A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.
Robert SmithsonRead
The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the negative impact of urban expansion on the environment and societal structures.
Robert Smithson's quote critiques the uncontrolled growth of urban developments that emerged after the war, suggesting that such expansion leads to disorder and deterioration, which he calls the 'architecture of entropy.' By emphasizing the chaotic nature of human development and the resulting effects on the landscape, Smithson encourages a deeper reflection on how modern living spaces may contribute to cultural and environmental degradation.
Themes
UrbanSprawlEntropyArchitectureDevelopment
In practice
Example use cases
During a talk on urban planning, one might quote this to highlight the consequences of unchecked development.
More from Robert Smithson
All quotes βWhen 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 SmithsonRead
Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future
Robert SmithsonRead
A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence.
Robert SmithsonRead
Similar quotes
The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.
Muhammad IqbalRead
Christ had a specific evangelizing goal in mind when he prayed at the Last Supper that all his disciples 'be one...'The Church's evangelizing mission, therefore, moves along the path of ecumenism, the path of unity of faith, of evangelical witness and authentic fraternity.
Pope Benedict XviRead
Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning.
F. Paul WilsonRead
I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.
Marco PoloRead
There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.
Dante AlighieriRead
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
Lord ChesterfieldRead