This book examines the work of Robert Smithson,
a major figure in American art in the second half of the 20th
century. Focusing on a selection of his essential works and concepts, Ann
Reynolds establishes the coherence of Smithson's thought and production. She
gained access to Smithson's socio-cultural environment, sources of inspiration
and daily practice via his correspondence, diaries, notebooks and, most
importantly, his library, which were bequeathed to the Archives of American Art
by his widow, Nancy Holt. This copious material enabled the author to reconstruct
his creative conceptual and physical environment. Reynolds' painstaking approach
ties into what she calls the "blind spots" that lie at the very core of
the conventional view of culture. Fascinated by the “elsewhere” and the
peripheries, Smithson deplored the cultural hegemony of the New York “white
cube” art scene and turned his attention to investigating faraway places and neglected
sites instead. And yet, as Reynolds shows, his questioning of artistic
boundaries and normative places of culture cannot be reduced to geographic
decentralization, for it begins by shaking the very foundations of seeing, an
enterprise which the modernist aesthetic had raised to preeminence in artistic
debates and institutions. This book is far more than a monography, for it offers
a profound reflection on the role of archives, the writing of contemporary art
history and the shakeup of an aesthetic paradigm by Smithson and his peers.
Author: Ann Reynolds
Translated from the English by Anaël Lejeune and
Olivier Mignon
Original title: Learning from New Jersey and
Elsewhere, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003.
Graphic design: Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier
Published in 2014
In French
15.5 x 22.7 cm
384 pages
ISBN : 978-2-930667-09-6
EAN : 9782930667096
