![]() ![]() After briefly attending the San Francisco Art Institute in 1963–64, he moved to New York City in 1966. Michael Heizer was born in Berkeley, California, in 1944, son of anthropologist Robert Heizer. The sheer magnitude of North, East, South, West, along with its physical insertion into the floor, creates a sense of potential physical danger that dramatically charges the viewing experience. Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience, I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended. Immense, architecturally sized sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere. Small works are said to do this but it is not my experience. It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe. The son of an anthropologist, Heizer acknowledges numerous ancient sources for some of his forms but sees the comparison as more apt in the realm of effect than of specific reference: The architectural scale and construction of Heizer’s work call forth comparisons to the megalithic monuments of ancient cultures-a comparison that is explicitly addressed in his Negative Megalith #5 (1998), a natural, menhir-like stone inscribed in a rectangular niche, installed in a neighboring gallery. The simplified geometric forms of North, East, South, West suggest the underlying Euclidean lexicon of basic three-dimensional forms-box, cone, and wedge-essential for all sculpture, ancient and modern. The volume that traditionally defines a sculpture is described in Heizer’s works as absence rather than presence. Made literally of nothing, North, East, South, West presents the viewer with form as the separation of void and solid mass. The concept of negative space is critical for the understanding of Heizer’s work. When the work was first developed, such dimensions had no precedent in the art of recent times. Together they measure more than 125 feet in length and sink from the floor of the gallery to a depth of 20 feet. This work is a sequence of geometric pits: two stacked cubic forms, one larger and one smaller ( North) a cone ( South) a triangular trough ( West) and an inverted truncated cone ( East). The inauguration of this new, permanent version of North, East, South, West coincided with the opening of Dia:Beacon in 2003, where it has been constructed in its entirety, with the dimensions and material that Heizer originally specified for it. It was only partially completed in 1967, when North and South were produced in painted wood and metal, respectively, at 4 feet across and 4 feet deep.ĭecades after the work was dismantled, Dia commissioned Heizer to produce a re-creation, this time indoors. The first in his series of monumental Land art works, titled North, East, South, West, was to consist of four excavations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, which echoed the shapes in his paintings. Soon he set out to undertake the same operation in larger dimensions and in open space, free from the constraints of the stretcher and canvas, the exhibition, and, ultimately, the urban context. Originally a painter, Heizer had already made several works in which geometric shapes were carved out of canvases. In the mid-1960s, Michael Heizer made a series of trips to his home states of Nevada and California to experiment in the American desert landscape. Though carefully contained, the towering work creates a sense of looming danger. Installed in a neighboring gallery, Heizer’s Negative Megalith #5 (1998), a large stone entombed in a wall cutout, opens up similar questions. Decades after these two components were dismantled, Dia commissioned Heizer to produce the complete series as a permanent installation for Dia Beacon. The work was conceived and partially executed in 1967 as North and South. The title’s use of the cardinal points is a reflection of the artist’s interest in the discrepancies between mapped and actual space. ![]() Heizer’s first negative sculpture, North, East, South, West (1967/2002) was conceived as a series of four geometric pits. Often cutting into and expunging parts of the landscape, Heizer developed the concept of a “negative sculpture,” where the presence of the work of art is made palpable precisely through its material absence. Deeply concerned with archeology, ecology, and the natural landscape, he uses stone and steel as his primary materials. Though Michael Heizer began his career as a painter, he is best known for the monumental sculptural works he began making in the 1960s.
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