![]() ![]() So the idea of a spiral or whirlpool is active even in these One of the anecdotes that Smithson was apparently aware of was the centuries-old idea that the Great Salt LakeĬontained a whirlpool that somehow connected That appears in nature, quite frequently. Shape of Spiral Jetty is a form that has shown up in petroglyphs throughout the American West. Known as the Nazca Lines, in Peru, in South America, or the earthworks that come out of the Fort Ancient culture in North America. The Europeans arrived, the geoglyphs, better ![]() Of indigenous peoples in the Americas, long before We can go even further back and look at the artwork ![]() The Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s. But we could also thinkĪbout the importance of the vastness of the American landscape in 19th-century American painting, or even its importance to One of the themes here, for me, as we stand here. Size and power of nature and the smallness of man, and that's certainly We could go back to artists like Caspar David Friedrich, who thought about the overwhelming This natural landscape, it's an expression of the way in which artists thought about the Interested in the idea of entropy, the idea of the way things break down. Meant to be a work of art that changed, based on natural principles. So, instead of the water filling the spaces in between the spiral, we have sand. In the midst of a drought, the water has receded and is at a great distanceįrom this earthwork. But right now, because the American West is By creating a spiral, Smithson created lots of opportunities where the land and the waterĬould meet one another. Smithson was able to bring a front-loader and dump trucks, a tractor, to help move these basalt stones and sand and some soil into place. With helpįrom the Dawn Gallery, which represented him, But today as we look outĪt the lake, it's blue. There are a few fish that liveĪt the outlet of some of the freshwater rivers, and- And there are brine shrimp, and algae, in fact there'sĪ particular kind of algae that makes the water turn pinkish-red, and that was true when Of these terminal basins that exist in the world. And especially with salt, very much like the Dead Here from rivers and streams, collects and then simply evaporates. This is a terminal basin, a huge lake that hadīeen largely freshwater, but there is no outlet, so the water, once it flows Smithson first created it, where it was an intersection But we're not seeing this the way that it existed when We're standing right in the middle, at the edge of the Smithson hired several people to help him create Spiral Jetty. ![]()
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