Robert Smithson's earthwork: a dried-up basin, with its original structure altered by erosion

Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973) 
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas 
Rocks, earth 
Diameter: 140 ft. (42.67 meters); Maximum height: 15 ft. (4.57 meters) 
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni

© Holt/Smithson Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Narrative description: 
Constructed to emerge from the base of an artificial lake, Amarillo Ramp now lies in a driedup basin, its original structure altered by erosion. It is Smithson’s final earthwork - while surveying the site in 1973, Smithson was killed in a plane crash. The sculpture was posthumously completed by Nancy Holt and fellow artists Tony Shafrazi and Richard Serra. Overgrown with mesquite, its once-defined edges sloping into the earth, Amarillo Ramp is a solemn illustration of entropy. 

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