Robert Smithson: a rhetoric of movement

The artist Robert Smithson attempted to develop a form of aesthetic resistance to the technologies of power that loom over the contemporary world. Using the interpretive lens of an emblematic work of art, this article considers the architecture of that resistance. To achieve this, we will walk with Smithson through the Monuments of Passaic' as the artist brings together mundane descriptions of the everyday with eclectic quotation, photography, and fantastic forms of speculation. For him, this walk through the marginal spaces of his hometown (his Crystal Land') represented the unfolding images, rhythms, and narratives of a single, sunny autumn day in New Jersey (Saturday, 30 September 1967), but for us, it might define the topographical structurethe spatial architectureof his entire artistic OEuvre.