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    24 views4 pages

    Smithson Robert 1966 Quasi-Infinities and The Waning of Space

    Uploaded by

    papiroparoraro

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Quasi-Infinities and the Ww Waning of Space ‘ase ‘tan tient of pois” For many artists th ian the universe is | A SOUND FOUR BLOCKS of pes | shall pout four ultramundane margins that shall contain in x! ding; for determinate information as well as. reproxduced SxPan ‘95 reproductions, The first obstacle shal] be a labyrinth’! some it is through which the mind will pass in an instant, thus i eliminating the spatial problem. ‘The next encounter contracting. is an abysmal anatomy theatre. Quickly the mind will |, puss over this dizzying height. Here the pages of time are By paper thin, even when it comes to a pyramid”, The ROBERT SMITHSON | “*** of this pyramid is everywhere and nowhere. Eom this center one may sce she Tower of Babel”, Keplers universe, or a building by the architece Ledoux", To formulate 8 general theory of this inconceivable system would nor solve its symmetrce! perplesitien, Realy Without time seme, comeion trap the mind is one of an infnite number of "cites of siesta wai} the future'”.” Inutile codes!" and exeesvagan experi " tenet '*’ adumbrate the “absolute” abstraction''”’, One becomes aware of what T. E. Holme called “the fringe the cold walks», that lead aowheres In Ad Reinhardcs "Twelve Rules for a New Actdemy wre find the satemens, “The presen i the favre oF the Das and the past ofthe future.” The dim surface sections within the confines of Reinhard's standard (60” x 60°) | i “paintings” disclose faint squares of time, Time, asa color F less intersection, is absorbed almost imperceptibly into ‘one’s consciousness. Each painting is at once both mem: ory and forgetfulness, a paradox of darkening time. The lines of his grids are barely visible; they waver between the furure and the past. George Kubler, like Ad Reinhard, seems concemed a with “weak signals” from “the void.” Beginnings and endings are projected into the present as hazy planes of “actuality.” In The Shape of Time: Remarks on the Hise 10 Ad Reinhardt installation tory of Things, Kubler says, “Actwality is... che inters J 5 Kepler moet oF them ‘March 1968) Betty Parsons Gallery chronic pause when noching is happening. It is the void hata between events.” Reinhards seems obsessed by this “void.” $0 much that he has attempted co give it a concrete shape—a shape that evades shape, Here one finds n0 allusion to “duration,” but an interval without any sug- Sekt gestion of “life or death.” This is a coherent portion of AT AR a hidden infinity. The future crisscrosses the past as an Sy unobtainable present, Time vanishes into m_ perpewal gran 6 Claude-Nicalas Ledous 9 From Edgar Allan Poe's ‘Most notions of time (Progress, Evolution, Avant- Craton) : Eureka garde) are put in terms of biology. Analogies are drawn hetween organic biology and technology: the nervous system is extended imo electronic, and the musculae ° ° i. wortocea as cureena 2 FGHEDCBA ot 3 erences 353/373 oercncea oi 23 coeranes sagt as acDEFGHA 01234 ascoeren 4A. Dire Scheme Without B. Nomcode based on The Sremory by Ban Graham ‘te Mag ot aon Lal 7 “City of the Furr Ants Magazine, November 1966 ‘Any. art that oviinate, wih 2a to expression’ Ts vot sac, but representalonal Space represemated. Cees ho inrpae atin teres of ce see the Tstory of at BND tetoction of three fpersional tlsinitic space Torsise same order of Space aoe care » the pleasure nowhere. Jet him go to sleep w Bin Case. Sitence Ganbridge: MIT. Press ‘Dr. J, sronowski among others AGE pointe ont that mathematics Shines ot wy see a the most fl ofall scenes conse Beost colcnal meupbor i ie, and must be judge etcay as well as ines: Bie cra of the seca of metaphor” Novbest Wiener, Homie Use 0) ftuman Be nes sour bodies.” (Clement Greenberg "absiract, Repre- Semiational id so jorth) Here “Greenberg. squats Space" with “our bodies" and interprets this reduction fe. abstract. This anthropo ‘morphizing of space i) acs thetleally a Spathete fallacy” tnd is im no way abstract 12 Plate, probably drawn for Spigelius (1627) system is extended into mechanics. The workings of biology and technology belong not in the domain of art, bue to the “useful” time of organic (active) duration, which is unconscious and mortal. Act mirrors the "actual that Kubler and Reinhardt are exploring. What is actual is apart from che continuous “actions” between bigch and death. Action is not the motive of a Reinhardt painting. Whenever “action” does persist, i is unavail able of useless, Ia art, action is always becoming inertia, but ehis inertia has no ground w seutle on except the mind, which is as empty as actual time. THE ANATOMY OF EXPRESSIONISM” ‘The study of anatomy since the Renaissance lead to a notion of art in terms of biology’. Although anatomy is rarely taught in our art schools, the metaphors of ana- romical and biological science linger in the minds of some of our most abstract artists. In the paintings of both Willem deKooning'" and Jackson Pollack’ one may find traces of the biological metaphor''”, or what Lawrence Alloway called “biomorphism'".” In arch tecture, most notably in the theories of Frank Lloyd Wright, che biological metaphor prevails", Wright's idea of “the organic” had « powerlul influence on both archiveets and artists. This in curn produced a nostalgia for the rural or rustic community or the pastoral setting, and as a result brought into aesthetics an antivurban attitude. Wright's view of the city as a “cancer” or “a social disease” persists today inthe minds of some of the most “formal” artists and critics, Abstract expression: sm revcaled this visceral condition, without any aware: ress of the role of the biological metaphor. Art is still for the most part thought to be “creative” or in Alloway's words “phases of seeding, sprouting, growing, loving, fighting, decaying, rebirth.” The science of biology in this case, becomes "biological-ietion,” and che problem of anatomy dissolves into an “organic mass.” If this is 0, thea abstractexpressioniam was « disintegration of "figure painting” or a decomposition of anchropomor- phism. Impressionistie modes of art also suffer from this biological syndrome. Kubler suggests that metaphors drawn from physical science rather than biological science would be more suitable for describing the condition of art, Biological science has since the nineteenth century infused in most people's minds an unconscious faith in "creative evolu- 13 7 Willem deKooning Jackson Pollack The, biological metaphor is atthe “bottom of al for mast” ‘crite. These Rothing “abstract” about Kooning or Pollack. To foeste thems ine a formalist system ‘is simply" a crtical mutation based on a. rasan Aerstanding of "toetaphor— famely, the biologics! es fended into the spatial ‘Art Forum, September 1965 The ‘Blomorphie. Fortes A. The Guggenheim Museum perhaps Wrights most Visceral achievement. "No butlsing is more organic than this Inverse digesise wat, The ambulatories are meta Bhogal vetines t's B, Guggenheim Muscum 18 The truncated ideas in Nove Express (Evergreen "Black Cat “Hook BC-102)" disclose In" part the. “heat-eath™ of the Biological metaphor, “The Insect Brain of Minti closed in a erytal =” MeL Yon Feane in’ Time and Syn Chronicity. tn “Analg Proye Choloey sates, "Physicists Studying cybernetics have ob Served” that what We call In prineiple, nothingness remains inaceewtble "to" science* "Martin Weiserger, A “Tnmucsion to Metaphpes The unity of Nature isan extremely arificlal “and fragile ridge, garden net” TE Hulme, Cinders came. 10 him with a great shake Mon ne eas vad ever seen a living thing, Not i bug. a worm, a leat They did fot Know” what flesh. was, ‘Only the doctors Knew that, “and none oo them ‘could readily understand ‘what as meant by. the words ‘organic mater’ Michael Shea's, Oiphans'of the Voud MA. Foc further edification oncermingobslsky seo Show Hintory af the Exgprion Chet by Wi. "Cooper London: ‘Samuel Bagster and Sons. 1877. the fst men: sion of he obstih ov Tek with the: pyramid: and both fre" alike esignated sacred ‘romuiments ont the funcreal Stele Of the early empire. and ako \were undemahly. devoted tothe. worship of the sun fccasionily the Obelisk. was represented’ ay surmoumting sramily 8 postion. which it Fas'never actualy been found 10 occupy. sist of am intrnpsehic, fox Sr trnln GF ideas whieh Sows Parallel to" Cor is even pos explicable by) he arrow’ of time. While M.'s Wanmbe convnny a Sac sur genes others ike’ Granbaurt tend” to hewe that entropy iy suse of tine is man The Vowen of Tome tp. 2 flted ‘by "1, Friner, New i! Gtorge Bari 19 Alberto Giacometti, The P: Gee at Four AM. (1932 tion.” An intelligible dissatisfaction with this faith is very ‘much in evidence in the work of certain artists THE VANISHING ORGANISM ‘The biological metaphor has its origin in the temporal order, yet certain artists have “detemporalized” cer organic properties, and transformed them into solid ob jects that contain “ideas of time.” This atitude toward art is more “Egyptian” than “Greek,” static rather than dynamic. Or it is what William 8, Bursoughs calls “The ‘Thermodynamic Pain and Energy Bank"* —a condition of time that originates inside isolated objects rather than outside, Artists as different as Alberto Giacometti and Ruth Vollmer w Eva Hesse and Lucas Samaras disclose this tendency Giacometti’s early work, The Palace at Four A.M. cenigmatically and explicitly is abous time. But, one could hacdly say chae this “time-structuse” reveals any sugges: tion of organic vitality. Its balance is fragile and precari- fous, and drained of all notions of energy. yet it has a primordial grandeur” Ie rakes one’s mind to the very origins of time—to the fundamental memory. Giaco- mecei’s art and thought conveys an enseopie view of the world. “Tes hard for me co shut up,” says Giacometti v0 James Lord. "It’s the delirium shat comes from che im- powibility of really accomplishing anyehing'*”." ‘There are parallels in the art of Ruch Vollmer 10 that of Giacomett. For instance, she made small skeletal _gcometrie structures before she started making hes bronze ‘spheres,” and like Giacometti she considers those eatly works "dead-ends.” But there is no denying that these works are in the same class with Giacometti, for they evoke both che presence and absence of time. Her Obelisk is similar in mood to The Palace at Four AM. One thinks of Pascal's "fearful sphere” Jost in an Egyptian pest, or in the words of Plotinus the Stoa, “shadows in a shadow.” Matter in this Obelisk "opposes and fore- closes all activity—its future is missing, ‘The art of Eva Hesse is vertiginous and wonderfully dismal’™. Trellises are mummified, nets contain desiee cated lumps, wires extend from tightly wrapped frame- works, a cosmic decelicrion is the general effect. Coils go fon and on; some are cracked open, only to reveal an empty center. Such “things” seem destined for a funerary chamber that excludes all mention of the living and the dead. Her art brings to mind the obsessions of the pha B, The New York Obelisk ©. Cleoputna’s Needles and Cicopturos Nectle by Charles Oiler Eevpttan “Obelisks "by Er Rioldenke, New “York: Sir EA. Walls Budge, Lom ‘Amon. B Rindolph and don! ‘The Religious, Tract So CoTNOT, “We know of the ciety, 1926." Regarding be Obelisk of Karnak, crected skein Rome “The brasy by" Queen Hatasu, thet the globe which "had been fred Spex of His pyramidion Wa GN he" op. af the. obelisk ‘Covered with tpure gold then ligase ip was hough many. believed 20 The following is part of , mpanwsript that deserts Peloce af Four Mit ya dictated” by Giscomett “ ‘Andre Braton for publica, spits meas Mita on dy 1938. peta) fhe wandtated by" th vit met. into English (see magarine Transjotmeain published by. Witenbom Pris object “has taken ley lite by ile By the Swi foe me, the arr paris faking their exact fo Sind thei parila placs'p the ensemble. Come “sitry tha attained such aly that its “exccion in ‘Spat id pot cake: more han oe ay He aso goes one fay," the days and ge Bad the” Some eversthing hap fore caveat 2A. Givcomeni Portus, The Museum of Modern Ati 23 Quoted from Ennead Concepts of Mass in Classi and Modemn Physics | fer Torch. Book TS? Bax Jammer, page the same page ammet say, Proc the ost tone oi oak Plotigus’ doctrine but wih fone important modification matter follows from iis ck fension.” The decline of {32 fatezories of “painting Bl Seuipture™ seem 10. be seul of thie prblem 91

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