Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
Robert SmithsonWhen a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us
Robert SmithsonA work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.
Robert SmithsonOne's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason.
Robert SmithsonThere is something abominable about cameras, because they possess the power to invent many worlds. As an artist who has been lost in this wilderness of mechanical reproduction for many years, I do not know which world to start with. I have seen fellow artists driven to the point of frenzy by photography.
Robert Smithson