Page 48 - Studio International - April 1969

Aerial art

Robert Smithson

Proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional
Airport (Tippetts-Abett-McCarthy-Stratton,
Architects and Engineers)

Art today is no longer an architectural after- or not seen at all. scattered light and weak tone-reproduction.
thought, or an object to attach to a building On the boundaries of the taxiways, runways or High-altitude aerial photography shows us
after it is finished, but rather a total engage- approach 'clear zones' we might construct how little there is to see, and seems to prove
ment with the building process from the `earthworks' or grid type frameworks close to what Lewis Carroll once said, 'They say that
ground up and from the sky down. The old the ground level. These aerial sites would not we Photographers are a blind race at best....'
landscape of naturalism and realism is being only be visible from arriving and departing Carl Andre sees the camera as the most catas-
replaced by the new landscape of abstraction aircraft, but they would also define the ter- trophic invention of the Modern Age.
and artifice. minal's manmade perimeters in terms of land-
How art should be installed in and around an scaping. Aerial art can therefore not only give limits to
airport makes one conscious of this new land- The terminal complex might include a gallery `space', but also the hidden dimensions of
scape. Just as our satellites explore and chart (or aerial museum) that would provide visual `time' apart from natural duration—an arti-
the moon and the planets, so might the artist information about where these aerial sites are ficial time that can suggest galactic distance
explore the unknown sites that surround our situated. Diagrams, maps, photographs, and here on earth. Its focus on 'non-visual' space
airports. movies of the projects under construction could and time begins to shape an esthetic based on
The future air terminal exists both in terms of be exhibited—thus the terminal complex and the airport as an idea, and not simply as a mode
mind and thing. It suggests the infinite in a its entire airfield site would expand its mean- of transportation. This airport is but a dot in
finite way. The straight lines of landing fields ing from the central spaces of the terminal the vast infinity of universes, an imperceptible
and runways bring into existence a perception itself to the edges of the air fields. point in a cosmic immensity, a speck in an
of 'perspective' that evades all our conceptions Letters A, B, C and D, (see aerial map) stand impenetrable nowhere— aerial art reflects to a
of nature. The naturalism of seventeenth-, for installations of art on the margins of the degree this vastness.
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art is re- main terminal complex. This art is remote
placed by non-objective sense of site. The land- from the eye of the viewer the way a galaxy is
A. ROBERT MORRIS
scape begins to look more like a three dimen- remote from the earth. In fact, the entire air
His proposal is an 'earth mound' circular in
sional map rather than a rustic garden. Aerial terminal may be considered conceptually as
shape and trapezoidal in cross section. Its sur-
photography and air transportation bring an artificial universe, and as everyone knows
face would be sod, and its radius might be
into view the surface features of this shifting everything in the known universe isn't entirely
extended as much as a thousand feet—easily
world of perspectives. The rational structures visible. There is no reason why one shouldn't
viewed from arriving and departing aircraft.
of buildings disappear into irrational disguises look at art through a telescope. Our terminal
and are pitched into optical illusions. The universe is built in the shape of a rectangle
world seen from the air is abstract and illusive. with two diagonals set in a photo firmament of C. ROBERT SMITHSON
From the window of an airplane one can see haze and non-objective land masses. The A progression of triangular concrete pave-
drastic changes of scale, as one ascends and double white rectangles within the grid shall ments that would result in a spiral effect. This
descends. The effect takes one from the dazz- someday contain a series of terminals each one could be built as large as the site would allow,
ling to the monotonous in a short space of time the size of Grand Central Station. At the and could be seen from approaching and de-
—from the shrinking terminal to the obstruct- moment we are considering this air terminal parting aircraft.
ing clouds. through the camera obscura of our mind—the
Below this concatenation of aerial perceptions camera takes a picture but does not see it. D. SOL LEWITT
is the conception of the air terminal itself, `Some ideas are logical in conception' says His proposal is 'non-visual' and involves the
firmly rooted in the earth. The principal run- Sol LeWitt, 'and illogical perceptually.' Visi- sub-stratum of the site. He emphasizes the
ways and series of terminals will extend from bility is often marked by both mental and `concept' of art rather than the 'object' that
11,000 ft to 14,000 ft, or about the length of atmospheric turbidity. Just how we should results from its practice. The precise spot in the
Central Park. The outer limits of the terminal look at art is a question that is rarely consid- site would not be revealed—and would consist
could be brought into consciousness by a type ered. Simply looking at art at eye-level is no of a small cube of unknown contents cast inside
of art, which I will call aerial art, that could solution. If we consider the aerial map as 'a a larger cube of concrete. The cube would then
be seen from aircraft on takeoff and landing, thing in itself', we will notice the effects of be buried in the earth.