Smithson Quotes & Sayings

Every man is a valuable member of society, who, by his observations, researches, and experiments, procures knowledge for men, — James Smithson

I happen to believe that one's success comes only from responsibility, diligence and dignity. - King Hercalon V, King of Oomaldee — L.R.W. Lee

It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil. — James Smithson

Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time. — Robert Smithson

Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence. — Robert Smithson

Great ... So neither of us knows anything about dragons ... We're so going to die! — L.R.W. Lee

I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. — Robert Smithson

The way our efforts are shunned, at first we don't care. In a way it makes us proud. It's humility. And selfless service is truly selfless if you're never recognized. — Ryan Smithson

One day the photograph is going to become even more important than it is now ... But I am not particularly an advocate of the photograph. — Robert Smithson

For many artists the universe is expanding;
for some it is contracting. — Robert Smithson

From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline. — Robert Smithson

You make time for what is important to you. - Glaucin — L.R.W. Lee

Words for mental processes are all derived from physical things. — Robert Smithson

I know this sounds weird, but you saved my life. — L.R.W. Lee

The memory of what is not may be better than the amnesia of what is. — Robert Smithson

You're not crazy. And yes, cow farts chase the fog away. The only problem is the smell. — L.R.W. Lee

A camera is wild in just about anybody's hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction. — Robert Smithson

Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum. — Robert Smithson

Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void. — Robert Smithson

Establish enigmas, not explanations. — Robert Smithson

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. — Robert Smithson

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought. — Robert Smithson

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

Art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical. — Robert Smithson

Remember when you told your sister how scared you were of monsters under your bed? Hah. Hah! She scared you good when she hid under there and jumped out when you got up to go pee after the lights were turned off that night! — L.R.W. Lee

Noon-day sunshine cinema-ized the site, turning the bridge and the river into an over-exposed picture. Photographing it with my Instamatic 400 was like photographing a photograph. The sun became a monstrous light-bulb that projected a detached series of stills through my Instamatic into my eye. — Robert Smithson

Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. — Robert Smithson

Emily Ferrin." The sovereign glanced about, as if expecting objections. When none came he continued, "Three years ago she married a man named Fred Smithson. They live in a different land, the land of LakeHillsTexas. They have a one-year-old daughter, Madison. My sources tell me Emily wants to have another child." "You're going outside the bounds of Oomaldee? This is crazy! How'd she even get there?" fired Sine Ster. — L.R.W. Lee

An emotion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain words. — Robert Smithson

The names of minerals and the minerals themselves do not differ from each other, because at the bottom of both the material and the print is the beginning of an abysmal number of fissures. Words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void. — Robert Smithson

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness. — Robert Smithson

Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising. — Robert Smithson

But Dad! It really did happen! I was transported to a Laboratory in an old stone castle and there was a wizard in blue robes with a floppy hat and ... — L.R.W. Lee

Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development. — Robert Smithson

Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art . — Robert Smithson

One's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason. — Robert Smithson

Foord had insisted that their infrequent meals on the Bridge should be taken together, and defied any of the humans to object. Rather to his annoyance none of them had, although his liberal gesture did irritate Thahl and Smithson: they both found humans' eating conventions unsettling, though for different reasons, and would have preferred to eat alone. — John Love

A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. — Robert Smithson

Please don't say any more, you're scaring me. - Andy Smithson — L.R.W. Lee

Let's face it, the human eye is clumsy, sloppy, and unintelligible when compared to the camera's eye. — Robert Smithson

It is in knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness. — James Smithson

Take courage. You do not yet see your own abilities because you have never been tested. You have never demonstrated to yourself or anyone all that you can do. Put your fears aside and trust that you can succeed in the challenges that lie ahead. - King Hercalon IV, Former King of Oomaldee — L.R.W. Lee

This is not about you," reminded the inneru.
I know ... thought Andy. It's about all the people in the Land of Oomaldee. It is about the King, Mermin, Alden, Marta, Hans and everyone I've come to love here.
"You don't usually think about others first," replied his inneru.
Maybe this is my chance to change that. — L.R.W. Lee

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

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

There is something abominable about cameras, because they possess the power to invent many worlds. As an artist who has been lost in this wilderness of mechanical reproduction for many years, I do not know which world to start with. I have seen fellow artists driven to the point of frenzy by photography. — Robert Smithson

Hey, watch it! You almost hit me in the head! — L.R.W. Lee

It's like the end of the day where you feel nothing has been achieved and you're in a hurry to get the day over with so you can start the next one. You tell yourself you're going to do lots of positive things. But the next day is just like the one before. Sometimes it goes on for weeks. — Robert Smithson

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

Questions about form seem as hopelessly inadequate as questions about content. — Robert Smithson

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

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

Why demand ye of me where the land of Oomaldee lies? Did they do the same of C.S. Lewis and his Narnia? — L.R.W. Lee

Nature is never finished. — Robert Smithson

My first reaction to finding Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in a book was, Wow, what a great photograph! I could not believe that someone had gone to so much trouble just to end up with a picture. — Vik Muniz

You control whether you are happy. It's all your narrative and you can change it if you choose to. - L. R. W. Lee Andy Smithson: Blast of the Dragon's Fury — L.R.W. Lee

The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy. — Robert Smithson

Where's your trident? I've only seen mermen with a trident that looks like a pitchfork," asked Alden.
"New technology. I upgraded last year to a disc implanted under the skin in my right hand. I don't miss having to carry that clumsy thing. Kept dropping it. — L.R.W. Lee

The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other. — James Smithson

The word 'color' means at its origin to 'cover' or 'hide.' Matter eats up light and 'covers' it with a confusion of color. — Robert Smithson

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem. — Robert Smithson

Photographs are the results of a diminution of solar energy, and the camera is an entropic machine for recording gradual loss of light. — Robert Smithson

Why do you care for them?
"I think it's because I feel loved. I feel like they understand me." - Andy Smithson — L.R.W. Lee

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

A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. — Robert Smithson

Give it a minute or two for the weaction to begin. — L.R.W. Lee

History is a facsimile of events held together by finally biographical information. — Robert Smithson

Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues. — Robert Smithson

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification. The power of a word lies in the very inadequacy of the context it is placed, in the unresolved or partially resolved tension of disparates. A word fixed or a statement isolated without any decorative or 'cubist' visual format, becomes a perception of similarity in dissimilars - in short a paradox. — Robert Smithson

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

As long as cameras are around no artist will be free of bewilderment. — Robert Smithson

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. — Robert Smithson

The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality. — Robert Smithson