Michael Heizer - Double Negative

 





In 1969, Michael Heizer’s earth work Double Negative commanded the attention of art critics across the world. Soon after, with the help of the Dia Art Foundation and the Lannan Foundation, he began work on City, a colossal and ambitious sculpture set in the barren Lincoln County of Nevada. Now, almost 40 years later, he is still at work. With an estimated size of one and a quarter miles long and more than a quarter of a mile wide, City is the largest sculpture ever created. A synthesis of ancient monuments, Minimalism and industrial technology, the work derives inspiration from Mississippian mounds, Mesoamerican ball courts and Pre-Columbian sites like La Venta as well as Modernism. Heizer also cites an interest in the ceremonial squares and associated civic monuments as influences. Several of the welded titanium structures seem set in pyramidal future by way of Blade Runner while other adobe enclosures and catacomb passageways barrow from ancient mausoleum architecture. Over the years Heizer has become notoriously secretive about the operation, sanctioning reporters with visiting permits very infrequently (the last outsider to set foot on the compound was Michael Kimmelman for NYT in 2005.) Without paved roads or traffic signs to the sculpture, access to the location is extremely limited but the exact co-ordinates of Phase I of the sand metropolis exist at: 38°01’48″ N, 115°26’10″ W, allowing for a satellite view here.