Michael Heizer, ‘City’ and the majesty of madness

I can’t stop thinking about “City”, the amazing mega-sculpture by artist Michael Heizer that was reported last week in the New York Times. The project has taken Heizer 50 years and cost $40mn in funds, donations and self-financed earnings. According to its creator, the work is still not officially complete. The only reason anyone is getting access (it opens to visitors from September) is because the land around it has been designated as a national monument, which means that it must be made traversable to guests.

The desert plains of America have long called artists to their vistas: the open landscapes and vast horizons are the perfect canvas for works of monumental art. It’s the natural home for massive projects: one thinks also of the totemic multicoloured Seven Magic Mountains installed by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone south of Las Vegas in 2016, or the 400 polished poles that make up Walter De Maria’s spectral wasteland known as “The Lightning Field”. Visitors rarely if ever see any lightning, but the artist conceived the mile-long landmark as a place in which to commune. Something about giant sculptures tickles an ancient magic, and I find such projects irresistible. Whether the results were unintended, such as the graveyard of military planes one can see in Arizona, or cheap roadside attractions like the Cabazon dinosaurs in California, I am equally enthralled by all.

Spare, sandy and unapproachable, it’s not been conceived for an audience, for Instagram or, really, to be visited at all

Clearly I am not unusual: we are drawn to massive things. We coo over landmarks, be they stone circles or giant painted doughnuts, because they are so overwhelming: there’s something awe-inspiring about seeing a ginormous and otherworldly object just sat beside the road. As illustrated by the wonderful but now finished Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum in London, we are hard-wired to make and visit man-made shrines. And notwithstanding the religious symbolism or intention of their creators, in the right context even the most prosaic sculptures can take on a sacred glow.

What seems more extraordinary about Heizer’s near-Sisyphean effort is how insouciant about it the now 77-year-old artist seems to be. While he thinks of “City” as being his “masterpiece”, he maintains that it is still unfinished and that he has never had the slightest intention of opening it for all the world to see. Instead, his work is the mastery of some kind of madness: who else would be compelled to cut such precise slabs of concrete or to rake earth into such immaculately smooth buttes and mounds?

In some ways, Heizer seems a natural successor to an artist such as Antoni Gaudí, who took over the building of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, another epic project that was only a quarter finished when the artist died in 1926. But Heizer’s temple is neither the product of a commission, nor for an audience. He has simply been shovelling earth for decades, helped at times by various sympathetic aides. To me, his actions recall Richard Dreyfuss, sculpting mashed potato into a mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Heizer’s “City” looks like the base camp for an alien invasion, or a nuclear bunker so smooth, so curvilinear in the sagebrush, that it looks quite wonderfully unreal.

Heizer’s project may recall a home for alien species: it also reminds me of something from Dune. But as much as his landscape is fascinating, so too is the possession of his mind. What the hell makes someone want to do that? What was going on in his brain? I think of those people who are compelled to build the Taj Mahal in Lego or burrow underground their houses creating labyrinthine networks that come to resemble an alternative world.

“City” resists easy documentation: it’s in the middle of nowhere for a start. This is no Anish Kapoor “Bean”, the gleaming Chicago “Cloud Gate” that Kapoor claims has enjoyed around 250mn visits and starred in 600mn selfies since its birth. Nor is it like Antony Gormley’s “Angel of the North”, which overlooks the motorway near Gateshead and was conceived as a “collective effort” by the artist and produced in collaboration with the industries of the north-west. “City” eschews community and communal moments: its hostile geometry has been designed to remain barren. It’s too big to be caught comfortably on camera and, as Heizer told the NYT, he’s not interested in it being photographed via drone.

But perhaps that’s the exquisite beauty of “City”: that it’s the antithesis of so-called popular art. It’s spare, sandy and unapproachable. It’s not been conceived for an audience, for Instagram or, really, to be visited at all.

And yet who gazing at its immaculate contours is not compelled to see it for themselves? Reading about it, I feel an urge to book the first flight to Nevada, just like Dreyfuss in Close Encounters is drawn to Devils Tower. There’s something primal about Heizer’s “City” that unlocks the druid in us all. His freaky, quiet architecture in the desert offers the ultimate shift in perspective. It’s a brutal sanctuary — and a welcome escape from planet earth.

Email Jo at [email protected]

FT Weekend Festival, London

Save the date for Saturday 3 September to see and listen to Jo Ellison and more than 100 authors, scientists, politicians, chefs, artists and journalists at Kenwood House Gardens, London. Choose from 10 tents packed with ideas and inspiration and an array of perspectives, featuring everything from debates to tastings, performances and more. Book your pass at ft.com/ftwf

Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ftweekend on Twitter