One year ago today, the rock started its 11-night, 5mph journey from Jurupa Valley to LACMA.
On opening day, in summer solstice sunlight, the rock looked fascinating and different from every angle. From some perspectives, it’s a domino about to topple. From others, it’s as stable as the pyramid on the dollar bill (which actually would have toppled, had the Egyptians built one with those too-vertical proportions). It changed appearance as the sun moved, and will surely look different in other seasons and weathers. Levitated Mass is a Chinese viewing stone almost the size of a Monet cathedral.
“Levitated Mass”: First Reactions | Los Angeles County Museum on Fire | ARTINFO.com
The brooding sculptural ensemble marks time both cultural and geological. Adjacent to an urban art museum, repository for the relics of civilizations gone by, it’s also next to the La Brea Tar Pits, resting place for prehistoric bones sunken into the primordial goo. Unavoidably, it calls for contemplation of our transient place in the larger scheme of things.
(via Art review: LACMA’s new hunk ‘Levitated Mass’ has some substance - latimes.com)
On KCRW’s Which Way LA? last night, Michael Govan phoned in from directly under the rock in Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass. Hear him describe the experience.
The famed rock, sitting in its original quarry in Jurupa Valley. My, how far it’s come.
Be here on Sunday, 11 am, to see official opening and dedication of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass.
Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass officially opens to the public on Sunday. For something a little lighter, but levitating a little higher, try Mungo Thomson’s homage.
(via Mungo Thomson riffs on Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass - latimes.com)
In early 1969, a young artist working in the Nevada desert had an idea for an epic sculpture. Michael Heizer had found a 120-ton boulder in the mountains and wanted to set it above a trench dug in a dry lake bed.
Visitors would be able to walk into the trench and look up at the giant rock, as though itwere floating overhead. It would be a means of celebrating and also updating the tradition of ancient monoliths by giving a rare view of a stone from underneath.
He called the work “Levitated Mass.”
With a small crew, he dug the trench in the lake bed, but the boulder was a problem. “We went to lift the rock up, and it broke the boom on the crane,” Heizer recalled.
Los Angeles Times, column one: Michael Heizer’s Calling is Set in Stone
When we last left The Rock, it was rolling into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at the end of an internationally televised odyssey. This week, behind cloaked chain-link fences, the two-story-high boulder crossed a much less public milestone: Under the direction of Nevada earth artist Michael Heizer, it was lowered, inch by inch, onto a long concrete trench behind the museum, taking its place in “Levitated Mass,” Heizer’s new masterpiece.
