Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970.
After the rather drab photographic work (reviewed in previous entry) I viewed at the Salt Lake Art Center, my Thanksgiving holiday to Utah was proving to be fairly art-less until a last minute decision to drive out and see the Spiral Jetty constructed within the Great Salt Lake. What I have always found interesting in land art or site-specific work is the possibility for the work to change or disappear given the environment within which it is placed. Part of the unique character of site specific art is its permeability and tangibility not found in artworks displayed carefully within the white walls of a museum or gallery. So, I found it humorously coincidental that, while reading the New York Times online this morning, I ran across an article titled, "How to Conserve Art that Lives in a Lake?" Concerned with the Jetty's previous dissolution into the lake and its reemergence over the past few years, the article discusses The Dia Foundation's constant documentation and photography of the Jetty to chart its changes in order to make decisions concerning its eventual conservation. With growing industrial projects planned to be carried out near the sculpture, as well as natural interventions such as silt build up and varying water levels, the Spiral Jetty is in constant transformation, lending an air of fluidity that leads many art enthusiasts to worry over its possible temporary existence.
The Dia Foundation, which is also in charge of conservation over Walter De Maria's Lightening Field, a site-specific sculpture of metal rods implanted in the earth of rural New Mexico, is responsible for the precarious and difficult decision of whether or not to intervene in the natural life of site-specific works in order to preserve them for future generations. In my opinion, to conserve or restore these works is to damage the original intent of the artists who created them, Smithson noted for stating, "I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day. " It is necessary to allow these works a process of erosion, decay, or survival on their own terms as they relate to their environments, instead of interrupting their processes with the desire to preserve the work. For as much as I enjoyed walking out onto the lake and seeing Smithson’s work, the most beautiful part about it was that, in that moment, the Spiral Jetty existed for me alone. Whatever condition the sculpture was in when I viewed it will change over time and the next visitor to the Great Salt Lake will experience a different artwork. The transitory nature of the site-specific work is what provides it with importance. To “fix” or restore the Jetty, or any other environmental work, is to compromise the function of the work itself. As Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, once removed from its original, intended location at the Federal Plaza in New York City, could no longer be an artwork as its fundamental environment is was created for was removed, so does alteration of the Spiral Jetty, or its environment, compromise Smithson’s intent and the integrity of the artwork.
Richard De Maria, Lightning Field, 1977.
Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981.
