64 Quotes by Robert Smithson

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.

Abstraction is everybody’s zero but nobody’s nought.

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

A camera is wild in just about anybody’s hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction.

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.

Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody’s head.

Some artists imagine they’ve got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.

Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head.

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