Delight: Over thiry years after its conception, Robert Smithson's floating island becomes a reality.Last September, New Yorkers were treated to the surreal spectacle of a re-imagined fragment of the Isle of Isle of For names of actual isles, see the specific element of the name; for example, Wight, Isle of. Manhattan drifting languidly around the Hudson and East Rivers. Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan was conceived in 1970 by American artist Robert Smithson Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938–July 20, 1973) was an American artist famous for his land art. Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League. but never realised in his lifetime. Thirty five years later, to coincide with a major retrospective of his oeuvre at the Whitney Museum, Smithson's miniature island finally and dramatically set sail. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Best known for Spiral Jetty The Spiral Jetty, considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson, is an earthwork sculpture constructed in 1970. Built of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, earth, and water on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in , a monumental curlicue of basalt basalt (bəsôlt`, băs`ôlt), fine-grained rock of volcanic origin, dark gray, dark green, brown, reddish, or black in color. Basalt is an igneous rock, i.e., one that has congealed from a molten state. extending into Utah's Great Salt Lake, Smithson was a radical who enjoyed musing on nature and the cosmos. He revered Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, and this project for a barge of vegetation towed around Manhattan by tugboat tugboat, small, strongly built vessel, used to guide large oceangoing ships into and out of port and to tow barges, dredging and salvage equipment, and disabled vessels. can be seen as a kind of homage to his nineteenth-century land art predecessor. As Central Park is, in effect, an artificial model of nature, so the floating island is an artificial model of Central Park. More prosaically, realising the project so long after Smithson's death raised various practical and logistical problems (choice of shrubs and trees, what sort of barge, how to construct it, jumping through the hoops of city, federal and port authorities port authorities npl → autoridades fpl portuarias ). Smithson left only a rudimentary sketch of the proposed topography and landscape, so had to be creatively second guessed on several issues, though he did specify the presence of a weeping willow weeping willow symbolizes grief at loss. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 178] See : Grief and moss just so on a particular boulder. In all there are 10 trees (including maples, ash, beech, burr oak and the obligatory willow) and three rocks of Manhattan schist (borrowed from Central Park). Together with assorted shrubs, grass and earth, the landscape is artfully arranged and anchored on a 90 x 30ft flat decked barge. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some critics thought it a little too well manicured, comparing it to a big floating window box, but the effect of a slab of lush greenery gliding past the arid concrete jungle of Manhattan will doubtless endure in the memory of those fortunate enough to witness it. Smithson himself lived near the waterfront so the project was also a speculation about the changing nature of the island city. At the end of its brief tour the various landscape elements were replanted in Central Park, so a small piece of Smithson is now physically and symbolically merged forever with Olmsted. |
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