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Indifference of Material in the Work of Carl Andre and Robert Smithson

This peer-reviewed article examines the different understandings of materiality and materialism at work in the art and writings of the American artists Carl Andre and Robert Smithson. In the case of Andre, it is argued that materiality was defined according to an indifference to form, but complicated by being figured through the mutually cancelling registers of art and industrial labour. Smithson, on the other hand, was critical of Andre’s materialism for its Marxist ‘romanticism’, and sought instead a more radical condition of exteriority that not only defined the industrial decay he was interested in but also determined the more ‘immaterial’ realms of representation and language. A complicated pattern of definitions emerges that determined each artist’s materialism not only as an artistic attitude, but also in the wider terms of a philosophical or political attitude. The article thus clarifies a key theoretical term in relation to which art of the late 1960s defined itself and so contributes to the art-historical understanding of the period.

The research for the article involved primary research in the Archives of American Art in Washington DC, which was supported by a grant from the AHRC.