About This Artwork
Robert Smithson
American, 1938–1973
Chalk-Mirror Displacement1969
Sixteen mirrors and chalk
Approximately 10 feet in diameter
Through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Morris, 1987.277
Contemporary Art
Not on Display
Robert Smithson helped pioneer the Earthworks movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, which took as its subject the creation of art within and from the landscape. His Site/Nonsite pieces bring the physical properties and materials of the earth into the gallery, thereby extending the traditional confines of the exhibition space while creating entirely new parameters for contemporary sculpture. Chalk Mirror Displacement belongs to a series of works, created during 1968–69, that combines mirrors and organic materials called “Mirror Displacements.” In 1969 this piece was exhibited concurrently at the “Site” location where the materials originated—a chalk quarry in Oxted, York, England—and the “Nonsite” location, the seminal exhibition When Attitude Becomes Form at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. This simultaneous presentation is a rarity among Smithson’s Site/Nonsite works.
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
London, Institute of Contemporary Art, “When Attitudes Become Form,” September 26–October 27, 1969 (destroyed).
New York, John Weber Gallery, “Robert Smithson: Sculpture 1968–69,” October 10–31, 1987, n.pag. (ill.)
Oslo, Norway, National Museum of Contemporary Art, “Robert Smithson: Retrospective • Works 1955-1973,” February 27–May 2, 1999; traveled to Modern Museum Stockholm, June 19–September 12, 1999, Arken Museum of Modern Art Ishøj, October 2, 1999–January 16, 2000, cat. 133 (no ill.), p. 289 (as “exhibition copy”).
Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Robert Smithson,”September 12–December 13, 2004; traveled to Dallas Museum of Art, January 14–April 3, 2005, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, June 23–October 16, 2005, pp. 28, 166 (color ill.), 268 (as “Chalk-Mirror Displacement, 1969/2004, Exhibition copy”).
Publication History
Robert Hobbs, “Robert Smithson: Sculpture” (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 5, 168-69, fig. 49, pp. 239, 257.
Eugenie Tsai, “Robert Smithson,” Arts Magazine 62, 4 (December 1987), p. 94.
“The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture” (Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills Press, 1996), p. 130, as “Chalk Mirror Displacement, 1987 version of a 1969 work.”
Jennifer L. Roberts, “Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 45-46, fig. 20, as “1987 version of a 1969 work.”
Charles Altieri and Rei Terada, “Maximal Minimalism,” Postmodern Culture (2005), fig. 1, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/v015/15.2altieri.html.
Ownership History
Estate of Robert Smithson. Sold, John Weber Gallery, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.