LAND ART IN THE U.S.A. A new study of land art in America, featuring all of the well-known land artists from the ‘golden age’ of land art - the 1960s - to the present day. Fully illustrated, with a bibliography. EXTRACT FROM THE CHAPTER ON ROBERT SMITHSON Robert Smithson is the key land artist, the premier artist in the world of land art. And he’s been a big favourite with art critics since the early Seventies. Smithson was the chief mouthpiece of American earth/ site ?sthetics, and is probably the most important artist among all land artists. For Robert Smithson, Carl Andre, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Tony Smith were ‘the more compelling artists today, concerned with ‘Place’ or ‘Site’’. Smithson was impressed by Tony Smith’s vision of the mysterious aspects of a dark unfinished road and called Smith ‘the agent of endlessness’. Smith’s ?sthetic became part of Smithson’s view of art as a complete ‘site’,...