical System: An Archaeology of an Artwork"

Related Content

Asphalt Rundown

Serena Solin

October 2022

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.

black and white image of the center of a large mine, with spiraling center circle

Bingham Copper Mining Pit—Utah / Reclamation Project (1973) and Robert Smithson’s “land ethic”

André Leal

October 2022

Robert Smithson’s earthworks Spiral Jetty (1970) and Broken Circle /Spiral Hill (1971) are located in sites ravaged by mineral extractions.

a collaged image of burial mounds with a floating abstract shape

Three Desert Monuments: Revisiting Robert Smithson’s 1966 Collages

Ali Ismail Karimi

October 2022

In 1966, Robert Smithson produced three proposals for monuments in desert settings: Grave Mounds with Object, Proposal for a Monument on the Red Sea, and Proposal for a Monument at Antarctica. These proposals for monuments in Bahrain, Egypt, and Antarctica were made by overlaying illustrations of crystalline forms clipped from science books onto found images.

a room with wood floors and white walls filled with sculptural arches of conduit and lightbulbs

Electrical System: An Archaeology of an Artwork

William T. Carson

October 2022

How do you present a site-responsive installation in a new location when the artist who created the work cannot be consulted? For Nancy Holt’s Electrical System, this was the exact question that had to be asked.