Smithson’s Asphalt Shed drawing was made soon after completion of Spiral Jetty, when he was developing projects that explored what he called the “non-site,” the studio or gallery document that stands in relation to an outdoor earthwork as a map stands to territory. Asphalt, for Smithson, was a material of particular conceptual interest: it was synthetic (derived from petroleum), it flowed according to entropy, and its black surface absorbed rather than reflected light, properties that opposed it systematically to the transparency and precision of Minimalist fabrication. In a related project from 1969 he had actual asphalt poured down a hillside, treating the pour as a sculptural action analogous to his earthworks. The pencil drawing occupies an ambiguous position between preparatory study and finished work: at twenty by twenty-four inches, it is emphatically not a sketch but a presentation drawing, and yet its subject is a shed, a vernacular building type that deliberately refuses architectural pretension.
