The waters of the lake were unusually low that year, but soon engulfed the dark basalt spiral, which only resurfaced 30 years later – now white as snow with encrusted salt. Spiral Jetty, the best-known earthwork of the New York-based artist Robert Smithson (19381973), is one of the most powerful works of public art in Utah. Phillips agreed, for an extra $3,000 on top of the $6,000 already billed. Juxtaposing the industrial violence of Spiral Jetty’s construction with the peaceful beauty of its surrounds, the film provides an ambivalent, disorienting perspective of Smithson’s earthwork.

It’s often said that Spiral Jetty was built in just six days, but that’s forgetting the two months of preparation up front, not to mention Smithson’s request that the whole thing be done again (“It’s just not right!”). Featuring Smithson’s earthwork of the same name, Spiral Jetty is an artistic endeavor of its own identity. Conservation of this earthwork is particularly challenging, as the artist suggests it was intended to both withstand and be intimately involved with the climate changes. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty Watch on Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1500 (if unwound) x 15 foot spiral of basalt, sand, and soil, Holt-Smithson Foundation Speakers: Dr. He had difficulty finding a contractor willing to tackle the job, but eventually hit on Bob Phillips, who accepted due to the unusual problems it raised. Spiral Jetty (1970), Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork, is a 460 meter long and 4.6 meter wide coil of basalt rock and earth that extends into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Bureau of Reclamation to move the 6,500 tons of basalt needed for a project he had begun working on in late 1969 – the construction of a 1500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, spiral-shaped jetty in the Great Salt Lake, whose waters are four times saltier than the sea.Īs a result it has a strange tint, like that of tomato soup according to Smithson, a reminder that aesthetics were not secondary in his intentions. Great Salt Lake, Utah Network partner Holt/Smithson Foundation exists to continue the creative and investigative spirit of. Smithson then obtained permission from the U.S. It is made of 6,650 tons of black basalt rock and earth and is 1,500 feet long - so big that it can be seen from. In a sand quarry in the Northeastern Netherlands, Smithson has carved into the shoreline, flooding the resulting dikes to form an interlocking canal and jetty. Spiral Jetty is in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Collector Virginia Dwan put up the cash, which the artist later reimbursed. (3-4.5 m) deep Spiral Hill: diameter: 75 ft. To kick-off our participation in the World Weather Network a worldwide constellation of 28 arts agencies formed in response to the climate crisiswe will be looking at the changing conditions at Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty since its completion in 1970. He climbed to the top and threw handfuls of ripped pages from books and magazines over the edge of the facing as Holt filmed it.The asking rent was $100 per annum, payable in advance at the beginning of each year. Smithson and Holt drove to the Great Notch Quarry in New Jersey, where he found a facing about 20 feet high. The Jetty is a site-specific work, meant to interact. Many of the pages and some of the pieces of each page are missing”. Robert Smithson designed and directed the construction of his iconic work the Spiral Jetty in April 1970. This idea came from a quote Smithson found …”the earth’s history seems at times like a story recorded in a book each page of which is torn into small pieces. A one minute section is filmed by Nancy Holt for inclusion in the film as Smithson wanted Holt to shoot the “earth’s history”. Sequences filmed in a natural history museum are integrated into the film featuring prehistoric relics that illustrate themes central to Smithson’s work. Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. April marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, located on the Rozel Point peninsula in the Great Salt Lake in Corinne, Utah.

A voice-over by Smithson reveals the evolution of the Spiral Jetty.

This film, made by the artist, Robert Smithson, with the assistance of Virgina Dwan, Dwan Gallery & Douglas Christmas, Director, Ace Gallery, (the aforementioned Dwan & Christmas also assisted Smithson financially with the making of the Spiral Jetty), is a poetic and process minded film depicting a “portrait” of his renouned earth work - The Spiral Jetty, as it juts into the shallows off the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Standing apart along the northeast shore of the Great Salt Lake is a huge earthworks project, boulders and potholes, clinging brine and mirrored sky, which the film documents, as it moves back geologically to dinosaur history.

Spiral jetty by robert smithson