Robert Smithson at the Art Students League and Early Drawings: Angels, Babes, and Beefcakes

Suzaan Boettger's lecture will focus on Robert Smithson’s little-known drawings made from 1955 while a student at the Art Students League and those of the ensuing years to 1964 before becoming a well-known essayist, sculptor, and land artist. She will discuss and illustrate several works never-before-exhibited, analyzed in print, and/or known to exist. These include his expressive realist imagery, his visions of angels both lithe and hunky, his “cartouche” collage/drawings mixing the overt sexuality of mid-20th century pin-up “broads”, and his tracings of muscular beefcakes illustrated in bodybuilding magazines retroactively described as a “semi-illicit form of soft-core gay erotica.”

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Bring your copy of Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson to be inscribed or purchase one after the lecture.

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This talk will take place in-person only and will not be recorded.