Robert Smithson

“The city is a language, a repository of signs.”

“The site is not a backdrop for the work, but a part of the work.”

“Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.”

“The world is a museum of objects, a history of things.”

“The monuments of antiquity are seen not as models of perfection but as reminders of the fleeting nature of time.”

“One must remember that writing on art is a poor substitute for the art itself.”

“A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance.”

“A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.”

“The museum, a place of confinement, arranges everything in historical order, and this order is like a coffin.”

“I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.”

“Entropy is a condition of all things.”

“I like to think of my work as a kind of geology of the mind.”

“The desert is a place of no-time.”

“My work is a reflection of the reality of my own time, the reality of the landscape, the reality of the industrial world.”

“The spiral is an archetypal shape, a spiritual force in the landscape.”