It is in this context that a particular photo of two artists calls me intensely: Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt are portrayed in Rozel Point, in the site of the Spiral Jetty in the dawn of its realization, by Gianfranco Giorgioni, the Italian photographer that witnessed and captured in images the process of construction and exposure of Spiral Jetty. April 1970. Robert Smithson bends his knee over one of the volcanic rocks that gather in that side of the Great Salt Lake and that will constitute the material for the jetty. He looks epic and heroic, with a grave gesture on his face and a sense of transcendence, pointing to somewhere in the vast lake with his fingers and a raising arm, a pencil between them and a sketchbook in the other arm. Nancy Holt at his side looks rather lost on her thoughts, looking East where Robert looks North, wearing a slight smile with a touch of skepticism, even irony, I might say.
Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were inextricably united, being one and a team, a partnership of personal and artistic endurance; an admirable one. And yet it was not until Robert Smithson sadly and unexpectedly died that Nancy Holt was "born" as an artist on herself, not as -before- a collaborator and supporter of her very famous husband. Some widely known examples of married artists can be easily summoned and brought to comparison: Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta, Gordon Matta-Clark and Jane Crawford, Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Brice Marden and Helen Marden (this one, sure, not so), Christo and Jeanne-Claude (maybe the only arty couple where he creates, she dominates).
Lee Krasner, as we all know, was devoted to Jackson Pollock and his career. The moment she began to achieve some heights as a painter for herself, Jackson got depressed, even more heavy-drinker, and stopped painting. It was only when he died that Lee was freed from the self-imposed obligations of being the wife of Jackson Pollock, hero and myth, and could develop a remarkable artistic career on her own. Sylvia and Helen are hidden to a greater or lesser degree under the large abstract shadow their husbands cast, but they probably don´t seek to gain a prominent position. Jane and Gordon were dramatically and against-the-clock together, united so briefly, so passionately. Carl Andre could not probably resist the irresistible ascension of Ana Mendieta and decided to pull her down- forever. Another kind of rising.
It would seem like being a marriage of artists implies difficulties in getting along and very human feelings of inferiority, jealousness and skepticism of each other´s capabilities. That´s why I assume Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson cannot fit in this group of personal-artistic tumultuous stories full of love, hate and suffering. We don´t have any clue of how their life was together, but I believe they were far from being the Lee and Jackson of the late 60´s and 70´s- their photos together (all of them, of course, available only in books on Robert Smithson) show a very confident partnership, where he usually shows a face of "I´m in an intellectual mission" and she peacefully and lovely stays by his side, "I will help you to conquer it". No submission, no complex hard feelings of despise or being neglected. Pure love and mutual understanding.
And yet for that she was clearly annulled or rather self-annulled, devoted to her husband´s art- the only known artworks she made before Smithson´s death were videos and certain pieces connected to his creations, and in the photos we have of her she appears "collaborating", "helping", "involved" in his husband's projects. Her first work after the forever-tragic-and-mourned disappearance of his husband was the completion of his last piece, the Amarillo Ramp in eccentric-arty oil baron Stanley Marsh´s ranch in Amarillo, Texas, aided by Richard Serra and artist-aggressor-dealer-celebrity-millionaire Tony Shafrazi.
That was in 1973 and I like to think she said "up ´til here, now on my own with him in my soul" or similar beautiful, profound words and started creating art herself. The famous, impressive and mystical Sun Tunnels in the Great Basin Desert of Utah were her first and gorgeously grand achievement. Then, commissions by universities, cities and corporations for making those pieces of her that gather environment, earth, nature, light, sculpture, transcendence, fun and sensorial experience. She got to be an artist, not a wife or a widow, and yet she has not a single book on her art, nobody seems interested in communicating her talent and vision to the world. She is being awarded public commissions and keeps working in projects, but for many, her only interest in her is the fact of her being the key to some secret, intimate knowledge of Robert Smithson. It has to be difficult to overcome the status of "late genius´ wife" as much as it has to be impossibly painful to be torn forever from your soulmate at 37. Fact is, even her having merit and proof enough to show the world she is much more, scholars prefer to skip, or flat out ignore, her art and have her as teller of the past. Is that why Nancy Holt is far more unknown than Lee, Elaine, Ana, Jane, Sylvia and even Helen were and are? (gossiper, party-goer and occasional writer A. Haden-Guest even calls her first "Smithson's wife, Nancy" and then "Nancy Smithson" (!!) in his irritating but absorbing "True Colors" chronicle of the art world)
Oddly and contradictorily enough (or not so), the very-macho-man art of the earthworks has been studied by more than one female (feminist?) writer-curator; all of them have devoted thousands of words and pages to the tough art and personae of Carl Andre and Robert Smithson, all of them have given one or two words to the female earth artists (Nancy Holt, Mary Miss, Maya Lin, Alice Aycock), none of them have dared to treat them longer and more in-depth, all of them have treated Nancy as an "accessory" of Robert Smithson, just a resource.
Thus, for the intense sympathy I have towards Nancy Holt and her art, I wish somebody would change her being included in the acknowledgements section of the tons of every year new books and catalogues on Robert Smithson to make her the subject of a well-deserved and long-denied study of her art. Somebody who starts talking to her about her and her art and her pieces, and write about her and publish her amazing achievements, ideas, projects, vision.
In proportion, we have had fair enough Robert Smithson for years to come and nothing at all Nancy Holt after 30 years of her art. Anybody out there?
