Editing Spiral Jetty (section)

== Criticism ==
The ephemeral nature of the ''Spiral Jetty'' (sometimes visible, sometimes submerged) sparked inquiries<ref>Owens, C. (1980). The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism. ''October'', ''12'', 67–86. {{doi|10.2307/778575}}</ref> into the enduring influence of the artwork and the importance of its various representations, such as photographs, films, and essays. The photographs played a critical role in preserving and promoting the earthwork's growing renown, acting as the primary connection between the object and its state of being forgotten. Smithson's conceptual framework, centered around the concepts of temporality and entropy, emphasized the dynamic and destructive elements at play, often referencing the gradual decline and disintegration of the artwork.<ref name=Smithson1996>{{cite book|first1=Robert|last1=Smithson|title=The Collected Writings|editor-first=Jack|editor-last=Flam|location=California|publisher=University of California Press|year=1996|isbn=9780520203853}}</ref>{{rp|256}} Through his essays and interviews, the artist articulated his awareness of these forces at work within his artistic practice. Borrowing from the term ''[[entropy]]'', Smithson indicated that the earthworks were "suggestions of sites external to the gallery situation".<ref name=Toner1996>{{cite book|first1=Paul|last1=Toner|first2=Robert|last2=Smithson|chapter=Interview with Robert Smithson For The Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution|title=The Collected Writings|editor-first=Jack|editor-last=Flam|location=California|publisher=University of California Press|year=1996|isbn=9780520203853}}</ref>{{rp|293}}

In his 1970 interview, Smithson mentioned his interest in working on raw materials with abstract geometrical forms.<ref name=Toner1996/>{{rp|234}} The ephemeral material changes the properties of the artwork over time, which could be regarded as process-oriented art.<ref>{{cite book|first=Brian|last=Massumi|title=Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation|location=Durham, NC|publisher=Duke University Press|year=2002|page=5|isbn=9780822328971}}</ref> In the end, it "dramatizes the sense of context and discontext".<ref name=Schmidt1996/>{{rp|203}} With spiraling screw dislocation in the crystal formation and the enclosed nature of the Salt Lake, Smithson created a sense of containment and movement.<ref name=Toner1996/>{{rp|236}} The complexity of matter creates an irrational "[[surd (mathematics)|surd]]" area.<ref name=Schmidt1996>{{cite book|last=Schmidt|first=Eva|chapter=Four Conversations Between Dennis Wheeler and Robert Smithson (1969-1970)|title=The Collected Writings|editor-first=Jack|editor-last=Flam|location=California|publisher=University of California Press|year=1996|isbn=9780520203853}}</ref>{{rp|199}} The idea of a closed space is established through the aesthetic concept of crystalline mapping.<ref name=Schmidt1996/>{{rp|197}}

Influenced by Wiener's system of feedback and entropy,<ref>{{cite book|first=Pamela M.|last=Lee|title=Chronophobia: on time in the art of the 1960s|location=Cambridge, MA|publisher=MIT Press|year=2004|page=244|isbn=9780262622035}}</ref> Smithson was aware that the circulation of its photographs would have a tendency to move ''Spiral Jetty'' into an [[Signified and signifier#Floating signifier|empty signifier without the signified]]. He mentioned in an interview, "If you make a system, you can be sure the system is bound to evade itself, so I see no point in pinning any hope on systems."<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert|last=Smithson|chapter=Earth (1969)|title=The Collected Writings|editor-first=Jack|editor-last=Flam|location=California|publisher=University of California Press|year=1996|isbn=9780520203853}}</ref>{{rp|194}} Smithson realized the instability of fugitivity of one's surroundings but still required the viewers to apprehend them through their eyes and ears.<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert|last=Smithson|chapter=The Spiral Jetty|title=The Collected Writings|editor-first=Jack|editor-last=Flam|location=California|publisher=University of California Press|year=1996|isbn=9780520203853}}</ref>{{rp|147}}

Over the decades since the unexpected submersion in 1972, ''Spiral Jetty'' has become known through its wide circulation of photographs. Scholars such as [[Roland Barthes]], [[Walter Benjamin]] and [[Henri Bergson]] frequently debated the issue of timelessness and the fixation of its photographs and multiple referents as [[Signified and signifier#Floating signifier|signifiers without the signified]]. Since the 1960s, the notion of life as a multi-formed complexity has challenged the concept of space as a static condition, leading to a reassessment of the notion of temporality. According to [[Manuel DeLanda]], "Rocks and winds, germs and words, are all different manifestations of this dynamic reality...this single matter-energy expresses itself."<ref>{{cite book|first=Manuel|last=DeLanda|title=A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History|location=New York|publisher=Zone Books|year=1997|isbn=9780942299922|page=21}}</ref>

While time and space are seen as key in the discussion of modern sculpture,<ref name=Krauss1977>{{cite book|first=Rosalind E.|last=Krauss|title=Passages in Modern Sculpture|location=Cambridge|publisher=Thomas and Hudson|year=1977|pages=4–5|isbn=9780500232729}}</ref> it raises challenges for analyzing ''Spiral Jetty'' through photographs as it suggests another temporality and hence different values.{{cn|date=July 2023}}

As Krauss explains:<blockquote>"In using the form of the spiral to imitate the settlers' mythic whirlpool, Smithson incorporates the existence of the myth into the space of the work. In doing so, he expands on the nature of that external space located at our bodies' centers, which had been part of the Double Negative's image. Smithson creates an image of our psychological response to time and of the way we are determined to control it by the creation of historical fantasies. But the ''Spiral Jetty'' attempts to supplant historical formulas with the experience of a moment-to-moment passage through space and time."<ref name=Krauss1977/>{{rp|282}}</blockquote>

However, the site experience and the referents are not self-sufficient, as art historian Ann Morris Reynolds says:<blockquote>Although I acknowledged that these descriptions were partial and distanced from their referent ... I still felt they provided visual and conceptual proxies, images and ideas, that seemed sufficient. September for the very first time, I was deeply aware of the fact that neither my on-site experience nor the descriptions that I was familiar with, both old and new, were self-sufficient or even clearly distinct.<ref>{{cite book|last=Reynolds|first=A.|year=2005|chapter=At the Jetty|title=Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities|editor1-first=Karen J.|editor1-last=Kelly|editor2-first=Lynne|editor2-last=Cooke|isbn=9780520245549|page=73}}</ref></blockquote>

[[File:9 MILES.jpg|thumb|Road sign to ''Spiral Jetty'']]
As time has passed since the completion of the ''Spiral Jetty'', the photographs have become the most accessible and vivid remnants of the artwork. However, they no longer serve as helpful maps leading to a physical location; instead, they have become signs that direct viewers to an apparitional and chemically vanished object. Lunberry questions the grounding and ontological location of the ''Spiral Jetty'', suggesting that its various manifestations, including photographs, essays, films, and the actual earthwork, refer to each other but do not fully settle on a singular object. He states:
<blockquote>The photographs thus remain as utterly believable substitutes, authentic apparitions, all that has been needed to restore to our eager eyes the vanished earthwork, raise the form once and for all from out of the waters that both reflect and conceal the ''Spiral Jetty'', affirm and deny its place upon the lake.<ref name=Lunberry2002>{{cite journal|last=Lunberry|first=C.|date=Spring 2002|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389647|title=Quiet Catastrophe: Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty", Vanished|journal=Discourse|volume=24|number=2|pages=86–120|jstor=41389647 }}</ref>{{rp|103}}</blockquote>

The disappearance of the earthwork raises perplexing questions about the significance and impact of its material absence. The photographs, the essay, and the film become intertwined with the submerged earthwork, but what happens to the object itself when all that remains are these representations? Additionally, the disappearance of thousands of tons of stone and soil raises the challenge of accounting for such a massive fact. Lunberry continues: 
<blockquote>Then, looking into our own desiring eyes, we may begin to wonder if the issue of seeing itself - the ''Spiral Jetty'''s appearance or disappearance, its ontology as an object or an image - has finally proven itself to be far more intricate and involved than initially imagined. If Henri Bergson is to be believed and "perception is only a true hallucination", then where would we have to go, what would we have to do to locate the precise vanishing point of Smithson's ''Spiral Jetty'', to arrive at the site of our own craving, to see the source of our own hallucination?<ref name=Lunberry2002/>{{rp|105}}</blockquote>

Lunberry suggested that there is a "dialectical play arises in the process of creating affective awareness"<ref name=Lunberry2002/>{{rp|118}} Lunberry's affective memories were primarily produced by his own picture of the Spiral Jetty, and an active recall of his past conscious and unconscious memories of seeing the Spiral Jetty years ''after'' his last visit. Similar to Krauss, Lunberry's viewing experience involved an imaginary voyage, except that he is aware of temporality: Spiral Jetty has vanished. Lunberry stated, "the effect of a ghost whose mysterious apparitions<ref name=Lunberry2002/>{{rp|117-118}}

During and after the completion of the work, Gianfranco Gorgoni documented the ''Spiral Jetty'' with Smithson. Since 2012, the present owner of the ''Spiral Jetty'', the Dia Foundation, has committed to annual aerial documentation.<ref>{{cite web|title=Collection: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Aerial Documentation|website=Dia Art Foundation Beacon|accessdate=17 July 2023|url=https://www.diaart.org/collection/collection/smithson-robert-spiral-jetty-1970-1999-014/}}</ref> Smithson was confident that "if the work is strong enough and photographed properly, it is fed back into mass distribution".<ref name=Toner1996/>{{rp|236}}