Paul Laffoley
(b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

The Hollow Earth
1968
Oil, Acrylic, Ink and Lettering on Canvas
53 1/2 x 53 1/2 inches
Collection of the Austin Museum of Art, Texas

Comments: The Theory of the Hollow Earth has three variations:
1) The first hollow earth appears as it does in conventional geology with one exception. Its form is topologically equivalent to a tube or a torus. There is an outer surface which is inhabited as we have come to know it. But there is also an interior cavity that is inhabited with its own source of illumination and other life support systems. Entry into the interior is gained by openings at the poles of 1400 miles in diameter.

That the interior of the earth is supposed to contain its own lands, mountains, cities, oceans and lakes has been the source of many legends from: Agharta the subterranean land with its capital city Shamballah, to the first section of The Divine Comedy- L'Inferno- of Dante Alighieri, to the ancient Grecian underworld, to the underground utopia of the Vril-Ya depicted by Sir Bulwer Lytton in 1871 in his book Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.

2) The second hollow earth consists only of an interior inhabitable surface a number of miles thick that does not move. The entire remaining universe is a phantom rotating sphere with an absolute vacuum at its center which coincides with the centroid of the earth space. Beyond the extension of the hollow earth there is nothing. No space, no time, no energy, no other celestial bodies.

3) The third hollow earth is composed of an infinite universe of solid rock that is occasionally interrupted by voids, like a mixture of air entrained concrete. One of the voids is the hollow earth. But there is no physical movement in the universe, only mental movement. No person moves, they only believe that they move. This applies also to the apparent moment of the "celestial" bodies of the infinite phantom universe.

It is often said that those who believe in some form of the hollow earth theory have a problem with accepting science in general and especially contemporary cosmology that has defined the earth and the human race out of its traditional central position and therefore value in the universe. And psychologically to be inside the earth is seen as a need to return to the safety of the "womb" of Mother Earth away from a frightening and indifferent universe. And yet such beliefs may in reality be symptoms of humanity's
collective imagination ability to assert once again, in the evolution of culture, its freedom of expression against orthodoxy, in this case scientism, which promotes an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of the natural sciences when applied to all areas of knowledge.

In that regard it is the third hollow earth that I have chosen to depict because it is based on a proposition that cannot be tested by science (such as is the case of the proposition of the existence of God), and, therefore the third hollow earth is linguistically mappable only by paradox- the language of the future.