Comments on: One on One: Jill Dawsey on Vik Muniz’s “Spiral Jetty after Robert Smithson”

By: Steve Benson

Steve Benson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:58:30 +0000

P.S. It was a marvelous coincidence to read your piece immediately before watching Gus Van Sant’s 2001 film called Gerry, which I am sure would interest you if you are not already familiar with it. I am thinking not only of the locations but of the dialogues among frames of reference — material and art, human and non human, sky and earth, time passage and staticity — that are highly pronounced and yet completely implicit from the very start of the film.

By: Steve Benson

Steve Benson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:46:30 +0000

Like many, I have wanted for many years to go to the spiral jetty, and at this point I am skeptical whether I will ever drive through Utah again or otherwise have opportunity to visit, so your blog here is very satisfying as a representation of such an experience–an experience that would be, it would seem, primary, of an actual artifact of the art effect Smithson initiated, but as you make perfectly clear, so is reading your piece about it and imagining it while drifting off to sleep. The proliferation of secondary aspects and virtual or partial experiences is consistent, to my mind, with his sense of the admirable workings of entropy, with which he sought to collaborate, don’t you think?

By: Chris Cobb

Chris Cobb — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:29:07 +0000

I like the underlying assumption the Earthworks art is based upon – that art is really important. The fuss, the hassle, the scale, the expense, the remoteness all work psychologically on viewers and take on a life of their own. It’s the sort of gesture that really reflected the times…so it’s nice hear your reflections on it – expectation vs. reality, how the work inhabited a place in your mind, how its function continues to change for you & how its meaning has changed as well.