This is a study on the ecological view of Robert Smithson’s reclamation projects. Smithson was a pioneer of Earth art in the late 1960’s. Robert Smithson believed that he could transform industrial wastelands, such as an abandoned oil rig and a no longer used quarry, into “Earth Art." In the early seventies, he conceived of land reclamation as a new art form and called this art “Reclamation Projects.” His attention regarding industrial ruin started from the American political and social situations in the 1960’s. In the late 1960’s, American society was in chaos from the right of movement of African Americans, the women’s rights movement and from the strike for renunciation of the Vietnam War. The intellectual class seemed to believe that it was the destiny of a closed system’s society to run in the direction of entropy. Smithson, who was skeptical about the system of American society, also thought that entropy was the proper diagnosis to describe America’s situation in the 1960’s. The 1960’s civic movements like the civil rights movement and antiwar movements expanded into the environmental movements based on ecological views of the 1970’s. The government had also started to worry about environmental pollution. Thus, the reclamation act was also established in 1972. Smithson believed that the relation between art and social background are closely related and affect each other. He was concerned with how art can join society, and the result was reclamation projects. Such reclamation projects lie on man-made wastelands, like abandoned oil rigs and no longer used quarries, which was an allegory of entropy. He also thought that Frederick Law Olmsted was a pioneer of earth art. The aesthetic category of Olmsted’s view of landscape is to be based on the picturesque of Uvedale Price and William Gilpin. So Smithson, who considered Olmsted as his touchstone, also accepted the picturesque. Such reclamation projects aim to change with nature by adapting the creative power of artists to the ruin which has the highest level of entropy in industrial society. Smithson wanted this to become the bridge between man and nature. His reclamation project’s aim, which shows the system interacting between man and nature as a network, is not different from the ecological view of the 1970’s environmental movement.

This thesis is the study about architectural sculpture in american art since late20th century focusing on works of Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt. Archtecturalsculpture is postmodernist sculpture looked like architecture and architecture;s scalebeing in actual space. Architectural sculpture installed in actual space have site-specific. RobertSmithson and Nancy Holt made large scale outdoor sculpture imbued with theirsurrounding. Their works evolved out of their site with consideration given to thetopography, built environment, and local materials, along with the psychology,sociology, and history of each place.It is possible that art can be integrated into society. It can be place to rest.Architectural sculpture fused with its environment can give social meanings andfunctions to the public. Architectural sculpture has interior space which inspired byshelter. Achitectural sculpture was informed by a counter cultural urge to carryoutside the precincts of the art world. it was also influenced by feminism. Feministsclaimed that it was natural for women sculptors to be attracted to image of shelter.Lucy Lippard suggested that the biological and sexual roots of “sheter sculpture”, asshe labeled it, were in the female body. Architertural sculpture is ecological. they concerned about environmental preservation. In particular, Smithson maintains that art could mediate between theecologist and the industrialist so he set up sculpture as land reclamation. Theconcept of sculpture as land reclamation was presented in some earthworks ofRobert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Broken Circle, and Spiral Hill in Emmen, Holland.Smithson’s intent in those works was to focus on the process of entropy. Smithsonbegan to think directly of land reclamation art and made attempts to work withmining companies and quarry owners. He thought that art should not be consideredas merely a luxury but should work within the process of actual production andreclamation.