A heap of Language

1964

Returns to art as a Minimalist

After a break from the art world, Smithson reemerges in 1964 as a proponent of minimalism: his new work abandons the earlier preoccupation with the body, and he uses glass sheet and neon tubes to explore visual refraction and mirroring — as in the wall-mounted sculpture “Enantiomorphic Chambers”, of steel and mirrors, which produces the optical effect of a pointless vanishing point. He becomes affiliated with artists of minimalism and Primary Structures — Nancy Holt (whom he marries), Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt — and later joins the Dwan Gallery, whose owner Virginia Dwan is an enthusiastic supporter of his work.

1966–1967

Proposals for the Dallas–Fort Worth airport

In 1966–1967 Smithson produces proposals for the Dallas–Fort Worth Regional Airport as concepts for “aerial art” — monumental-scale earthworks to be seen by air travellers. They were never realised.

1967

Explores the industrial areas of New Jersey

In 1967 Smithson begins exploring industrial areas around New Jersey: dump trucks excavating tons of earth and rock fascinate him, and in an essay he describes them as the equivalents of the monuments of antiquity. This gives rise to the series of “non-sites” — earth and rocks collected from a specific place are installed in the gallery as sculptures, often combined with mirrors or glass; he considers the best sites for “earth art” to be those disrupted by industry, reckless urbanization or nature’s own devastation.

1968

First trip to the American West

In 1968 Smithson visits the American West for the first time with Nancy Holt and Michael Heizer — to Virginia City, Nevada, and Lone Pine, California. Such journeys become central to his practice: his non-sites often include maps and aerial photographs of a place along with geological artifacts displaced from it.

September 1968

Essay “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects”

In September 1968 Smithson publishes in Artforum an essay promoting the work of the first wave of land artists. He writes a great deal in general — theoretical and critical texts for Arts Magazine and Artforum, visual-text works such as “A Heap of Language”, and in the late 1960s his work also appears in the avant-garde magazine “0 to 9”; for a period he is better known as a critic than as an artist.