»In which I begin to understand
During a visit to the Dia Arts' Riggio Galleries in Beacon, I discovered the work of Michael Heizer in person. I had read about his ambitious terraforming earth sculptures and heard about his Levitating Mass (link goes to overview and criticism of public art in New York City).
The ubiquity of satellite imagery on the Internet allows us to peek at Michael Heizer's City, a work in-progress in Nevada. Heizer has not made the work widely available to the public, and looking at aerial photographs feels like something of a spoiler; I shouldn't have looked for it. Heizer expects to complete City in 2010, but visits to its remote location might be as tricky as seeing his contemporary Walter de Maria's Lightning Field or Robert Smithson's . All of these pieces also receive support and curation from the Dia Foundation. The Foundation, long a supporter of visionary installation art, takes its name from the Greek δια, meaning "through": "chosen to suggest the institution's role in enabling extraordinary artistic projects that might not otherwise be realized."
After not quite understanding two holes-in-the-ground, one at the Tate Modern and the other until recently at the Gavin Brown Gallery in New York, seeing Heizer's North, East, South, West, 1967—2002 at dia: Beacon caused my jaw to drop. Beholding the installation in its context revealed the art as transcendent, and seeing several galleries of similarly massive, innovative works was an epiphany. I need to go back to the Warhol Museum.
All the exhibits at the dia: Beacon have developed with the collaboration of the artist, or with the artist's intellectual trustees. Gerhard Richter's grey mirrored panels appear in a beautiful rectangular gallery, lit by a glorious clerestory; Joseph Beuys's energy-channeling Fond series is in a sombre, dim room, and Dia has installed his Aus Berlin: Neues vom Kojoten in a room built to the specifications of its original début. Seeing galleries of such organization brought remarkable clarity to the works. One specific experience: walking in to the massive central gallery, ringed with isomorphic canvases in Andy Warhol's Shadows series.
