American - Artist | January 2, 1938 - July 20, 1973
The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
Robert Smithson
MemoriesPastRealityMuseumsGround
Nature is never finished.
NatureNeverFinished
Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void.
MuseumMatterGoingVoidVisiting
The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.
EyeMuseumCollectionGeneralizations
Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.
FuturePastRememberNewForgetOld
An emotion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain words.
WordsEmotionGlanceCertain
The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.
NostalgiaBlissCalmnessSurround
Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.
NatureDevelopmentLineStraight Line
Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.
HistoryTimeArtRestFasterThan
A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.
WorkArtWorldOutsideSurface
Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
ArtLimitsArtistPlaceOwnAsking
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.
ControlPrisonEndResultOutUp
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