History of the Sandbox: Between the Intimate and the Vast

In September 1967, Robert Smithson set to revisitsome defunct landscapes of his childhood. In a“Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”(Artforum, December 1967), he described decayingindustrial structures, including a sandbox or “modeldesert,” which became for him the epitome of disintegration;as if the dissolution of the world wasembodied in the grains of sand. It is in this empty,desolate space— doubling as “a grave,” Smithsonnoted—that children have always played. This paperexamines how play-scapes and artworks created insand have evoke entropy, chance and the passageof time. The intimate history of the sandbox is tiedto the vast landscape of social changes and to someimmense works of art.

Volume Editors
Urs Peter Flueckiger & Victoria McReynolds

ISBN
978-1-944214-16-6