Hannah Reed

2/9/17

Period 7

Fallingwater and Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson hired several people to help him create Spiral Jetty in 1970 at the edge

of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Spiral Jetty is made of mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks,

water coil arranged in a counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake. The spiral was

meant to be a work of art that changed based on natural principles. Smithson was interested in

the idea of entropy; the idea of the way things break down. His intervention in this natural

landscape, is an expression of the way in which artists thought about the landscape for many

years. The shape of the Spiral Jetty is a form that has shown up in petroglyphs throughout the

American West and its a form that appears in nature, quite frequently. When creating this work,

Smithson was aware of the centuries-old idea that the Great Salt Lake contained a whirlpool that

somehow connected it to the Pacific Ocean. Smithson was also interested in creating a porous

relationship between that more controlled gallery experience and the experience of art in the

world.

The mid-1930s were among the darkest years for architecture and architects in American

history; the countrys financial system had collapsed with the failure of hundreds of banks.

Almost no private homes were built. The commission for Fallingwater was a personal milestone

for the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, since it clearly marked a turning point in his

career. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. pointed out that Wrights famous concept of Organic Architecture

stems from his Transcendentalist background. The belief that human life is part of nature. Wright
even incorporated a rock outcropping that projected above the living room floor into his massive

central hearth, further uniting the house with the earth. This delicate synthesis of nature and the

built environment probably counts as the main reason why Fallingwater is such a well-loved

work. Wright further emphasizes the connection with nature by liberal use of glass; the house has

no walls facing the falls, only a central stone core for the fireplaces and stone columns. This

provides elongated vistas leading the eye out to the horizon and the woods. Both Smithson and

Wright worked to combine nature and art in an interesting way and created amazing pieces that

are still admired today.