Inside the Spiral
The Passions of Robert Smithson
LISTEN: Suzaan Boettger in conversation with Greg Lindquist on the UMN Press podcast.
This first biography of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success. Featuring copious illustrations never before published of early work, it offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures.
"Only someone who has immersed themselves in the life and art of Robert Smithson for forty years could have written a biography as deep and engaging as Inside the Spiral. Suzaan Boettger illuminates the artist’s religious thought, examines the complexities of his gender identity, and takes a psychoanalytic lens to his sources and esoteric symbolism, bringing coherence to our understanding of this remarkably complicated artist, his body of work, and his writings. A monumental achievement."—Jonathan Fineberg, University of the Arts, author of Modern Art at the Border of Mind and Brain
This first biography of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success, including his suppressed early history as a painter; his affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his sexual fluidity. Integrating extensive investigation and acuity, Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson’s story and, with it, symbolic meanings across the span of his painted and drawn images, sculptures, essays, and earthworks up to the Spiral Jetty and beyond, to the circumstances leading to what became his final work, Amarillo Ramp.
While Smithson is widely known for his monumental earthwork at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, Inside the Spiral delves into the arc of his artistic production, recognizing it as a response to his family’s history of loss, which prompted his birth and shaped his strange intelligence. Smithson configured his personal conflicts within painterly depictions of Christ’s passion, the rhetoric of science fiction, imagery from occult systems, and the impersonal posture of conceptual sculpture. Aiming to achieve renown, he veiled his personal passions and transmuted his professional persona, becoming an acclaimed innovator and fierce voice in the New York art scene.
Featuring copious illustrations never before published of early work that eluded Smithson’s destruction, as well as photographs of Smithson and his wife, the noted sculptor Nancy Holt, and recollections from nearly all those who knew him throughout his life, Inside the Spiral offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures. With great sensitivity to the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his distinct artistic language, this biographical analysis provides an expanded view of Smithson’s iconic art pilgrimage site and the experiences and works that brought him to its peculiar blood-red water.
Cover alt text: Black background with inset square black-and-white image of the artist in left side profile, smoking a cigarette.
Only someone who has immersed themselves in the life and art of Robert Smithson for forty years could have written a biography as deep and engaging as Inside the Spiral. Suzaan Boettger illuminates the artist’s religious thought, examines the complexities of his gender identity, and takes a psychoanalytic lens to his sources and esoteric symbolism, bringing coherence to our understanding of this remarkably complicated artist, his body of work, and his writings. A monumental achievement.
Jonathan Fineberg, University of the Arts, author of Modern Art at the Border of Mind and Brain
Suzaan Boettger’s long-awaited Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson is the first biography of this 'enantiomorphic' artist, whose oeuvre encompassed geological and sacred time alongside the moment of the snapshot, the 'dematerialized' theorizing and mapping of the non-site alongside the absolute site-specificity—viewable from outer space—of the Great Salt Lake. Boettger reveals fascinating and hitherto unexplored aspects of Smithson’s earliest formation, including his status as a 'replacement child' for a dead older brother, while her fearless exploration of the artist’s Christological bent, his hermeticism, and his difficult navigation of sexuality yields nuanced psychological insight. Unburdened by academic jargon, the work is supported by extensive reference to Smithson’s writings, notes, interviews, library, and other records, of which Boettger has long been recognized as the foremost scholar.
Judith Rodenbeck, University of California, Riverside
This book sheds important new light on Robert Smithson. Meticulously researched and wide-ranging in scope, it explores the intricate connections between Smithson’s personal history and his art. While revealing a great deal of new information about Smithson’s life and psychology, Suzaan Boettger also engages with his art in a focused and detailed way and writes about individual works with great perceptiveness. Readers will come away from this book with a fresh and enlarged understanding of Smithson’s life and art.
Jack Flam, editor of Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings
Boettger’s incorrigible fixation on her otherwise singular subject has produced an indispensable book for the study, ‘from the inside,’ of such a major American artistic personality.
The Brooklyn Rail
That his art appears larger after reading Inside the Spiral is as much credit to his own capacious imagination as it is to Boettger’s ingenious attempts to contain it.
Artforum
This revelatory study is the first biography of Robert Smithson that deepens the understanding of his practice and the influences that defined his artistic approach.
Widewalls
Boettger’s extensive documentation of Smithson’s iconography is fully intertwined with a psychological profile that effectively captures the ups and downs of this enigmatic artist’s life. The result helps us better comprehend the legendary Smithson and the demons he wrestled with as his career unfolded.
Leonardo Reviews
[Inside the Spiral] represents a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary art and unquestionably deepens our knowledge of Smithson’s foundational ideas and artworks.
Squarecylinder
Boettger has done a brilliant job analyzing one of the twentieth centuries greatest and perhaps enigmatic artists. This book will surely become the definitive work concerning Robert Smithson, the man, and the artist.
Leonardo Review
Contents
Note to Readers
Prologue and Background
Prehistory and Early Painting
1. Man of Sorrow
2. Brother’s Keeper
3. Drunk on Blood
Clandestine Fantasies, 1962–1964
4. Burying the Angel
5. Secret Partner
Mutation of Artistic Persona, 1965–1968
6. A Better Entrance
7. Locked Within
8. Transmuted
9. From the Ground, Upward
Professional Consummation, 1969–1970
10. Mirroring Absence
11. The Site of the Spiral: Thicker Than Water
12. Inside the Spiral
Expansion and Returns, 1971–1973
13. Reclamations
14. Closing the Circle
Gratitudes
Notes
Robert Smithson’s Library: A Selective Bibliography
Index
