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Entropy And Dialectic: The Signatures Of Robert Smithson, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

It has been the fate of a number of twentieth-century artists that the stronger their attacks on the history and traditions of art, the more joy is taken by the guardians of that history and tradition in demonstrating that their work and thought can be incorporated within it. This can be illustrated briefly by juxtaposing Robert Smithson's apparently radical rejections of art history, humanism, biologism and formalism, with some recent attempts to recuperate his work for a tradition. Smithson, you will recall, sought alternatives to museum culture in a series of actual and projected works that aim at effecting a …