The Role of Language and Map in Contemporary Drawing: A Special Focus on Robert Smithson’s Land Art

By the 1960s, the eruption of diverse artistic expressions and methods challenged the modernist definitions of art, which were based on disciplinary compartmentalization such as painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, etc. The artistic media, especially in the field of visual arts, dramatically underwent changes in their definitions. Accordingly, the traditional meaning of drawing, which was the key principle in creating all types of art at least since the Renaissance, was inevitably questioned. Whether drawing has any footprint in contemporary art, including earth art, which seems to be free of any connection with traditional definitions and media, was a matter of controversy. However, in its expanded and contemporary sense, the process of drawing adapted itself to the new post-media and interdisciplinary conditions; the fact that can aptly be traced in earth art as one of the critical movements in the art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The dependence of earth art to the natural elements and geographical locations on the one hand, and the strong connections between artist’s drawings and his or her culture, language, nationality, and social agency on the other, made the role of drawing in earth art practices significant and, therefore, necessary to study.
In this article, the ways in which drawing as a medium takes an important role in the process of land art, specifically in Robert Smithson’s groundbreaking works, will be studied. In this context, the position of language and map with regard to the conception of drawing will be discussed. The allegory and the paradox as the two vital characteristics of language gave the artist such as Robert Smithson the opportunity to articulate his conceptual drawing style and create his earthworks. The localization character and the aesthetic aspect of the map also make this tool a part of the context-based drawing, turning it into a means of new aesthetic practice. Smithson’s innovative idea of Non-Site sites is directly related to the expanded sense of drawing and the utilization of language and map in his work, providing a ground for the later conceptual arts with environmental concerns. Smithson’s art and writing are both considered in this text, not only to show his awareness of the problem and answers in the visual art of his period, but also the ways he suggests to redefine the process of drawing. In other words, with reference to his theory and practice, one would be able to picture the critical position of art, its means and aims, in this historical momentum of contemporary Western art. This article shows how drawing, as an apparently obsolete and traditional medium, has played a highly important role in the development of conceptual art from the 1960s onward. It argues that the position of drawing in contemporary art has not been destabilized, but, rather has been essential in the development of diverse new media in contemporary art scene.