Double Negative, a curious work of art in a remote canyon in northeastern Nevada

@ElentirENG ES 5·09·2024 · 23:23 0

With this article I risk generating very conflicting opinions, but I think it is healthy to generate a little debate on some topics.

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This Wednesday, Sidetrack Adventures published an interesting video recorded near Moapa Valley, in northeastern Nevada (United States), to a very arid area located about 65 kilometers northeast of the city of Las Vegas. The video is titled "Is This Art?", and its author poses that question in relation to a curious work of art titled "Double Negative" and created by sculptor Michael Heizer between 1969 and 1970:

If anyone expected something similar to Mount Rushmore, they will surely have been greatly disappointed, unless we are talking about a fan of the very diffuse world that is contemporary art. The work of art in question is this:

I copy the explanation given by the Heizer website: "Double Negative is Michael Heizer's first prominent earthwork. It consists of two trenches cut into the eastern edge of the Mormon Mesa, northwest of Overton, Nevada in 1969-70."

These two trenches, made on both sides of a natural canyon, measure 457 meters long, 15.2 meters deep and 9.1 meters wide. 240,000 tons of rock were moved to dig it. The author's website adds: "Double Negative, though a notable piece of art, is essentially no more than a big trench (and even then, not a complete trench, as it crosses empty space)." Honestly, I have seen "works of art" like this many times done in various public works. In my country we call them "ditches".

If we have to choose between works of art, I choose the landscape of this place that shows Sidetrack Adventures in his video. God, of course, is the greatest and best artist there is.