Michael Heizer's 50-Year Art Project Will Outlast Humanity

“City” is a monumental architectonic work on a remote ranch in Nevada by artist Michael Heizer, with dimensions comparable to those of the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., and a layout informed by pre-Columbian ritual cities like Teotihuacan. Heizer started it in 1972, when he was in his late twenties and had already established himself as an instigator of the earthworks movement, a group of artists, including Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria, who made totemic outdoor sculptures, often in the majestic wastelands of the American West. “City” It is made almost entirely from rocks, sand, and concrete that Heizer has mined and mixed on site. The use of valueless materials is strategic, a hedge against what he sees as inevitable future social unrest.

From “A Monument to Outlast Humanity” by Dana Goodyear for the New Yorker, 2016; Photo by Jamie Hawkesworth

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