Erasing the object : sculptural manoeuvres into the sublime

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-85).During the Spring of 1969, as if adopting the guise of the explorer/adventurer of yesteryear, the American artist Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973) and his artist-wifeNancy Holt (1938 - )2 travelled to the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico (Roberts 2000: 552).Over a century earlier, in 1841, the American 'travel writer' John Lloyd Stephens(1805 -1852)3 had embarked on a similar voyage to the Yucatan peninsula and documented his encounters in his then celebrated book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan(1843). Smithson, aware of Stephens' travels and book, published his own account of his experiences on the Yucatan peninsula in an essay wryly entitled 'Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan41 in the September 1969 edition of the periodical Artforum