Robert Smithson-collective writing

Robert Smithson collective writing- cultural confinement takes place when curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories, some artists imagine they're got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them.

Seeing Art gallery as a space of restrictions, where the artist ends up supporting a cultural prison 'museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells - in other words, neutral rooms called 'galleries'. When a piece art is an art gallery it looses life and becomes a dead piece which is disengaged from the outside world.Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of aesthetic convalescence. They are looked upon so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society.

The gallery gives the art piece a certain status and value is distinguished from where the art is placed, for example; art gallery.I think this relates to societies status and class difference - Capitalism. When art is placed in an art gallery it has automatically achieved status, where as if art is placed outside of the gallery space; does it have less value and status?

Art shows that have beginnings and ends are confined by unnecessary modes of representation both 'abstract and realistic' limits of the neutral room. There is no freedom in that kind of behavioural game playing. Confined process is no process at all. It would be better to disclose the confinement rather than make illusions of freedom.'I am for an art that takes into account the direct of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. The darks that surround some museums isolate art into objects of formal delectation. Objects in Park suggest static response rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art. A park carries the values of the final, the absolute and the sacred. Parks are idealisation of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. Nature does not proceed in a straight line it is rather a sprawling development. NATURE IS NEVER FINISHED.

A park is seen as almost a sculpture and structure displayed in natural environment which is public, everyday is different and brings new liveliness. Emphasising that nature is ongoing and never finished.

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. Many parks and gardens are re-creations of lost paradise or Eden, and not the dialectical sites of the present. Parks and gardens are pictorial in their origin-land-scape's created with natural materials rather than paint. Apart from the ideal gardens of the past, and their modern counter parts-national and large urban parks-there are the more infernal regions -slag heaps, strip mines and polluted rivers. Because of the great tendency towards idealism, both pure and abstract society is confused as to what to do with such places. Nobody wants to go on a vacation to a garbage dump.

Smithson is particularly interested in alternative work spaces. He compared art galleries to rubbish dumps or garbage yards. When this collective writing was written it wasn't commonly known that pollution was damaging the environment. Now that the world is finding new ways to ensure we prevent harming the natural environment e.g recycling.

'Could it be certain art exhibitions have become metaphysical junk yards ? Categorical miasmas ? Intellectual rubbish ? Specific intervals of visual desolation ? The warden - curators still depend on the wreckage of metaphysical principles and structures because they do not know any better. The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground-concealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality. This causes acute anxiety among artists, is so far as they challenge, compete and fight for the spoiled ideals of lost situations.

Robert Smithson - Spiral made out of pebbles and rocks, weather and sea levels changed his outdoor project over time. What was unusual about this piece of work was that it was outdoor, natural materials and most unusual; it was temporary the way it looked, but constant as it left its mark forever. Over time the spiral disappeared due to water levels rising, then re-appeared when sea levels decreased. His work was pictured from great heights due to the size of it. His Anti-gallery view allowed him to explore different environments which did not hold some sort of restriction. Audiences where drawn to this location due to his work, which we do not know whether that was his intentions.