Robert Smithson documented his ‘sites’ with ‘nonsites’.
Robert Smithson writes;
By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a “logical two dimensional picture.” A “logical picture” differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two dimensional analogy or metaphor – A is Z.
The Non-Site (an indoor earthwork)* is a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site in N.J. (The Pine Barrens Plains). It is by this dimensional metaphor that one site can represent another site which does not resemble it – this The Non-Site.
Continue reading Smithson’s ‘A Provisional Theory of Nonsites’
A Nonsite, Franklin, New Jersey, 1968. Sculptural Component: Painted wooden bins, limestone, with Work on Paper: gelatin-silver prints and typescript on paper with graphite and transfer letters mounted on mat board H: 16 1” W: 82 1” D: 103” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
