64 Quotes by Robert Smithson

Establish enigmas, not explanations.

The names of minerals and the minerals themselves do not differ from each other, because at the bottom of both the material and the print is the beginning of an abysmal number of fissures. Words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline.

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.

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