Modern Art Monday Presents: Mirror Stratum By Robert Smithson

Mirror Stratum (1966) by Robert Smithson (1938 – 1973) is made up of Stacked Mirrors on a Formica-Covered Base and makes for such a lovely, pyramid-shaped reflective thing to try to get decent photos of. The reflection you see slightly in the above photos is a fragment of the phrase, “Wall Pierced By a Single Bullet Hole,” which is a caption (itself a work of art) written across the wall adjacent to the sculpture.

On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in the vicinity of Amarillo, Texas. He was 35 years old. Despite his early death, and relatively few surviving major works, Smithson has a following amongst many contemporary artists.

Mirror Stratum By Robert Smithson is part of the permanent collection at The Museum Of Modern Art in NYC.