From the Desk of Pat Greene
Monuments Evolving by Pat Greene
Robert Smithson published Monuments of Passaic in Art Forum in ���� . His essay included photos , featuring the town of Passaic , New Jersey ( Smithson ’ s birthplace ). The photos of Passaic captured the blight of the area , while presenting it as art . His title pays faux reverence to industrial structures , by referring to what was widely considered to be an eyesore as a monument . His written essay was part detached travelogue , and something resembling a scientific journal .
He seemed to be following the lead of Marcel Duchamp ’ s Readymades , who roughly fifty years before Passaic displayed a urinal , snow shovel , and a bicycle wheel as art , and stated that if the artist feels it ’ s art , it ’ s art ( paraphrased ). There are still plenty of conversations by educated and informed people in the art world asking whether different artists work is art or not . I doubt that these tedious conversations will ever go away .
Smithson is more well known for his Spiral Jetty , but the Passaic piece laid down the conceptual foundation for Spiral Jetty , and site specific work by other artists . He gave significance to a place that was generally considered to be undesirable . It was a continuation of Duchamp ’ s commentary on what art is , but Smithson extended the conversation to whether artists need galleries and museums . His belief was art can be anywhere .
Of course I love art in a gallery , and museum . Full disclosure I run a gallery . Smithson ’ s point about galleries , and museums is valid , because he saw something beyond what was viewed as the standard . His standard didn ’ t replace the old , but now we know there is room for galleries and site specific work . Conventional galleries , and museums may be the preferred outlet for most artists , but many well known artists choose sites that work with specific projects .
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Some of the more well known examples are the Christos and Banksy .
An English professor friend of mine uses Smithson ’ s essays in his English classes . Smithson ’ s writing may have given credence and lasting power to Land Artists . He was a great writer who gave clarity to his ideas . Interestingly Poet William Carlos Williams was his pediatrician . I would like to imagine that he too was an influence .
When I hear people express their frustration that they can ’ t get a show in a gallery or a museum often I ’ ll bring up Smithson and others who made their own rules ..
In the late �� ’ s I was given a copy of Greil Marcus ’ s book Lipstick Traces . The book showed the parallels and connections between the Dada Movement , The Situationist International and Punk Rock . Until then , I had no idea that the Sex Pistols manager Malcolm Mc- Laren was interested in the photo by Ashley Inguanta
Situationists , a group of French intellectuals , philosophers , artists and wanderers . The situationists believed that the world had been reduced to a spectacle . Guy Debord a leader of the group wrote an intentionally fragmented book in ���� called Society of the Spectacle . In ���� he made a film based on the book . The film was a series of advertisements , eye candy and other shallow snippets or spectacles . Thematically the book and the film seem very contemporary , because the level of spectacle is always evolving .
Robert Smithson , Spiral Jetty 1970 , precipitated salt crystals and rocks . Photo by Flickr user joevare
In the mid-�� ’ s Malcolm McLaren met the guys who would later be the Sex Pistols . They were McLaren ’ s art project . The idea was you can feed the world anything , and they will bite if it ’ s presented right . So he presented the world
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