“There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture” – Michael Heizer
What creative obsession drives a person to make art by excavating two huge trenches in a remote Nevada mesa? I learnt about Double Negative a few days earlier while exploring Google Maps during a lunch stop in St George. I felt both intense curiosity to see the land art for myself and distaste at damaging the natural environment for no obvious benefit. On a crisp February morning, with these conflicting thoughts circling in my head, I cautiously navigated a maze of two-track trails searching for Double Negative.
Passing a sad, abandoned homestead, I wondered about the lives the home had nurtured in this in-hospitable environment and carefully continued further south. Suddenly, without any signage, I was at the edge of a mesa and right at the entrance to the northern trench of Double Negative. The dust cloud blown up by my vehicle slowly settled, gradually exposing the 30-foot wide, 50-foot deep trench. With child-like delight and satisfaction, I found the companion trench on the south side of a canyon, visually connecting and completing the land art.
In 1969, 23-year-old Michael Heizer instructed a work-crew provisioned with explosives and a bulldozer to tear the two trenches into Mormon Mesa, which overlooks the Virgin River meandering lazily to its consummation with the Colorado in Lake Mead. The above drone image shows the piece from the north, with the trenches facing each other across a natural canyon in the mesa’s edge creating the 1,500 foot long Double Negative.
As suggested by the title, the sculpture is negative in two ways. First, the trenches subtract material from the mesa to create the art. Second, the alignment of the trenches across the canyon incorporates the negative space between them to complete the work, which is best seen from ground level (as shown in the image below).
Heizer was an early pioneer of the land art or earthworks movement. Land art is characterized by location, context, direct creation in nature mostly using materials found on site, and an emphasis on natural processes allowing the works to evolve over time. Initially, the movement embraced an anti-establishment aesthetic: the artists wished to create works that were uncollectible. Ironically, Double Negative is now part of the permanent collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, providing the museum with a remote physical location in the Nevada desert.
Initially, Heizer did not want the museum to protect Double Negative, allowing nature to eventually reclaim the land through weathering and erosion1. More recently, he has found the degradation of the work depressing and wishes to raise money to restore it to its original clean lines2. After over 50 years in the harsh desert, the work is noticeably deteriorating, but even without repairs, evidence of its existence will remain for hundreds of years.
On that bright, cool morning, I felt a sense of peace while overlooking Double Negative, but most likely I would have experienced similar feelings standing at the edge of the mesa in its original state. The visit left me ambivalent about the importance and value of Double Negative. Its primary function may be to satisfy the ego of its creator – possibly this is the purpose of all art?
My judgement may be too harsh. While I was there a group on side-by-sides came to see the work, it was a nearby resident sharing the sight with visiting friends. There certainly is value in creating a space where people can share their wonder over the quarter mile of art in the desert. I also discovered the local community is protective of the work, successfully objecting to a proposed $1 billion solar farm project on Mormon Mesa because it would ruin the context of the work and harm tourism3.
Double Negative was a prelude to Heizer’s 50+ year principal life work, City, a mile-and-a-half-long, mile-wide monumental sculpture in central eastern Nevada. The work comprises excavations and concrete structures created from 1970 to 2022. I am deeply curious to see City, I expect it will provide insights into Heizer’s obsession.A foundation owns the work and controls access, allowing limited visitors each year over the summer months. I did not get a booking this season but hope to see the work next year.
“It is just not my inclination to make small work” – Michael Heizer.
- William Wilson, “New Moca Acquisition is a Hole in the Ground”, Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1985.
- Dana Goodyear, “A Monument to Outlast Humanity”, New Yorker, August 22, 2016.
- Gabriella Angeleti, “Plans scrapped for solar project that would disrupt Michael Heizer’s Double Negative”, The Art Newspaper, July 26, 2021.