Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:33:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Antschel <antschel-AT-m-net.arbornet.org>
Subject: Tony Smith's car ride



Today marks the 50th anniversary of Tony Smith's car ride.

I'm referring to Tony Smith's famous description of the nonspace that
became apparent to him while driving along the New Jersey turnpike on the
night of October 10, 1953. Here's part of his description which appeared
in an article in artforum, entitled "Talking with Tony Smith":

When I was teaching at Cooper Union....someone told me how I could get
onto the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike. I took three students from
somewhere in the Meadows to New Brunswick. It was a dark night and there
were no lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings, or anything at all
except the dark pavement moving through the landscape of the flats, rimmed
by hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes, and
colored lights. This drive was a revealing experience. The road and much
of the landscape was artificial, and yet it couldn't be called a work of
art. On the other hand, it did  something for me that art had never done.
At first, I didn't know what it was, but its effect was to liberate me
from many of the views I had about art. It seemed there was a reality
there that had not had any expresssion in art.
The experience on the road was something mapped out but not socially
recognized. I thought to myself, it ought to be pretty clear that's the
end of art. Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There's no
way you can frame it you just have to experience it. Later I discovered
some abandoned airstrips in Europe - abandoned works, Surrealist
landscapes, something that had nothing to do with any function, created
worlds without tradition. Artificial landscape without cultural precedent
began to dawn on me. There is a drill ground in Nuremberg, large enough to
accomodate two million men. The entire field is enclosed with high
embankments and towers. The concrete approach is three, sixteen-inch
steps, one above the other, stretching for a mile or so."

And to think, this was still during the time of the abstract
expressionists, and at least ten years before Donald Judd said:
"It looks like painting is finished."