Robert Smithson Quotes

A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence.
Robert Smithson

Art, Through, Seen

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought.
Robert Smithson

Everybody, Nobody, Zero

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.
Robert Smithson

Art, Themselves, Artists

Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.
Robert Smithson

Future, Forget, Past

A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.
Robert Smithson

Work, Art, Outside

An emotion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain words.
Robert Smithson

Words, Emotion, Glance

Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.
Robert Smithson

Time, History, Art

Art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical.
Robert Smithson

Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories.
Robert Smithson

Artists, Fit, Fraudulent

Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning.
Robert Smithson

Words, Fall, Meaning

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
Robert Smithson

Art, Place, Rather

From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline.
Robert Smithson

Top, City, York

History is a facsimile of events held together by finally biographical information.
Robert Smithson

History, Together, Events

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy.
Robert Smithson

Time, History, May

I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.
Robert Smithson

Art, Takes, Exist

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification.
Robert Smithson

Between, Language, Literal

Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence.
Robert Smithson

Language, Developing, Isolated

Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head.
Robert Smithson

End, Find, Idea

Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising.
Robert Smithson

Language, Mutations, Becomes

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem.
Robert Smithson

Mistakes, Mean, Problem

Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum.
Robert Smithson

Everything, Looks, Turning

Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.
Robert Smithson

Nature, Rather, Line

Nature is never finished.
Robert Smithson

Nature, Finished

Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art .
Robert Smithson

Art, Rather, Finished

Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.
Robert Smithson

Art, Painting, Finished

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Artist

Born: January 2, 1938

Died: July 20, 1973

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Cite this Page: Citation

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