An expansive and revelatory study of Robert Smithson’s life and
the hidden influences on his iconic creations This first biography
of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator
of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing
the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success,
including his suppressed early history as a painter; his
affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his
sexual fluidity. Integrating extensive investigation and acuity,
Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson’s story and, with it, symbolic
meanings across the span of his painted and drawn images,
sculptures, essays, and earthworks up to the Spiral Jetty and
beyond, to the circumstances leading to what became his final work,
Amarillo Ramp. While Smithson is widely known for his monumental
earthwork at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, Inside the Spiral
delves into the arc of his artistic production, recognizing it as a
response to his family’s history of loss, which prompted his
birth and shaped his strange intelligence. Smithson configured his
personal conflicts within painterly depictions of Christ’s
passion, the rhetoric of science fiction, imagery from occult
systems, and the impersonal posture of conceptual sculpture. Aiming
to achieve renown, he veiled his personal passions and transmuted
his professional persona, becoming an acclaimed innovator and
fierce voice in the New York art scene. Featuring copious
illustrations never before published of early work that eluded
Smithson’s destruction, as well as photographs of Smithson and
his wife, the noted sculptor Nancy Holt, and recollections from
nearly all those who knew him throughout his life, Inside the
Spiral offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one
of modern art’s most enigmatic figures. With great sensitivity to
the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his
distinct artistic language, this biographical analysis provides an
expanded view of Smithson’s iconic art pilgrimage site and the
experiences and works that brought him to its peculiar blood red
water.
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