Robert Smithson. Rome is still falling.

ROBERT SMITHSON
Rome is still falling

24 November 2022 – 21 May 2023
#Rehearsal

In 1961, at twenty-three, Robert Smithson (1938-1973) travelled to Rome for his solo show of religious-themed paintings at George Lester Gallery. During his stay in Rome, Smithson was able to further explore his interest in Western history – in what he described as byzantine art, ideas of archetype, myth, and anthropomorphism, and what he named the “façade of catholicism”. This period is also marked by what Smithson described as an artistic and spiritual “inner crisis”.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. External view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. Exhibition view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1963, pencil and crayon with collage on paper, 61 x 45.7 cm; Untitled, 1962, pencil and crayon with collage on paper, 61.3 x 45.7 cm; Untitled, 1962, ink on paper, 61 x 45.7 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1962, pencil and crayon with collage on paper, 61.3 x 45.7 cm; Untitled, 1962, ink on paper, 61 x 45.7 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1962, pencil, ink, gouache, collage on paper, 55.9 x 43.2 cm; Untitled, 1962 mixed media and collage on paper, 62.9 x 45.7 cm: Fallen Christ, 1961, ink and gouache on paper, 45.7 x 61 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1962, pencil, ink, gouache, collage on paper, 55.9 x 43.2 cm; Untitled, 1962, mixed media and collage on paper, 62.9 x 45.7 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Hands Stigmata, 1961, gouache on paper, 45.7 x 34.6 cm; Untitled, 1960, gouache and ink on paper, 45.7 x 40 cm; Creeping Jesus, 1961, photo collage and gouache on paper, 45.7 x 35.6 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1962, ink on paper, 61.3 x 45.7 cm; Untitled, 1961, gouache and ink on paper, 51.8 x 45.7 cm; Untitled, 1962, ink on paper, 45.7 x 61 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Untitled, 1964, pencil and crayon with collage on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm; esurrection, 1960, pencil on paper, 61.3 x 45.7 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. Da sinistra a destra / from left to right: Untitled, ca. 1960-1961, pencil on paper, 45.7 x 38.4 cm; Crucifixion, 1960, pencil on paper, 51.8 x 45.7 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. From left to right: Fallen Christ, 1961, ink and gouache on paper, 45.7 x 61 cm; Feet of Christ, 1961, gouache on paper, 45.7 x 35.6 cm; Untitled, ca. 1960-1963, gouache, ink, and collage on cardboard, 21.6 x 12.1 cm; Untitled, ca. 1960-1963, pencil on paper, 21.6 x 27.9 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. On the left: Writings by Robert Smithson; An interview of Robert Smithson conducted in 1972 July 14 and 19 by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute. On the right: Untitled, 1964, pencil and crayon with collage on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm.

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Robert Smithson, Rome is still falling. MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Four instamatic photographs of Robert Smithson taken by Lorraine Harner, Roma / Rome, 1961 (exhibition copies). Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Nancy Holt Estate Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Rome is still falling takes the George Lester Gallery exhibition as its starting point to present a lesser-known earlier body of work that both draws upon and departs from Smithson’s spiritual and religious concerns during his time in Rome. Its title originates from a letter by Smithson to his wife the artist Nancy Holt, written in the Eternal City in July 1961, where, floating in the bottom-left corner of the paper, are the four words: “Rome is still falling”.

The time preceding 1964-65 Smithson described as a “period of research, of investigation,” and it also represents a moment of transition and development. Smithson’s stated that he “began to function as a conscious artist around 1964-5”. The exhibition therefore presents works that occurred before his full ‘awareness’ as an artist: from representations of Christ’s feet, face and fallen Christ to advertisements and magazine cut-outs interspersed with painted religious themes, to black ink and pencil winged figures and architectural structures surrounded by language and letters beyond their meaning. The later works on paper in Rome is still falling, made in 1965, introduce the viewer to another period in Smithson’s oeuvre: a specific set of drawings he began in 1963, at the age of twenty-five in New York, where religious imagery is fully replaced with figures from comic books, erotic magazines and popular culture.

Selected extracts from Smithson’s writings and poems will convey the artist’s voice in the exhibition space to contextualise and frame his relationship with Rome, and his preoccupation with religious and spiritual themes. Four exhibition copies of Instamatic photographs of the artist in Rome will also be on display.

ROBERT SMITHSON (1938–1973) was born in Passaic, New Jersey. He attended classes in New York at the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum School while still in high school. He moved to New York in the late 1950s, where he began to paint, draw and make collages, and had his first solo show at Artists Gallery in 1959. His work encompasses paintings, drawings, sculptures, architectural schemes, films, photographs, writings, earthworks and everything in between. Smithson’s works are in numerous museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2004 an important retrospective opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, and ended at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2005.

The exhibition is promoted by Roma Culture and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo.

Rome is still falling was organized in close dialogue with the Holt/Smithson Foundation.

Curator: Luca Lo Pinto
Curatorial assistant: Carlotta Pierleoni
Exhibition coordinator: Lorena Stamo
Production assistant: Anna Mostardi
Art handlers: Fabio Pennacchia, Matteo Pompili

Special thanks to: Holt/Smithson Foundation, Archives of American Art and Marian Goodman Gallery

In-kind sponsor: OTT ART