Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

collage and drawing on graph paper depicting a theoretical continent of Lemuria, a map, and many handwritten notes

Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria [detail] (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

collage and drawing on graph paper depicting a theoretical continent of Lemuria, a map, and many handwritten notes

Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria [detail] (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria [detail] (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

collage and drawing on graph paper depicting a theoretical continent of Lemuria, a map, and many handwritten notes

Robert Smithson, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria [detail] (1969)

Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper

22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

1969—1970

The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria

Robert Smithson
1969
Brown ink, crayon, graphite, and collage on paper
22 ¼ x 17 ¼ in. (56.5 x 43.8 cm)
Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Closely related to Smithson’s slidework Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969), this two-dimensional work provides conceptual details around the object of representation. Lemuria, a theoretical continent whose existence was quickly disproved by the scientific community, comes to life through the artist’s attention. “You don’t have to have existence to exist,” Smithson asserted in Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan (1969).

The collage includes maps of both the fictional island and the placement of Smithson’s sculptural rendition, thus connecting the concepts while simultaneously emphasizing their removal from one another. Similarly to Smithson’s Nonsites, which bring attention to places often overlooked or elsewhere, The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria resuscitates an idea from pedagogical obscurity.

Writing

Scholarly Text
a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a long round oval shape. blue sky and ocean in the background

Florida, Man: Robert Smithson’s Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria

Sean J Patrick Carney

Before sunrise on an already soupy Monday in mid-August 2023, scores of white contractor pickups from mainland Florida clogged the causeway bridge onto Sanibel, a narrow, crescent barrier island curving twelve miles along the Sunshine State’s southwestern Gulf Coast. Ten months earlier, Hurricane Ian had thrashed the island, leveling homes and businesses, disemboweling infrastructure, and clobbering complex, verdant ecosystems filled with alligators, marsh rabbits, black racer snakes, river otters, iguanas, gopher tortoises, and legions of bird species.

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Scholarly Text
two people roll a chunk of tree out of the ocean onto the beach

Upside Down Trees: Terminal Transmissions

Adam Lauder

Robert Smithson’s Upside Down Trees (1969) form a circuit with the artist’s parallel series of earth maps, one that materializes and satirizes period visions of the growing informationalization of art and perception.

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In the Nonsites, the prehistoric reference comes through, but the sites are all here today, within the maps of materials (stone, mud, grass and shells). All of these things point to continents and land masses that don't exist today. That establishes a context.

Robert Smithson

“Interview with Robert Smithson (1970),” eds. Paul Toner and Robert Smithson in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), p236.

Related Info

1969—1970
a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a long round oval shape. blue sky and ocean in the background
Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria
Robert Smithson
1969
1969—1970

Situated along the coast of Sanibel Island in Florida, Smithson’s Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria is sculpted from a pile of shells, its tenuous form vulnerable to the impacts of nature and time. The hypothetical continent in question is similarly fragile; theories surrounding Lemuria were disproved soon after their original conception. Smithson believed that the presence of any given object hinges on its absence; with this work, a concept’s non-existence is represented by material reality.

See Also