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THE PARIS REVIEW

in The Paris Review and it is totally fascinating . . . . . . enjoy. More wide ranging then mere art and artists but I really enjoyed it.

Peter Smithson - Spiral Jetty 1970


This is worth a read. I have been interested in Land Art (so called) since being a student in the seventies and Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty' was one of the first to inspire me and I found the scale of which staggering (util later when fid the work of Michael Heizer et al) The natural elements re-arranged to follow the rules of sculpture always intrigued and held allure for me. I found this article 

On Henri Bergson, disasters, and the human perception of time.

THE PARIS REVIEW

‘There’s the matter of perspective, and there’s also the matter of scale. A young poet I know noticed that I often write about the self watching the self. He quoted an es­say in which I wrote that I fantasize in the third person, connecting this to another piece, which mentions Robert Smithson’s earthwork sculpture Spiral Jetty. “Do you think land artists more so desired their work to be experienced within (standing on the rocks, beside the hole) or from above (via camera, airplane)?” he asked me in an email. My mind spiraled off. It’s very hard for me, I told him, to be “present in the moment”—I’m always going meta, narrativ­izing, thinking about what I’m thinking about, imagining the future—and then in my specious present, I’m com­paring what is happening to what I had imagined would happen, my souvenir du présent to my memoire de l’avenir.I didn’t say that Smithson didn’t mean for Spiral Jetty to be seen at all, or at least not for long—he built it when the water levels in Great Salt Lake were unusually low: a comment on ephemerality at epic scales. Finished in 1970, the jetty had disappeared by the time he died, in 1973, in a plane crash while surveying sites for a new piece. It stayed hidden for thirty years. Since 2002, drought has kept the water levels low, so it is now usually visible. The ephem­erality doubles back: The design exposed, it’s Smithson’s intention, human intention, that’s ephemeral.’ The Unreality of Time By Elisa Gabbert

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/08/11/the-unreality-of-time/