Analysis Of Robert Smithson's A Sedimentation Of The Mind

Robert Smithson’s 1968 essay titled “A Sedimentation of The Mind” is a response to the lingering question: what is the justification of land art? Smithson’s answer was that the justification was both the sensation that dedifferentiation gives to the land artists and the impure natural processes that are incorporated gives land art its quality, while arguing that the time that encompasses the sensation and mental processes when creating their works were just as important as the actual works themselves. As a fellow land artist himself, Smithson attempts to explain dedifferentiation, the sensation it gives, and why it gives land art its quality, using what the Minimalist artist Tony Smith experienced during his car ride on an unfinished turnpike as an example. Tony Smith spoke about how the experience was revealing to him, something that critics such as Michael Fried were shocked by. Smithson states that Smith was talking about a sensation, and that …show more content…
Smithson favors the process of nature on technology as artistic, declaring “Why steel is valued over rust is a technological value, not an artistic one.” Smithson attacks the idea of refinement, claiming that refinement hides the processes that “makes one aware of the sub-strata of the Earth”, while stating that impurities in technology are not necessarily bad, because the Earth is also made up of impurities. Smithson criticizes the artist that works “within the limit of his ‘craft’” for attempting to “copy a perfect mental model”, while expressing that the artist who refuses “technological miracles” will get to know the chaos “in the strata of esthetic consciousness” by recognizing more of the