Robert Smithson, Nonsite “Line of Wreckage,” Bayonne, New Jersey (1968)
Painted aluminum container with broken concrete, framed map, and photo panels
Cage: 59 x 70 x 12 1/2 in. (149.9 x 177.8 x 31.8 cm); three panels: 3 3/4 x 49 in. (9.5 x 124.5 cm) each
Collection Milwaukee Art Museum
Purchase, with National Endowment for the Arts Matching Funds

A metal bin positioned on the floor with horizontal openings that contains broken concrete. Four framed horizontal images on the wall behind the bin.

black and white image of four framed horizontal images. The top frame contains a map and the bottom three contain multiple photographs

Nonsite "Line of Wreckage," Bayonne, New Jersey

Robert Smithson

1968

Painted aluminum container with broken concrete, framed map, and photo panels

Cage: 59 x 70 x 12 1/2 in. (149.9 x 177.8 x 31.8 cm); three panels: 3 3/4 x 49 in. (9.5 x 124.5 cm) each

Collection Milwaukee Art Museum Purchase, with National Endowment for the Arts Matching Funds

Broken pieces of concrete gathered from a destroyed New Jersey highway are arranged inside a steel box with horizontal openings, alongside a map and a series of photographs on the wall providing geographic and visual context. Smithson illuminates the forgotten, displaying post-industrial rubble as if it were an ancient ruin. The result is both anticlimactic and tragic. Visually mundane, the site is afforded our attention within the gallery setting—and its material remains demand a reckoning with the pervasion of loss in an otherwise invisible place.

Writing

Writing by the Artist

A metal box filled with rocks and horizontal slots cut in the box on the floor and horizontal images on the wall.

A Provisional Theory of Nonsites

Robert Smithson

By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a “logical two dimensional picture.” A “logical picture” differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two dimensional analogy or metaphor—A is Z.