3/25/08

From the center of the Spiral Jetty

North - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
North by East - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Northeast by North - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Northeast by East - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East by North - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East by South - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

Southeast by East - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

South by East - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

South - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

South by West - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

Southwest by South - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

Southwest by West - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

West by South - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

West - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

West by North - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

Northwest by West - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

Northwest by North - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

North by West - Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

I feel that Smithson believes that one of the most important characteristics of his piece is scale. The shape of the immobile spiral alone is disorienting; the size of the structure only adds to the viewer's confusion. He stated this point himself:

"I was slipping out of myself again, dissolving into a

unicellular beginning, trying to locate the nucleus at

the end of the spiral"

-Robert Smithson

The poem above helps to explain how daunting the inside of the spiral really is. From any possible direction you see the same material: mud, salt, rocks, water. The nucleus of the spiral is isolated enough to block off outside landscape - within the spiral, all that exists is the spiral.

Between the viewing and the reading, I developed the idea that the purpose of the film was to allude to how big the earthwork actually was. The difficulty with earthwork is its immobility. There is no gallery to accommodate a sculpture of this scale; the gallery is the sculpture itself. Much like the works of Matta-Clark, the surrounding environment is part of the art. If the purpose of the film was to solely give evidence of the structure, to bring the structure to those who are unable to travel to it, it would have been a much different film.

After thinking about it, I realize that every shot of the film in some way helps to magnify the scale of the work. The helicopter tracking shot went on for well over a minute - showing how long, if untwisted, the spiral would become. Entire dump-trucks were used for small segments of the jetty. High-angle and low-angle shots alike display the magnitude of the art (it's quite big, if you haven't guessed by now).