![]() ![]() ![]() Over the course of six days in April of 1970, Smithson and two assistants used two dump trucks, a front loader, and a tractor to move 6,650 tons of earth and rock from nearbyhillsides into the lake. Once Smithson decided on the isolated location and the ancient form of his monumental earthwork, construction began. In other instances, as in a petroglyph found near Cedar City, Utah, the horizontal line might indicate the surface of the ground, below which the spiral extends to symbolize a flash flood originating below the crest.3 Smithson had a great interest in petroglyphs, and, even after he completed Spiral Jetty in 1970, he continued to visit Indian rock art sites in Utah. Indian rock art throughout the American southwest often depicts this reverse spiral as connected to a horizontal line, which suggests a beginning point-the lakeshore in this case. Interestingly, he reversed the usual direction of the spiral its counterclockwise movement suggests infinity, rather than the more typical connotations of moving water or a human odyssey. Smithson wisely chose a spiral for his massive earthwork, a symbol at once ancient and universal, occurring in many world cultures. Of course, it is only possible to speculate about what Spiral Jetty “means”: its ambiguity is part of its transcendent effect. Clearly, this offers the perfect setting for an exploration of time, space, and mutability. ![]() Yet, within any given hour, the water transforms to bright turquoise or coppery brown, pea soup green or cobalt blue. He selected a site at Rozel Point because of the bacteria, brine shrimp, and algae growing there, which turn the water close to shore the color of pale blood. In addition to the lake’s magical shape-shifting, Smithson was no doubt drawn to its astonishing and constantly changing colors. A rise of a few feet in the lake level may change its contours amazingly and add hundreds of square miles to its surface area.”2 All its shores slope so gently that its shoreline is subject to extraordinary fluctuation. ![]() The lake’s dimensions, according to Morgan, “can rarely be stated with any precision. Morgan calls it “the Lake of Paradoxes…an ironic joke of nature-water that is itself more desert than a desert.”1 Early photographs show people bobbing on its surface, unsinkable in its salty buoyancy. As the remnant of the ancient, fresh-water Lake Bonneville, which was about the size of Lake Michigan, the Great Salt Lake today measures 75 miles long by 50 miles wide and is second only to the Dead Sea in salinity (between 10 and 25 percent). The lake itself epitomizes change and unpredictability. All images: © estate of Robert Smithson / licensed by VAGA, ikonos satellite image provided by space imaging. Earthwork in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, as seen from the 1,600 pound Ikonos satellite, 423 miles up in space. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, April 1970. When it reappeared, after five continuous years of drought, it was no longer a massive coil of black basalt but a glittering white spiral of encrusted salt-a transformation even its creator could not have predicted. April of this year marked the 34th anniversary of this causeway of basalt coiling out into the briny lake.įor decades-years rich with rain and even floods- Spiral Jetty lay submerged like some prehistoric desert dragon, waiting on time and nature’s cycles to resurface. This landscape is vast, isolated, dreamlike-the perfect site for Robert Smithson’s meditative earthwork, Spiral Jetty. The waters of the lake were unusually low that year, but soon engulfed the dark basalt spiral, which only resurfaced 30 years later – now white as snow with encrusted salt.Seen from a hilltop at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, open-range grass and sagebrush stretch north, the pastel Wasatch Mountains lie low along the eastern skyline, and distant islands float in mirages to the south and west. Phillips agreed, for an extra $3,000 on top of the $6,000 already billed. It’s often said that Spiral Jetty was built in just six days, but that’s forgetting the two months of preparation up front, not to mention Smithson’s request that the whole thing be done again (“It’s just not right!”). He had difficulty finding a contractor willing to tackle the job, but eventually hit on Bob Phillips, who accepted due to the unusual problems it raised. Bureau of Reclamation to move the 6,500 tons of basalt needed for a project he had begun working on in late 1969 – the construction of a 1500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, spiral-shaped jetty in the Great Salt Lake, whose waters are four times saltier than the sea.Īs a result it has a strange tint, like that of tomato soup according to Smithson, a reminder that aesthetics were not secondary in his intentions. Smithson then obtained permission from the U.S. Collector Virginia Dwan put up the cash, which the artist later reimbursed. The asking rent was $100 per annum, payable in advance at the beginning of each year. ![]()
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