Second Upside-Down Tree
The animating spirit behind photography is time, and the medium’s vital role in preserving the ephemeral expanded in the 1960s to include the recording of a wide array of Conceptual gestures and strategies, such as the new sculptural practice known as "earthworks". A number of artists including Richard Long, Michael Heizer, and Robert Smithson created often large-scale, site-specific alterations or additions to the environment; in doing so, they deliberately moved away from the Modernist tradition of contemplative, self-referential sculpture (epitomized by Brancusi) that sat comfortably in galleries and living rooms, to works that were carved out of and commented on the post-industrial landscape. Perhaps the best-known of these works was the massive stone Spiral Jetty (1970) created by Robert Smithson (1938-73) in the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
This photograph is of another, more ephemeral, work by Smithson, in which he upended a dead palm tree—now blooming its expired roots—on the shore at Sanibel Island, Florida.
This photograph is of another, more ephemeral, work by Smithson, in which he upended a dead palm tree—now blooming its expired roots—on the shore at Sanibel Island, Florida.
Artwork Details
- Title: Second Upside-Down Tree
- Artist: Virginia Dwan (American)
- Artist: After Robert Smithson (American, Passaic, New Jersey 1938–1973 Amarillo, Texas)
- Date: 1969
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 19.2 x 19.2 cm. (7 9/16 x 7 9/16 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992
- Object Number: 1992.5068
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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