Did Robert Smithson’s vision include an oil rig?

The New York Times reported today that the very same lake that contains Robert Smithson’s 1970 work of land art, entitled Spiral Jetty, is at the center of a debate right now because of plans to allow for the drilling of oil a visible five miles from the site of the art piece.  This issue ranges across art, economics, environmentalism, and politics.  Personally, while I would hate to see an oil rig set up near this artwork, I think the sadder issue here is one that is akin to the debate over opening up the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve for oil drilling…we are Big Oil’s bitches…all of us.  Maybe we just tend toward dependency as a race, maybe there really isn’t any choice at the moment, maybe I’m missing something, but our dependency on this one non-renewable resource as a necessity of life is ridiculous.  We fill our SUV’s with it, we rely on it to connect us with time and space, we resist admitting the changing climate happening around us for it, we constantly risk doing the un-doable to suckle at the tit of this one naturally occurring liquid.  For pete’s sake, you’d think our bodies needed it to function the same way they need water.  Drilling in ANWAR, damaging the environment near Spiral Jetty…these are un-fixable crimes.  Do you know how long it takes the frozen environment in Alaska to recover from damage?  Try taking a big gouge out of a piece of ice, putting it in your freezer, and coming back to it later.  Did the gouge heal?  Obviously not.  The ground is the same way in the northern parts of Alaska.  There are few natural processes healing the land up there when it is damaged.  To open the Great Salt Lake up for drilling will damage the landscape there in such a way that will take generations to heal, thereby changing the aesthetic of Spiral Jetty.  Should we care about the “aesthetic experience” of some piece of artwork that just happens to be out in nature?  Some people might not care, it’s true. There are those that believe that the economy and business should be our primary concerns, and that our natural resources are here for exploitation.  I only wish I could find someway to understand that shortsighted point of view.  I see no justification for believing that it’s okay to slash and burn our planet now for financial profit with no consideration for future generations.

And then there’s the art piece of it.  Didn’t Smithson look for places where industry and natural environment overlapped for his works anyway?  Even if he did, you have to consider that he still was creating an experience in a particular land setting.  To change the setting after the artist has left moves the art away from the artist’s intentions.  Are we actually destroying Spiral Jetty to drill for oil in the existing environment around it?  Look, honestly, if you don’t understand art from a philosophical, spiritual, or simply personal standpoint, you won’t understand what you’re doing to the piece by setting up an industrial oil rig nearby.  All too often in this world we make compromises in these small, peaceful, and soul-cleansing corners of life that accompany the arts.  We do this in the name of pragmatics and business.  Somewhere, sometime, someone has to hold the line and say, “Not this one.  You can’t have this one.”

 currently reading:

Who Let the Dogs In? by Molly Ivins

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

currently listening to:

Wincing the Night Away by The Shins

Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right…But Three Do by Reliant K

The Beautiful Letdown by Switchfoot