Robert Smithson Quotes

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.
Robert Smithson

Nature, Fact, Ideal

Questions about form seem as hopelessly inadequate as questions about content.
Robert Smithson

Questions, Seem, Content

Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.
Robert Smithson

End, Control, Fact

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.
Robert Smithson

Eye, Museum, Everywhere

The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
Robert Smithson

Past, Reality, Act

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.
Robert Smithson

National, Bliss, Calmness

Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void.
Robert Smithson

Matter, Museum, Void

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.
Robert Smithson

Gardening, Work, Past

Words for mental processes are all derived from physical things.
Robert Smithson

Words, Physical, Mental

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Artist

Born: January 2, 1938

Died: July 20, 1973

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