When thinking about spirals in art this is the first - and one of the biggest spirals that comes to mind.
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in Utah - now sadly submerged most of the time - is a beautiful contradiction. A spiral with a view that leads you back in not towards the wideness of the water, but yourself.
And this beautiful tension between contraction and expansion is used in a lot of art, although not always as explicitly as in Smithson’s work, where the spiral coincides with the work.
The most famous and familiar spirals in painting are probably found in Van Gogh’s starry night.
Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889, MoMA, New York
One of my personal favourite is a bit more abstract, but still very much a spiral: Matisse’s snail.
Henri Matisse - The Snail - 1953, Tate Modern
Today, go on a treasure hunt for spirals in art. Dive into Google Arts and Culture, or other online collections, and look for different ways artists use spirals in their work.
Share your finds on Twitter or Instagram, using the hashtag #kramerseye.