When Robert Smithson died in 1973, postwar American art was robbed of an unusually creative practitioner and thinker. Smithson's pioneering earthworks of the 1960s and 1970s anticipated contemporary concerns with the site-specific character of artistic production and with environmentalism.

Gary Shapiro examines the full range of Smithson's virtuosity from his best-known works, including Spiral Jetty and Partially Buried Woodshed, to his photographs, films, and theoretical writings. His book contextualizes Smithson's career within the critical and philosophical legacy of American art of the 1960s.