Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

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

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a long round oval shape.

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

a white sand beach with blue sky and ocean in the background

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

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

1969—1970

Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria

Robert Smithson

1969

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

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

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. While the sculptural element of this work inevitably unraveled with time with the shells dispersing into the sand—illustrating Smithson's fascination with entropy—the four 126 format chromogenic slides comprising this slidework remain as the manifestation of Smithson's ideas on Lemuria.

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.

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.

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.

Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria

Writing

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

Upside Down Trees: Terminal Transmissions

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