Robert Smithson, First Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Second Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Third Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Fourth Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Fifth Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Sixth Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Seventh Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

square mirrors in branches of a tropical tree

Robert Smithson, Eighth Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Robert Smithson, Ninth Mirror Displacement, detail from Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1969)
Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed
Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

1969—1970

Yucatán Mirror Displacements

Robert Smithson

1969

Yucatán, Mexico

Nine chromogenic prints from original 126 format chromogenic slides

24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) each, framed

Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

‎‏‏‎ ‎‎In 1969 Robert Smithson travelled to Mexico with the artist Nancy Holt and the gallerist Virginia Dwan. On this trip he made this work, Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1–9) —a temporary sculpture that became fixed in time through its photographic representation. Smithson created a number of Mirror Displacements in Europe and the Americas, including in his home state of New Jersey. He would select a specific outdoor site, place the mirrors, photograph them, and then remove the mirrors, often to replace them again and repeat the process. In these works, the land and sky are reflected and refracted uninterrupted by the human figure.

Here Smithson placed twelve 12-inch-square mirrors in different sites on the Yucatán Peninsula. The resulting series of nine color photographs was published in the magazine Artforum to accompany Smithson’s essay “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatán,” the title referring to the 1843 guidebook titled “Incidents of Travel in the Yucatán,” written by John Lloyd Stephens and illustrated by Frederick Catherwood. Smithson intended his trip to be an “anti-expedition,” a journey that would undo the ethnocentrism of Stephens. Looking from the distance of more than fifty years, it is clear he nonetheless brought his own subjectivities with him. Smithson concludes the essay with the paragraph: “If you visit the sites (a doubtful probability) you find nothing but memory-traces, for the mirror displacements were dismantled right after they were photographed. The mirrors are somewhere in New York. The reflected light has been erased. Remembrances are but numbers on a map, vacant memories constellating the intangible terrains in deleted vicinities. It is the dimension of absence that remains to be found. The expunged color that remains to be seen. The fictive voices of the totems have exhausted their arguments. Yucatán is elsewhere.”

Writing

Writing by 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.

Such mirror surfaces cannot be understood by reason. Who can divulge from what part of the sky the blue color came? Who can say how long the color lasted? Must “blue” mean something? Why do the mirrors display a conspiracy of muteness concerning their very existence? When does a displacement become a misplacement? These are forbidding questions that place comprehension in a predicament. The questions the mirrors ask always fall short of the answers. Mirrors thrive on surds, and generate incapacity. Reflections fall onto the mirrors without logic, and in so doing invalidate every rational assertion. Inexpressible limits are on the other side of the incidents, and they will never be grasped.

Robert Smithson

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

Yucatán Mirror Displacements

Writing

Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan

See Also