A brilliant theoretician at a time receptive to radical esthetic theories, Smithson gained considerable influence in his short life, mostly for advocating earth as a material valid for sculpture. Because many of Smithson's major sculptures no longer exist, perhaps the principal achievement of his career was making works that successfully survive in secondary literature, beginning with his own writings. To my mind, the paradigmatic Smithson masterpiece is Incidents of Mirror Travel in the YucatanIncidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan...
SMITHSON, Robert
(1938–1973)