Earthworks: Robert Smithson, Sam Durant, and Mary Brogger September 1, 2010

Robert Smithson is one of the most influential and significant artists of the twentieth century, and his writings, drawings, sculptures, and earthworks are touchstones for contemporary artists for their rigorous artistic and theoretical investigations. 'Earthworks' brings together three works from the MCA Collection to demonstrate the sustained influence of Smithson's artistic output. Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty' documents the production of the 1,500-foot long, 15-foot wide counterclockwise coil made entirely from mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, earth and water that extends from the northeastern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. The film was created just months after Partially Buried Woodshed, a dilapidated wooden structure that Smithson piled dirt on until the central beam cracked, and an influence for 'Spiral Jetty' and the work of Mary Brogger and Sam Durant. In 'Earthwork,' Brogger created a birdhouse in the form of a scale-model of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Piling birdseed in the center of the transparent home, Brogger suggests the potential for an icon of architecture to become a ruin itself. Durant uses materials influenced by Smithson's work like dirt, mounds and mirrors, for Partially Buried 1960s/70s Dystopia Revealed (Mick Jagger at Altamont) & Utopia Reflected (Wavy Gravy at Woodstock), a study of the utopia and dystopia shift of the two music festivals.