It is very difficult to argue aesthetics over financial gain, but it needs to be done and needs to be put into a proper perspective. It isn’t a matter of comparing apples and oranges, but a matter of one industry threatening the livelihood of one artist. The Spiral Jetty, if anything, is an important reminder of the power of art in the right context. The need to create for an artist, any artist, is as strong and as powerful as any entrepreneurial adventure. Art is the intangible vs. the tangible; food for the soul and mind vs. cold hard cash; a beautiful sunset, the smell of your lover’s perfume vs. entropy – it is all this and much more – passion, creativity, ideas, expression, your individuality, and your essence as a human being. Art is not a game of chance, it is not haphazard, it is not play time, but it is real, well planned, and generally very good. Bad art is none of these things. It all comes back to the ideas and the source of their inspiration. Art is there to create something you’ve never seen before. It is a Muse you bring to life. This is what Smithson had to say about Rozel Point when he first glanced upon it:
As I looked at the site, it reverberated out to the horizons only to suggest an immobile cyclone while flickering light made the entire landscape appear to quake. A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement. This site was a rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness. From that gyrating space emerged the possibility of the Spiral Jetty.” And this: “My dialectics of site and non-site whirled into an indeterminate state, where solid and liquid lost themselves in each other. It was as if the mainland oscillated with waves and pulsations, and the lake remained rock still. The shore of the lake became the edge of the sun, a boiling curve, an explosion rising into a fiery prominence. Matter collapsing into the lake mirrored in the shape of a spiral. [From The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt]
These are not visions of a madman, but those of a genius. There is no cash profit to be made in the experiencing of art, only the profit of having truly lived through it. Don’t believe me? Go to Rozel Point, you’ll see what Smithson saw, and realize that you too have a dormant earthquake inside you. Trust me.
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