Page 120 - Hrobat Virloget, Katja, et al., eds. (2015). Stone narratives: heritage, mobility, performance. University of Primorska Press, Koper.
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stone narratives
mon Mesa that were 9 meters wide, 15 meters deep, and 457 meters in length. The size has
been compared to the Empire State Building set on the side (Pray, 2014). The emptied spa-
ce is defined by Heizer as a negative sculpture, the object into which one needs to walk in
order to experience it. The most important part of this sculpture is thus the absence, the
thing that is not there – a displaced earth. The same principle that Kandinsky and Rothko
were trying to achieve in painting is at work here, namely inviting the observer not to look
at the picture but to enter it, which is easier when the sculpture allows the actual physical
step in. The visitors record solitary, intimate and sublime experience (Hogan, 2008), stan-
ding within the sculpture and walking through it. The void may offer cultural tourist a
kairic moment, in which temporality presents the possibility of transformation or innova-
tion. It is however not readily accessible thus only the most dedicated cultural tourist ven-
ture to experience it.
Double Negative has been credited to have made a great impact in art history and
a direct influence on such memorials as Vietnam memorial and the Ground zero. This
claim is probably up for a debate as the absence in Double Negative, a void offered to so-
litary exploration and contemplation, is rather removed from the absence in Ground
zero, intended to provide space of (social) memory, no matter how controversial the me-
morial.
However, there is no doubt that there is a direct link between the Double Negative
and Levitated Mass in terms of use of negative space, (Figure 2, 3) in two different locations
and the size is dramatically different.
Levitated Mass 1, 2, 3 …
Michael Heizer created the original drawings of Levitated Mass in 1969, (as already men-
tioned now part of Marzona collection in Berlin) when he acquired a solid granite rock in
Spooner Summit, Nevada. He dug a slot in a dry riverbed on which he planned to positi-
on the rock. However, he was not able to complete the sculpture as the boulder broke the
boom on the crane and it couldn’t be moved to its intended slot.
At the time three other drawings of Levitated Mass, much more sketchy, were produ-
ced, among them Levitated Mass Olympia intended for Olympic games in Munich in 1972,
which again, was never realized.
In 1982, Levitated Mass, though entire different in shape, horizontal and carved, was
put in place as a public (fountain) sculpture on 590 Madison Avenue in New York. A gra-
nite slab »levitates« on a pillar completely covered by running water. The carved grooves
represent the address, 5 and 6 grooves for 56th Street; 13, 1, and 4 for the letters M, A, D,
in Madison Avenue. People can be observed sitting on the provided frame surrounding the
slab, eating their lunch, chatting, laughing, texting … with two dominant sources of sound,
the running water and New York traffic.
After the New York project, it took another twenty-three years, for the rock, needed
to complete the original Levitated Mass, to present itself.
118
mon Mesa that were 9 meters wide, 15 meters deep, and 457 meters in length. The size has
been compared to the Empire State Building set on the side (Pray, 2014). The emptied spa-
ce is defined by Heizer as a negative sculpture, the object into which one needs to walk in
order to experience it. The most important part of this sculpture is thus the absence, the
thing that is not there – a displaced earth. The same principle that Kandinsky and Rothko
were trying to achieve in painting is at work here, namely inviting the observer not to look
at the picture but to enter it, which is easier when the sculpture allows the actual physical
step in. The visitors record solitary, intimate and sublime experience (Hogan, 2008), stan-
ding within the sculpture and walking through it. The void may offer cultural tourist a
kairic moment, in which temporality presents the possibility of transformation or innova-
tion. It is however not readily accessible thus only the most dedicated cultural tourist ven-
ture to experience it.
Double Negative has been credited to have made a great impact in art history and
a direct influence on such memorials as Vietnam memorial and the Ground zero. This
claim is probably up for a debate as the absence in Double Negative, a void offered to so-
litary exploration and contemplation, is rather removed from the absence in Ground
zero, intended to provide space of (social) memory, no matter how controversial the me-
morial.
However, there is no doubt that there is a direct link between the Double Negative
and Levitated Mass in terms of use of negative space, (Figure 2, 3) in two different locations
and the size is dramatically different.
Levitated Mass 1, 2, 3 …
Michael Heizer created the original drawings of Levitated Mass in 1969, (as already men-
tioned now part of Marzona collection in Berlin) when he acquired a solid granite rock in
Spooner Summit, Nevada. He dug a slot in a dry riverbed on which he planned to positi-
on the rock. However, he was not able to complete the sculpture as the boulder broke the
boom on the crane and it couldn’t be moved to its intended slot.
At the time three other drawings of Levitated Mass, much more sketchy, were produ-
ced, among them Levitated Mass Olympia intended for Olympic games in Munich in 1972,
which again, was never realized.
In 1982, Levitated Mass, though entire different in shape, horizontal and carved, was
put in place as a public (fountain) sculpture on 590 Madison Avenue in New York. A gra-
nite slab »levitates« on a pillar completely covered by running water. The carved grooves
represent the address, 5 and 6 grooves for 56th Street; 13, 1, and 4 for the letters M, A, D,
in Madison Avenue. People can be observed sitting on the provided frame surrounding the
slab, eating their lunch, chatting, laughing, texting … with two dominant sources of sound,
the running water and New York traffic.
After the New York project, it took another twenty-three years, for the rock, needed
to complete the original Levitated Mass, to present itself.
118
