Robert Smithson, Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL, USA

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson, Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL, USA

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL
Photograph: Robert Smithson

Smithson and Robert Rauschenberg rolling the tree trunk that will become Upside Down Tree II out of the Ocean.

Robert Smithson Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Smithson and Robert Rauschenberg rolling the tree trunk that will become Upside Down Tree II out of the Ocean.

Robert Smithson Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL

Photograph: Robert Smithson

1969—1970

Upside Down Tree II

Robert Smithson

1969

Captiva Island, Florida, USA

Boldly subverting the natural order, Smithson uproots a tree and buries it back into the earth, upside down. Smithson created and photographed a series of three Upside Down Trees in 1969: the first in Alfred, New York; the second in Captiva Island, Florida; and the third in Yucatán, Mexico. In his essay Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatán (1969), Smithson writes, “…lines drawn on a map will connect them. Are they totems of rootlessness that relate to one another?” Arguably perverse, this work is reminiscent of Smithson’s controversial depictions of Christ in its blatant reversal of convention. Much of Smithson’s work deals with displacement, positing that an object cannot exist without the possibility of its removal or alteration. By defying what is “correct,” Smithson calls for an examination of what is.

Writing

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.

Writing by the Artist

Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan

Robert Smithson

Driving away from Merida down Highway 261 one becomes aware of the indifferent horizon. Quite apathetically it rests on the ground devouring everything that looks like something. One is always crossing the horizon, yet it always remains distant. In this line where sky meets earth, objects cease to exist. Since the car was at all times on some leftover horizon, one might say that the car was imprisoned in a line, a line that is in no way linear. The distance seemed to put restrictions on all forward movement, thus bringing the car to a countless series of standstills. How could one advance on the horizon, if it was already present under the wheels? A horizon is something else other than a horizon; it is closedness in openness, it is an enchanted region where down is up. Space can be approached, but time is far away. Time is devoid of objects when one displaces all destinations. The car kept going on the same horizon.

...lines drawn on a map will connect [the trees]. Are they totems of rootlessness that relate to one another? Do they mark a dizzy path from one doubtful point to another? Is this a mode of travel that does not in the least try to establish a coherent coming and going between the here and the there? Perhaps they are dislocated ‘North and South poles’ marking peripheral places, polar regions of the mind fixed in mundane matter—poles that have slipped from the geographical moorings of the world’s axis. Central points that evade being central. Are they dead roots that haplessly hang off inverted trunks in a vast ‘no man’s land’ that drifts toward vacancy? In the riddling zones, nothing is for sure. Nevertheless, flies are attracted to such riddles. Flies would come and go from all over to look at the upside-down trees, and peer at them with their compound eyes.

Robert Smithson

Smithson, Robert. "Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan." Artforum, Vol. 8, no. 1, (September 1969).

Upside Down Tree II

Writing

Upside Down Trees: Terminal Transmissions

Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan

See Also