Abstract

Based on the Kantian aesthetics, Modernist critics insisted that an art experience is disinterested aesthetic experience different and independent from cognitive experience, and excluded the cognitive dimension from the art experience. But since 1960s, many art practices and theories that were challenging Modernismappeared. As a result, contemporary arts accept the cognitive dimension as an essential part of art experience. Minimalism made a great contribution to this change and established a new paradigm of art. Emphasis on the active and complicated experience of the viewer is representative. A land artist Robert Smithson used a symbol, a map to achieve that kind of experience. This thesis considers how he made use of a symbol in his work and how that symbol played in theexpansion of art experience.