Archinect - News

The New Yorker dissects the immersive potential of Sphere and City

2023-11-14T08:00:00-05:00

The differences between “City” and the Sphere are deep, true, yet narrower than you might suppose—the works are trying for the same things but in opposite ways. Both are big, expensive, geometric structures in the desert that offer visitors a vivid encounter with the natural world—one with exquisite footage of jellyfish and the like, the other with deftly roughened rock and concrete.

The New Yorker’s art critic Jackson Arn takes on two of the most recent (and spectacular) cultural offerings of the Silver State — "One with a deluge of images and the other with a tantalizing lack of them," as he writes.

Related on Archinect: Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut (45°, 90°, 180°, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome)

Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut

2022-08-26T17:51:00-04:00

The long-awaited public opening of land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental earthwork City is just around the corner, and the Triple Aught Foundation, the group which manages its remote Lincoln County, Nevada site, has shared some amazing new photos that offer a sense of the scale and stasis of the massive sculpture which has taken 52 years and another $40 million to finish.

City © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex One and Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Critic Dave Hickey recently described it as "a gracious intervention in the desert...composed and complete."

LACMA Director Michael Govan reflected on its realization, stating: "Over the years I would sometimes compare Michael Heizer's City project to some of the most important ancient monuments and cities. But now I only compare it to itself. It's an artwor...

Michael Heizer’s land art masterpiece 'City' finally sets an opening date

2022-08-22T10:00:00-04:00

City, a vast complex of outdoor structures and landmasses the Land artist Michael Heizer began constructing in the desert of Nevada in 1970, will finally begin welcoming public visitors next month. The site’s opening on 2 September, more than 50 years after work at the site began, marks the fulfillment of Heizer’s most ambitious and career-defining project.

Get ready to weep (assuming you are among the select art tourists willing to travel to the site-specific installation, as Heizer intended): The 50-year saga surrounding the National Mall-sized sculpture is over, and the Triple Aught Foundation, which manages the site, will begin accepting up to six visitors a day in an outcome that has at times seemed impossible.

Heizer's masterpiece has been the subject of an Obama-era protective designation (a measure first proposed by the late Senator Harry Reid) and later the failed Trump Administration attempt to open up the 740,000-acre tract to mining and development. Plans were originally for the earthwork to be made public in 2020. LACMA director Michael Govan says it is "an artwork aware of our primal impulses to build and organize space."

As the artist, who began the piece in 1970, told the Los Angeles Times in 2012: "The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for ins...

Land surrounding Michael Heizer’s "City" could lose national monument protection under Trump Administration

2017-07-31T14:55:00-04:00

As City—Michael Heizer’s vast Land Art installation in the Nevada desert—nears completion, the fate of the federally protected land surrounding it could soon be decided. Ryan Zinke, the US Interior Secretary, visited the state on Sunday, 30 July, as part of a review of 27 national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump, which could result in some of these lands being reopened to development.

"A number of museums banded together to call for the site’s preservation," The Art Newspaper explains the background of City's current surroundings (previously also on Archinect), "and in 2015, Obama created the Basin and Range National Monument, which covers 704,000 acres in southern Nevada’s Lincoln and Nye counties, including the land surrounding City and several Native American rock art sites. The next year, he created the Gold Butte National Monument, which covers 300,000 acres in Clark county."

A monument to outlast humanity

2016-08-30T12:48:00-04:00

“My good friend Richard Serra is building out of military-grade steel. That stuff will all get melted down. Why do I think that? Incans, Olmecs, Aztecs—their finest works of art were all pillaged, razed, broken apart, and their gold was melted down. When they come out here to fuck my ‘City’ sculpture up, they’ll realize it takes more energy to wreck it than it’s worth.”

Heizer, a pioneer of the earthworks movement, began “City” in 1972. A mile and a half long and inspired by ancient ritual cities, it is made from rocks, sand, and concrete mined and mixed on site.

“ ‘City’ is one of the most important works of art to have been made in the past century. Its scale and ambition and resolution are simply astonishing.” Its unseen status has made the place almost mythic—it’s art-as-rumor, people say—and has turned the artist, who became known for chasing off unwanted visitors and yanking film out of cameras, into a legend, or a “Scooby Doo” villain." -Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

Heizer, who is given to playful lamentation, complains about what New York is turning him into: “A decaffeinated, used-up, once-was quick-draw cowboy, a sissy boy who eats at Balthazar for lunch.” At such moments, he is a cartoon roughneck, swatting at his own amusement like a housefly. “Chemical castration—doesn’t happen all at once,” he sa...

Heizer's "City" now part of national monument, thanks to POTUS

2015-07-10T15:23:00-04:00

Using his authority under the Antiquities Act, the president created a protected area spanning roughly 704,000 acres in central Nevada’s Basin and Range, as well as smaller ones in California’s Berryessa Snow Mountain and Texas’ Waco Mammoth. [...] Broadly supported by environmentalists, [Basin and Range] is also home to a major earthen sculpture, “City” which the artist Michael Heizer has worked to create over nearly half a century.

All in all, these new monuments cover more land than the state of Rhode Island, adding significant mileage to Obama's public lands legacy. The Basin and Range (Nevada), Berryessa Snow Mountain (California) and Waco Mammoth (Texas) monuments cover lands that are either completely or mostly undeveloped, and their now-protected status will prohibit mining and energy leasing.

The designation also encompasses Michael Heizer's "City", the massive land-art project now in the final stage of its creation, located in Garden Valley, Nevada. "City" was an integral part of a public preservation campaign aimed at getting President Obama to act on the area. Heizer will reportedly attend the White House ceremony when the President will sign the monument proclamations.

Also now off the table are talks of a possible rail corridor through the Basin and Range area, chiefly for shipping nuclear waste to the nearby Yucca Mountain repository.

For more on the history of Heizer's "City":

#ProtectCity campaign l...

#ProtectCity campaign launched in support of Michael Heizer's "City"

2015-03-19T19:00:00-04:00

Located in Garden Valley, Nevada, Michael Heizer’s City is one of the most significant works of art in the United States. Begun by Heizer in 1972, the project is now in its final stage of completion. It will, in the future, be accessible by the public. [...] To see the land developed into a site for military, energy, or waste purposes, would ruin it forever. After 43 years of work, can it really be destroyed like this?

Notable American museums publicly expressed their support on Twitter via #protectCITY. The LACMA petition to protect Michael Heizer's City and the Basin and Range can be reached here.

Previously on Archinect: Michael Heizer's massive desert sculpture, "City", will make you cry

Michael Heizer's massive desert sculpture, "City", will make you cry

2014-11-04T17:37:00-05:00

“He didn’t like people coming into the studio and seeing the paintings before they were finished,” he said. “This is one of the most ambitious artworks ever envisioned, certainly in the United States.” Heizer's mammoth masterpiece in the desert is called "City." “It was in 1994 when I first saw it, unfinished,” Govan said. “You do cry. You think, what an incredibly beautiful ambition.”

Heizer's Rock 'n' Roll: on the Road

2012-02-29T12:32:00-05:00

I’m just happier than heck to see this thing go.- logistical superintendent Rick Albrecht

As the rock’s massive, centipede-like transporter inched onto Granite Hill Drive, lit by over 300 string lights, the mood was less public art project and more engineering-feat-meets-the-Rose Parade. More than 100 people –- truckers, police escorts, media and museum workers, as well as art lovers and general looky-loos -– gathered to see the rock off. A helicopter hovered above, cutting the crisp night sky, and nearby parked cars honked in celebration.

Noticeably missing was the reclusive artist himself, who lives in Nevada.

“There’s nothing he can really do to help now,” said LACMA Director Michael Govan. “But he’s excited.”

Previously