#w

Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#causing #forget #future #instead #like

Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#fall #feeble #function #into #meaning

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#artist #asking #confinement #cultural #curator

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#artifices #both #everybody #found #history

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#language #literal #metaphorical #operates #signification

Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#find #head #idea #itself #language

Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#does #line #nature #proceed #rather

Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#artists #control #cultural #end #fact

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#collection #everywhere #eye #generalizations #mobilize

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#18th century #20th century #century #finished #finished work