TROPOLISM

It is Spiral Jetty week at Greg.org, with a second entry about the newly cleaned-up sculpture in Utah. Because Robert Smithson is one of our heroes, we are unable to resist any post about him (although we were conveniently out of town for the floating island thing). Greg asks us some pretty difficult questions, for which we have no answer. Which means, the questions are those posed by Smithson's work, and they are themselves the impact of that work. They are his art:

When he sited Spiral Jetty in BF Utah, was Smithson building against New Jerseyification, or just ahead of it? Is it possible--or is it just convenient acquiescence to suggest--that roped-off "Nature"-driven degradation is not, in fact, entropy, but Romanticism? Maybe letting "civilization" have its paving, scrubbing, sprucing up, licensing, Acoustiguiding, Ritz Carlton Jettyway Weekend Packaging way with the Jetty isn't closer to the end game Smithson envisioned?