Holt and Smithson both hailed from New Jersey, and the state’s natural and industrial environments recur across their artwork. Swamp, filmed in the New Jersey Meadowlands, lasts the length of one 16mm film reel. Neither of the artists are visible in the film; instead, the camera viewfinder is a portal onto the marshy grassland, recording only what Holt could see through the camera while Smithson directed her movements in real time. (He logged the audio onto a tape recorder, and later added it to the footage.) While grass burrs bump the lens and the wind howls off-screen, the uneven terrain is mirrored in gaps in the artists’ communication.
411: Holt and Smithson on Film, 2026
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Holt and Smithson on Film
Gallery 411Smithson and Nancy Holt, partners in life and art, were among a generation of American artists whose earthworks, made by intervening into the landscape, expanded art’s place beyond the gallery.
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