In 1968, astronaut William Anders took this photo of the earth rising over the moon.
The picture which became known as "Earthrise" showed the world as a lonely fragile oasis.
And it changed the way we see our planet.
It was as if humanity was seeing itself in a mirror for the first time. Seeing itself as a globe,
as an object, would not only change our consciousness but also be inextricably
tied up with what would be called "Land Art".
Newsreader: "Good evening. Dr Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement
has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
1968 was a turbulent year for the United states.
And the sudden appearance of "Earth Art" or "Land art" can be seen as a response to the
heightened political activism of the time, as well as the emerging environmental movement.
The world was changing and art needed to change too. Artists were fed up with the gallery system
and the over-commercialization of art and culture. They were questioning what art was.
Was it only art if it was in a gallery? Or a museum? Was it only art if you could sell it?
A group of artists, mostly working in New York city, were looking to transcend the limitations
of painting and sculpture. To do this they would go west - to the vast desert spaces.
They would find something that was elemental something that would go beyond physicality.
They were fearless, ambitious, and daring. They were pioneers.
You could say land art existed thousands of years even before oil painting - but it would
take a group of American artists to bring it back to the public gaze in the 1960s and 70s.
Artists like Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt had emerged from sculpture, minimalism
and conceptual art. Rather than painting the landscape they started working outdoors and
sculpting directly INTO the landscape itself. Instead of paint brushes they would use bulldozers.
And the earth would be not only the site, but also the materials AND the canvas.
In spring 1970, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt visited northern Utah to select a site to
construct an earthwork. With no outlets to the sea the Great Salt Lake is a "Terminal" lake - only rain
can replenish the lake's waters. We see images of the spiral jetty looking picturesque, but it is
important to note that the lake has always been an area of intense industrialisation. It still is.
And it's one of the reasons Smithson chose it. In Smithson's film about the making of Spiral Jetty
we see an abandoned oil rig in the background. The Union Pacific railroad runs right through it.
Smithson saw his works of art as the "mediators" between the environment and the economy.
Some art theorists use the term "Land art" and "Environmental art" interchangeably. But the land art
of Smithson is not so much about ecology or direct activism. Spiral Jetty should really be seen as a
way of expanding awareness of geological changes. This was at the core of Smithson's practice.
But who paid for these projects? Land artists may have shown disdain for the traditional art market, but
their massive outdoor works still required money. And lots of it. Land art needed wealthy patrons
who were not going to get anything in return - just the chance to feel a part of art history.
Robert Smithson was not just an artist - he was an intellectual, an important writer and a theorist.
It would be his words that gave land art a voice He only created three monumental earth works and his
early death - in the process of creating the third - would lend his work a mythological status.
Smithson moved to New York in the late 1950s. Gallerist Virginia Dwan gave him a solo show in 1959.
And she would eventually fund the Spiral Jetty. At this time Smithson was
producing paintings, drawings, and collages inspired by the Abstract Expressionists.
Later his work would take a turn towards minimalism. The jump from minimalism to
land art is not such a giant leap. While the key element of land art was often its monumentality
and its site-specific context, it also connected closely with many of the concerns of minimalism.
In 1963, Smithson married Nancy Holt, a brilliant artist and a member of the earth, land
and conceptual art movements. She became not just smithson's wife but his collaborator.
And their partnership would mark a significant turning point in his career.
Both of them were fascinated by man's imprint on the natural landscape, and in 1969 they took
a journey through England and Wales, visiting sites ranging from ancient ruins and quarries
to wild natural places. It had a major influence on their work. Then in 1968 they took part in the
legendary show "Earthworks" at the Virginia Dwan gallery in New York. The following year Michael
Heizer created "Double Negative" in Nevada. A year after that Smithson built the Spiral Jetty in Utah.
Rozel point is located in a remote section of the north end of the Great Salt Lake, whose
waters are four times saltier than the sea. It is nearly devoid of life. In this harsh environment
only a few organisms like algae and bacteria can live. Brine shrimp however thrive in this extreme
environment. They are a brilliant red colour and in Autumn they shed their old shells and deposit
them in the lake. It is the bacteria and algae that live on the discarded shrimp shells that
provide almost a constant source of colour - ranging from blood red to rust orange and purple pink.
The colour of the lake was the preliminary factor that attracted Smithson to the site.
Smithson: "North of the Lucin cut-off, the water is a red or pink colour due to algae in the brine".
To him the pigmentation evoked the primordial seas.
The mirror-like quality of the lake also appealed to Smithson - not only would he
create a spiral, but the water would act like an inverse spiral and a mirror at the same time.
A big part of Spiral Jetty's appeal is the sheer audaciousness of it.
And the enormous effort involved in the construction only adds to its mythological status.
It was made possible by the support of Virginia Dwan who put up nine thousand dollars for the project.
In April 1970 Smithson received the lease agreement for 25 acres of land
on the banks of the Great Salt Lake. The rent was $100 per annum.
Smithson then obtained permission to move the six thousand five hundred tons
of basilt and earth from the shoreline. To construct a huge fifteen hundred foot long,
fifteen foot wide, spiral shaped jetty out on the lake.
Part of Spiral Jetty's attraction is how our senses are heightened when we encounter
artworks larger than us. Interacting with such a huge piece, requires a shift in perception
which then shifts how one experiences the world around it. The waters of the
lake were unusually low when construction began - but it was still an incredible feat.
Smithson marked out the shape with poles and rope, and his contractor Bob Phillips used two
dump trucks, a large tractor, and a front end loader to haul the tons of rock and earth from the shore
into the lake. This is the first proposal by Smithson, which they built. With an island
as planned - and you can see that here. But Smithson wasn't happy with the shape
and to the contractors horror, insisted on removing it entirely and starting again - to new specifications.
Despite this setback, Smithson was an artist who made his mark in a very short time.
Investigating the lake - choosing a site - hiring a contractor - and creating the work - took just four weeks.
Spiral Jetty's strange markings deliberately reference prehistoric architecture - as well as
American Indian "Petroglyphs" found in Utah. Early spirals are found in many places in the Americas.
Spirals fascinated Smithson, and in his writings he also mentioned their occurrence in galaxies and
nebulae, in the structure of crystals, in the human ear, and in particular in Constantin Brancusi's
famous portrait of James Joyce. In Smithson's early work you often find the spiral form.
Near to theSpiral Jetty site, the Bingham copper mines - still active - appealed to his love of industrial sites.
In fact he once proposed an Earthwork to the owners - but was refused. Some early settlers
believed the center of an ancient universe was directly UNDER the Great Salt Lake and Spiral Jetty
could be seen as a "portal" to that world. This would tie into a theory that a book by the science
fiction writer JG Ballard inspired Smithson. Smithson was a huge fan of science fiction
and in 1967, he took the title of Brian Aldiss' "Earthworks" to describe his own form of art.
JG Ballard's "The Voices of Time", like the Spiral Jetty is set in the salt flats, and concerned
with time. Ballard's world is ravaged by climate change and characters are transformed by landscape.
The climax has the main character, a scientist, building a "Mandala" off the coast of the salt flats.
A mandala is a ritualistic symbol in Asian cultures, and in the book it is a way of
communicating with the universe. The primary theme in both of these books is one which was common to
the new wave of science fiction writers - that of entropy and the breakdown of all things.
Entropy is the inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society - or in this case a work of art.
Land art might change in unpredictable ways. And that's the point. These works do not exist
in isolation from the world around them, and land artists embrace entropy - the idea of decay
or even the complete disintegration of their work. From the second Spiral Jetty was created
it has continually changed. Only a year after it was completed, the rising lake level submerged
it under water. It would reappear briefly in the 1980s then disappear again under 16 feet of water.
Until 2002 - when it would resurface as white as snow, with encrusted salt.
Robert Smithson was killed in a light plane crash along with the pilot and a photographer, as they
were inspecting one of his Earthworks under construction on a ranch near Amarillo, Texas.
His story is an American epic. That of a man who leaves the city to search for truth in the vast landscapes of the West.
I think the Land Art movement was less about ecology, than it was about a desire to take art out of the white box of the gallery.
But thanks to its emergence and submergence, Spiral Jetty has become a handy visual metaphor - a symbol of climate change.
It seems inevitable that after a few more cycles of high water and extreme drought
the Spiral Jetty will disappear completely - and return to the vast salt bed of the Great Lake - from where it came.
Something Smithson would have been very pleased with.