SALT LAKE CITY — The New York Times called it “the most famous work of American art that almost nobody has ever seen in the flesh.” The artist who designed it said it was “the edge of the sun, a boiling curve, an explosion rising into a fiery prominence.” And the woman who financed it said it was “very primal, almost a kind of Luciferian sort of art. There’s something underworld about this particular spiral.”
That piece of art is the “Spiral Jetty” — a swirling, 7,000-ton landmark off Rozel Point in northern Utah, built of salt crystal, mud and basalt rocks, that stretches more than 1,500 feet into the Great Salt Lake. And April marks its 50th anniversary.
The Deseret News spoke with a few experts on the enormous landmark. It’s a strange piece of art, with an equally strange history that continues to evolve.
A ‘point of embarkation’
“The magnitude of the effort, I think, was also part of (‘Spiral Jetty’ creator Robert Smithson’s) legacy,” said Kelly Kivland, a curator at the Dia Art Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that oversees care for “Spiral Jetty” and numerous “land art” pieces around the world.
Its construction, Kivland said, was an enormous feat. And the piece’s sheer magnitude inspired numerous artists who got sucked into its orbit.
“Just the amount of work, and how can that many tons of basalt and earth be pushed and shaped along a shore? How can an artist do such a thing these days?” she said. “I think it was just unimaginable to so many artists that had been working in their studios and creating works that you hang on a wall, or smaller sculptures.”
Robert Smithson was becoming increasingly well known in the New York art world during the 1960s when he conceptualized “Spiral Jetty.” Smithson wanted to make art that wasn’t confined to a normal gallery space — an extension of the “phenomenology” concept that previous artists like Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne had explored. In an artistic context — and especially with a work like “Spiral Jetty” — phenomenology is about interacting with art works much larger than one’s own body, and having one’s senses heightened because of it. Interacting with such a huge piece requires a shift in perception, which then shifts how one experiences the entire world that surrounds it.
Smithson was also fascinated by entropy — a concept about decay that gained increased prominence during the middle part of the 20th century. According to Matthew Coolidge, president of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Smithson fundamentally understood the dual relationship between construction and destruction — “sides of the same coin, and you couldn’t have one without the other,” Coolidge told the Deseret News. Smithson wished to explore that duality in his work. He knew a piece like “Spiral Jetty” wouldn’t stay pristine. It would decay and change, just as its surroundings would decay and change.
According to Smithson’s writings, though, that was kind of the point.
“That’s the interesting thing about land art, is that its meaning changes as the world changes around it,” Coolidge said.
“I like to think of (‘Spiral Jetty’) as a point of embarkation for looking at the region, and thinking of it not as an end itself — not a dead end as you walk around the spiral,” he continued. “We’ve evolved to think of that work, and other works of land art, as gateways to a heightened awareness about where you are.”
Taking a back seat
Three years after “Spiral Jetty” was completed, Smithson died in a plane crash while surveying sites for another land art piece, “Amarillo Ramp,” in Texas.
His wife, fellow artist Nancy Holt, had worked closely with Smithson on “Spiral Jetty.” Suddenly, Holt’s own art career changed drastically as she oversaw Smithson’s estate, his art and his legacy. Smithson’s early death, combined with “Spiral Jetty” being submerged underwater from 1972-1993, added mystery and notoriety to Smithson’s work as the years passed. And for Holt, overseeing it all became a lifelong endeavor. She remained closely involved with her husband’s work until her own death in 2014.
Holt’s art, including the land art piece “Sun Tunnels” in Utah’s Box Elder County, didn’t start getting proper recognition till the end of her life.
“She was an artist with ambition,” Coolidge said. “But she also was a modest person in some ways, and that had allowed her husband’s legacy to really overshadow hers.”
Kivland remembers the first time she met Holt, in 2011. They travelled to “Spiral Jetty,” Kivland said, “and (Holt) just grabbed a chair, pulled it all the way to the side of the parking lot, and she just sat there for hours, to ensure that she had her time with him. It was really quite beautiful. I could tell, just from that experience, it held incredible significance for her.”
The great reveal
As “Spiral Jetty” remained underwater for 20-plus years, its legend grew — thanks in part to separate written and video pieces about the work, which Smithson also created. While the casual audience might think of “Spiral Jetty” as just the sculpture, the art world holds these accompanying video and written pieces in high esteem. For years, it was those pieces that spread the word, doing the work that the submerged physical sculpture could not.
And because “Spiral Jetty” went underwater so quickly after it was completed, it remained relatively unknown to most Utahns, according to Hikmet Loe, a “Spiral Jetty” scholar and adjunct coordinator at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
As for the initial awareness locally, Loe said “people just didn’t know about it. Because (Smithson and others) came in, they did the work, they had their own entourage of international people who came in and looked at it. But locally, there was no traction. But in the ’90s, when ‘Spiral Jetty’ becomes visible, that’s when local people start to get excited.”
That’s when Loe’s interest started, as well. In the 1990s, Loe focused her master’s thesis on the local reaction to “Spiral Jetty.” She interviewed Bob Phillips, the Ogden-based contractor Smithson hired to physically construct “Spiral Jetty” in 1970. Until Loe’s interview with Phillips in 1996, he hadn’t publicly spoken about his work. And since Loe was in contact with others who oversaw “Spiral Jetty,” such as Holt and the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Phillips became a “Spiral Jetty” spokesman of sorts, speaking at various public events.
According to Loe, Phillips often talked about the last time he saw Smithson. Smithson and Holt visited Phillips’ house sometime in the early 1970s after “Spiral Jetty” was completed, and tried convincing Phillips and his wife to join them at the sculpture site that day. Phillips declined, saying maybe they’d go the next time Smithson and Holt were in town.
“But there is no next time, because then Smithson dies in this plane crash,” Loe said. “And I saw Bob Phillips at least five times recount this story, and he would always tear up and cry. It was this really interesting sort of connection that these two men had with each other, that Bob Phillips always valued.”
Phillips passed away in 2016.
Time to celebrate
“Spiral Jetty” has continued to have an unusual life since it reappeared in the 1990s. It was above water from 1993-1996, then submerged again from 1996-2002. And through all these periods till now, the site has become an increasingly popular destination for both locals and out-of-towners. Kivland said the Dia Art Foundation regularly gets “Spiral Jetty” inquiries from all over the world. People are often surprised to learn that the site is not regulated or monitored — “there’s nothing keeping you from being there at midnight,” Kivland said.
The Utah Museum of Fine Art has partnered with the Dia Art Foundation since 2012 to educate people about “Spiral Jetty.” Whitney Tassie, UMFA’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art, said she personally visits “Spiral Jetty” four or five times a year. Over time, she said, she’s come to appreciate the Utah community’s unique relationship with it. Tassie knows people who visit the site on the same date every year. Scientists also regularly visit, because it’s one of the few places they can easily access the Great Salt Lake.
“Every time we as Utahns go and visit this, it gains meaning and significance,” she said.
To celebrate the piece’s 50th anniversary, there are numerous events and experiences planned. Starting April 3, the Holt/Smithson Foundation began hosting “Fridays at the Movies” online, which virtually presents video works by Holt and Smithson every Friday between 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. Mountain time.
As for in-person experiences, UMFA visitors will be able to watch Holt’s 16 mm film “Utah Sequences,” which she shot at the “Spiral Jetty” site in 1970, once the public coronavirus quarantines are lifted. UMFA is also presenting aerial “Spiral Jetty” photography by Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni, and displaying Smithson’s 1968 piece “Nonsite, Site Uncertain.” Folks who have their own “Spiral Jetty” memories are encouraged to submit them via the UMFA website. On Oct. 3, UMFA will host a special community meet-up at “Spiral Jetty.”
Additionally, the Dia Art Foundation recently released the essay collection “Artists on Robert Smithson” and will soon be commissioning and releasing new “Spiral Jetty” photography.
These supplemental experiences are enriching, but through it all, it’s important to remember one of Smithson’s motivations for creating “Spiral Jetty” in the first place: to get people experiencing art in the natural world.
“When you’re with land art, it’s everything, and it’s bodily,” Loe said. “And you can never get that experience from reading about it. You can’t get that experience from watching the film. You get that experience with your body when you’re there.”
