{"data":{"id":"1241","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":1241,"topgoose_id":690,"tms_id":1241,"display_name":"Robert Smithson","sort_name":"Smithson Robert","display_date":"1938–1973","begin_date":"1938","end_date":"1973","biography":"\u003cp\u003eWhile remembered chiefly for his\npioneering earthworks, Robert Smithson’s\nearliest artistic endeavors, created between\n1957 and 1963, were two-dimensional—\npaintings, drawings, woodcuts, and\ncollages that often suggested mythological,\nliterary, or religious themes. By the mid-\n1960s Smithson started producing his first\nmature works—principally sculptures\nand theoretical writings—which consistently\nchallenged ideas about what materials\nmay constitute art, where it could be located,\nand how its relationship to institutions\nmight be configured.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1968 Smithson began to make\nwhat he called “non-sites”: works in which\nnatural materials such as rocks, sand,\nand gravel—from an outdoor geographic or\ngeological “site”—were transferred,\ncontained, and presented indoors, in a\ngallery or museum. \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/5560\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNon-site (Palisades—\nEdgewater, N.J.)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e consists of a slatted\naluminum box filled with rocks salvaged from\nan area near a former trolley line in the\nartist’s native New Jersey. “Instead of\nputting a work of art on some land, some\nland is put into the work of art,” he\nwrote in the sculpture’s component text\npanel. This particular site interested\nSmithson for its illustration of a central\npreoccupation of his art: the thermodynamic\nprinciple of entropy, or the tendency\nof any system to lose energy over time.\n“What was once a straight track has become\na path of rocky crags—the site has lost its\nsystem.” Smithson’s fascination with\nentropy also underpins his earthworks,\nlarge-scale, site-specific interventions in the\nnatural environment, some of which\nwere under way when he died in a plane\ncrash at age thirty-five.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500015753","wikidata_id":"Q328341","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:48:37.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-27T07:01:31.461-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/1241/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/1241/exhibitions"}}}}