Entropy is the inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society. The concept is articulated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve towards a state of inert uniformity). In an art context the term became popular in late 1960s New York when the artist Robert Smithson used the term entropy in reference to his contemporaries, the Minimalist artists Donald Judd, Sol Le Witt, Dan Flavin and Larry Bell, whose highly simplified and static work he considered embodied the concept.