"This fully illustrated 280-page book accompanies the first comprehensive American retrospective of Robert Smithson's (1938-1973) complex and highly influential body of work. Perhaps best known as the creator of Spiral Jetty, a fifteen-hundred-foot rock coil dramatically situated in Utah's Great Salt Lake, Smithson also broke new ground with his films, photographs, writings, drawings, sculptures, and collages. His oeuvre defied convention, utilizing nontraditional art materials such as mirrors, maps, concrete, earth, and asphalt - in addition to language, as both a written and visual medium. Smithson's revolutionary ideas moved art beyond the walls of the museum into the landscape itself."--BOOK JACKET.