Living a comfortable life depends on managing one’s expectations. It is like a child that dreams of getting a bike for their birthday. They spend weeks dreaming of the kind of bike they want, its color, how it will feel riding the bike and showing it to their friends. When their birthday comes, they don’t receive a bike but rather a scooter. It could be a nice scooter, but their expectations make it hard for them to enjoy and be thankful for the gift they did receive. Our expectations are important. Expectations help us prepare and anticipate for novel situations before they unfold — they allow us to plan and dream. However, just like that child, when you approach or encounter art you must manage your expectations. You have to learn to experience the work on its terms and humbly yield to what it has to offer. After experiencing, studying and contemplating thousands of great works of art, I was recently reminded of the importance of managing expectations while visiting Michael Heizer’s new land art piece entitled City. I have been captivated by Heizer’s work for decades.
His work is direct, powerful and connects you with the landscape — it amplifies the experience, heightens your awareness and develops a surprising connection to nature.
Getting to the City requires an hour and a half drive north from Las Vegas to a small town called Alamo, in Lincoln County, Nevada. The entire county has only 5,500 residents, and the small town shelters only 1,500 people. The valley was originally dominated by agriculture, an oasis of sorts, being fed by several natural springs that water fields and fill lakes. We were told today that several residents work at Area 51, the mysterious military base situated west of town. We arrived at a small office where we met a coordinator, her blind dog, the local driver and storyteller, as well as five other people who would be joining us on the adventure. The foundation responsible for managing the City limits the number of visitors to six at a time and only take folks out to the site three days per week. From the office the City is another hour and a half drive through an amazing desert landscape. The commitment in time and treasure to visit this work acts as an effective filter, leaving the truly curious, committed, interested and adventurous. Driving through the captivating landscape with great company, conversation and immediate sense of camaraderie was
surprisingly the highlight of the experience — not what I expected.
Another unexpected aspect of this work was its lack of focus on the landscape — at least in the way I anticipated. Along the perimeter pathways, I was captivated by the surrounding landscape, but the work itself is largely focused inward. Initially, I found this deeply disappointing. Great land art doesn’t seek to compete with the landscape for attention but finds a way to accentuate it. The City is approximately a mile and a half in length, a half a mile wide, taking 50 years and more than $40 million to complete. Facts which seemed to amplify its inward focus — making it feel excessive and self-indulgent. After reflecting on the title, City, it started to make more sense to me. Few if any modern cities are integrated with the natural environment around it. They are fortresses that protect the residents from the unpredictable and harsh realities of the natural world. Cities are monuments to humanity’s collective agency and our ability to control the environments we inhabit. They inherently are inwardly focused. Wondering the vast installation with only five other people was eerie, as if we were exploring the remains of a lost civilization whose demise was perhaps brought about by their ignorance, arrogance and hubris.
Very interesting adventure that you describe David! I think I will have to ad this to my bucket list…I have heard of CITY somewhere in my online surfing….I love adventures…esp in this fascinating desert that surrounds us…elements of your description remind me of a similar sense of AWE when visiting ARCOSANTI….more of a theoretical project than a work of art, but still….it is a work of art when seen in person….the difference i guess is that Arcocanti is open to free exploration (just pull in to the parking lot and start exploring (with a respectful eye out for rattlesnakes who inhabit the mesa edge) and still a work in progress…actually a full functioning city of sorts with a communal population of artisans and various off-the-gridders whom the site perfectly inhabits….RODEN CRATER (in Arizona) is another such project that intrigues me….likely you are already aware of that work of landscape architecture as well…I think the remoteness and effort necessary to obtain a rare ticket to the CITY site make it seem all the more mystical
follow up….the blog photo of CITY with the clouds brought to mind that I often describe cloud formations as REGIMENTS in my journal entries …this was particularly true when winter fronts would arrive in Michigan…the clouds had a militaristic feel as if they were marching thru…I got a similar sense when looking at the rhythmic contrast of the clouds and the concrete formations in the blog photo today…..slightly ominous?