Chalk-Mirror Displacement

Art © Estate of Robert Smithson / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Contemporary Art

1969

Robert Smithson
American, 1938–1973

The painter, sculptor, theorist, filmmaker, and photographer Robert Smithson helped pioneer the Earthwork Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, which took as its subject the artistic reordering of the American landscape in its many varied forms. Chalk-Mirror Displacement belongs to a series of works, executed in 1968 and 1969, that combine mirrors and organic materials. Eight double-sided mirrors radiate like spokes from the center of a chalk pile located on the gallery floor. As they slice through the pile, the mirrors separate the chalk into almost identical wedge-shaped compartments. The double reflection in each compartment preserves the illusion of the whole pile, making the mirror dividers appear nearly invisible. This work is also one of Smithson’s Site/Nonsite pieces. The artist referred to the first stage of the work as a “Site Incarnation,” which he created for a particular outdoor location: in this case, a chalk quarry in Oxted, York, England. After setting up and photographing the Site piece, the artist then dismantled it. The materials were subsequently reinstalled in the Nonsite location, the seminal 1969 exhibition When Attitude Becomes Form at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. This process purposefully blurred the boundaries between art and its environment, within and without gallery walls.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Contemporary Art

Artist: Robert Smithson
Title: Chalk-Mirror Displacement
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Original 1969
Medium: Sixteen mirrors and chalk
Dimensions: Approximately: Diam.: 304.8 cm (120 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Morris
Reference Number: 1987.277
Copyright: Art © Estate of Robert Smithson / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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.
Madeleine Grynsztejn and Dave Hickey, About Place: Recent Art of the Americas, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1995), 39, fig. 29 (ill.).
“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.

London, Institute of Contemporary Art, “When Attitudes Become Form,” September 26–October 27, 1969 (destroyed). A photograph of the installation was shown at the earlier venue, Kunstalle Bern, March 3–April 27, 1969.
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”).

Estate of Robert Smithson. Sold, John Weber Gallery, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.

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