Sites of time: organic and geologic time in the art of Robert Smithson and Roxy Paine

Abstract

Contemporary artists seeking new forms of landscape representation often look to the example of Robert Smithson. Smithson shifted his artistic practices outside of the studio (as with `earthworks' like the Spiral Jetty), seeking to replace the tradition of pastoral landscape painting with a focus on `sites of time'. Roxy Paine's artworks from the 1990s to 2005 similarly engage temporality on multiple levels, encompassing time scales linked to brief organic lifetimes and the immensity of geologic time. This article examines the ways in which Paine and Smithson offer examples for new conceptualization of the visual arts' intersections with geographical traditions like that of landscape.