Robert Smithson's Chalk Mirror Displacement
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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. In this case, as in many others, Smithson's intention was that the work be preserved only in photographs. The presentation of fragments of the original gives the viewer a sense of the texture of the piece, but also serves as a reminder--like a ruin from an ancient civilization of this human creation. It is not the photograph but the original sculpture that is interesting. The recording of the original sculpture in a photograph has a meaning only as a record of something temporary, since the temporary nature of all human accomplishments is an important part of Smithson's meaning in this work and others. 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 bu
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he lightning "jumps from pole to pole," but the human objects are basically just sitting in the landscape.
Other earthworks artists worked more like Smithson. For example, Fineberg shows 4 1969 works by Michael Heizer that were constructed in Nevada. Heizer cut rectangles into the flat surface of the desert, reinforced them with concrete, and then placed large stone pieces in them. In one piece, called Displaced-Replaced Mass (1969), for example, he took three solid granite boulders (from 32 to 68 tons) from the High Sierras mountains and transported them down to the desert where he placed them in the rectangles he had prepared. This geometrical cutting and moving of objects from one site to another resembles Smithson's work more than some of the other site-specific art works do. Both artists were interested in the supposedly permanent changes that human beings could make by imposing their presence on the landscape, rather than just setting an object in it.
This is the major difference between Smithson and the other site-specific artists. The works by de Maria, Holt, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude all seem to enjoy the world and the landscapes they are placed in. They do not seem to be bothered by the problems of deca
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2031
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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