"Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification"
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Smithson’s line lands like a quiet manifesto for an artist who treated words the way he treated earthworks: as material that shifts, erodes, and refuses to stay put. “Operates” is doing heavy lifting here. Language isn’t a neutral pipeline carrying meaning from speaker to listener; it’s a machine with moving parts, always translating, always misaligning. By placing it “between literal and metaphorical signification,” he frames meaning as a zone of unstable negotiation rather than a destination you arrive at.
That “between” is the subtextual pressure point. Literal meaning promises control: a label on a thing, a clean description, the museum placard. Metaphor promises expansion: slippage, association, the mind wandering off the map. Smithson insists you don’t get one without the other. Even the most “literal” statement leans on metaphorical scaffolding (we “grasp” ideas, “build” arguments). Even metaphor needs some literal anchor to be legible. Meaning is neither pure fact nor pure poetry; it’s a continual oscillation.
Context sharpens the intent. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Conceptual art and the broader “linguistic turn” were challenging what counted as an artwork: object, documentation, text, idea. Smithson’s own practice thrives on that ambiguity. His writings read like essays, travelogues, and fiction at once; his works exist as sites, photos, maps, and sentences. The quote doubles as a warning to critics and institutions: treat language as stable and you’ll domesticate art’s mess. Treat it as active and you’ll see how interpretation is part of the work’s terrain.
That “between” is the subtextual pressure point. Literal meaning promises control: a label on a thing, a clean description, the museum placard. Metaphor promises expansion: slippage, association, the mind wandering off the map. Smithson insists you don’t get one without the other. Even the most “literal” statement leans on metaphorical scaffolding (we “grasp” ideas, “build” arguments). Even metaphor needs some literal anchor to be legible. Meaning is neither pure fact nor pure poetry; it’s a continual oscillation.
Context sharpens the intent. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Conceptual art and the broader “linguistic turn” were challenging what counted as an artwork: object, documentation, text, idea. Smithson’s own practice thrives on that ambiguity. His writings read like essays, travelogues, and fiction at once; his works exist as sites, photos, maps, and sentences. The quote doubles as a warning to critics and institutions: treat language as stable and you’ll domesticate art’s mess. Treat it as active and you’ll see how interpretation is part of the work’s terrain.
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| Topic | Deep |
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