Robert Smithson's Chalk Mirror Displacement (1969) was designed as a temporary work of art that was specific to the site, a chalk pit in England. The work consists of 8 long, rectangular mirrors that are set on their longer sides. They all touch at the center, and are fanned out to form a circle. They are all placed at about an equal distance from each other. The shape resembles a star, a flower, or the sections of an orange. The mirrors are held up by a pile of chalk rocks and gravel. The rocks are all different sizes and are not placed in a particular order, just in a heap that is roughly leveled off at the top. The rocks are all different sizes, and the mirrors are inserted into the pile. The mirrors are almost covered by the rocks at the center of the circle, but at least one-fourth to one-third of each mirror sticks out beyond the pile of rocks. Smithson built the work near the edge of a chalk pit. The mirrors must have reflected the chalk pit and the area around it, as well as lighting up the chalk with reflected light. The reflected light would change during the day, and the piece would look very different depending on the time of day, the weather conditions, and the viewer's distance from it.
Robert Smithson created different kinds of artworks in the late 1960s and the early 1970s and Chalk Mirror Displacement resembles them in various ways. In Spiral Jetty (April 1970), Smithson made a spiral shaped road running from the shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The jetty was made out of salt, rocks, mud, and water from the place where it was built. Like Chalk Mirror Displacement, this work was made of materials from the site, and it was temporary. Almost nobody ever "saw the work in actuality before it was destroyed by the natural fluctuations of the lake."
Another kind of work by Smithson was his series called Nonsites that he made beginning in 1967. These were made up of photographs of places, taken ...