The desert described by Michael Heizer's land art

The landscapes of dunes, bare towering peaks, rock formations and smooth canyons that distinguish deserts could simply be described by referring to the words of National Geographic. Precisely, the well-known American magazine identifies the aforementioned expanse of arid terrain as a specific ecosystem, which, despite being marked by infrequent rainfall and extreme temperatures, is actually animated by a great variety of flora and fauna, whose peculiarities and lifestyles, well adapt to the aforementioned climatic "sterility." In fact, plants usually grow widely spaced in order to access as much water as possible, while animals escape the heat by digging cool burrows in the ground, places where they rest during the day, in order to be able to procure food during the cooler night. This exhaustive account of a purely scientific nature can be enriched by an art-historical perspective, offered to us by the land art of Michael Heizer, an American master who, in the late 1960s, left New York to travel to the deserts of California and Nevada, where he began to produce large-scale works, documenting them with film and photographic exhibitions. It was precisely in such arid contexts that works such as Double Negative (1969-79) and The City (1972-2022) were born, in which the stylistic features of Heizer, whose artistic investigation is characterized by a passion for ancient civilizations, the rhythm between positive and negative volumes, jumps in elevation, changes in scale, the predominant use of natural materials, and the choice of desert or very low-density housing locations, clearly emerge. Speaking of Double Negative, this land art work represents the first major enterprise of the said master, consisting of two trenches dug on the eastern edge of Mormon Mesa (Overton, Nevada). Therefore, such "sculpture" is the result of an act of pure subtraction, which was accomplished through the use of explosives and heavy equipment, having the purpose of creating two geometric carvings in the earth, which, able to be explored by viewers, reveal the landscape through the contemplation of art. As a result, the audience of Double Negative is stimulated to consider the existing relationship between the earth and creativity, but also to reflect on the trivial human attempt to impose its will on the environment, as the land art work, subject to change or disappear over time, demonstrates all the precariousness of human intervention. As for The City, on the other hand, such a sculptural complex represents one of the world's largest works of art, which, begun in 1970 and completed in 2022, is located in a vast area of remote Lincoln County, located within the arid Nevada desert. This monumental work is composed of earthen mounds, concrete pyramids and hieroglyphics, aimed at generating an "ideal" city whose intent is to "actualize" pre-Columbian and Egyptian constructions. In fact, Heizer's creation makes explicit reference to the cultural heritage of Luxor (Egypt), but also to that of Yucatan, a place where the artist certainly drew inspiration from Mayan constructions and, in particular, from the Chichen Itza archaeological complex. Such "sources" allowed the American to combine the great tradition of the cities of the past with a more modern, minimalist and industrialized point of view, rendered through the conception of constructions made through the use of basic materials, which, such as clay, sand and rock, were harvested by minimally invasive means, in order to leave native plants and wildlife undisturbed, in keeping with the most ancient purpose of land art.

Suren Nersisyan, Saguaro cactuses in the desert, 2022. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 61 cm.

Yaël Moon, Venus V, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm.

The Desert: from land art to painting and sculpture

In the above-mentioned narrative, the topicality of the desert was narrated through the point of view of land art, a contemporary art form born in the United States during the 1960s, which abandoned the confines of the traditional pictorial and sculptural medium in order to work directly on the land, generating creations in monumental format, made through the use of natural materials and elements, having the purpose of constructing a work in the landscape and with the landscape. Upstream of this ideology is also a fundamental concept: man acts on the landscape, which is constantly changing, in order to recognize and demonstrate all the ephemerality of his actions. Despite the permanence of these points of view, the most contemporary interpreters of land art have progressively interacted with the landscape in increasingly personal ways, that is, sometimes using materials not present in the place where they were operating. In any case, not only the works of the aforementioned art form are created for the purpose of celebrating a specific place; in fact, the paintings and sculptures of Artmajeur artists have also told the story of the desert, as evidenced by the views of Petra Ackermann, Andrey Gorenkov, and Artūras Tamašauskas.

Aurelia Steffanetti, Don't touch, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

Daria Kamishanova, Blooming cactus, 2020. Watercolor on paper, 30 x 21 cm.

Petra Ackermann, Desert storm, 2010. Oil painting, 80 x 80 cm.

Petra Ackermann: Desert Storm

Ackermann's painting takes us to one of the best-known symbols of the western United States, namely Monument Valley (Utah), a desert plateau of fluvial origin, characterized by spires formed of rock and sand, having the shape of reddish-colored towers, intended to represent the oldest witnesses of erosion phenomena. In the same state, another creative narrative took shape, namely that of Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt, aimed at highlighting the luminous peculiarities of the landscape of the Great Basins Desert (Utah), a place marked by wide valleys bordered by parallel mountain ranges, generally oriented in a north-south direction. Precisely in this context, the American artist wanted to place four concrete cylinders, which arranged in the shape of an open cross and aligned so as to frame the sun on the horizon during the summer and winter solstices, pursue the purpose of uniting the earth and the sky in a single dimension, having art as a reference point. Indeed, it is only the latter that Holt believes is capable of occupying a stable position within a wasteland, where even man cannot settle, except for very brief fragments of time.

Andrey Gorenkov, Rhinoceros full of clouds, 2020. Oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm.

Andrey Gorenkov: A Rhinoceros Full of Clouds

The poetic title of Gorenkov's work is a perfect introduction to the artist's surreal world, within which, in a desert landscape similar to that of the aforementioned Monument Valley, an optical phenomenon takes place, justified by the painter as a powerful mirage caused by the heated desert air. In fact, the painting is characterized by the "light and transparent" vision of a rhinoceros, an animal whose body allows a glimpse of some mountains, part of a landscape akin to the "main" landscape of the work. In the history of art, an important surreal tale has taken place within a desert landscape; in fact, in Salvador Dali's The Elephants (1948), two animals with very long and thin legs advance from the sides of the painting toward the center, moving in an extremely arid and very low-density residential context, where we find only two human figures, who seem to be going towards each other. Precisely, the aforementioned elephants, having obelisks on their backs, turn out to be a recurring subject in the Spaniard's work, found in other masterpieces, such as, for example, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee (1944) and The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946). Finally, the physical peculiarities of such mammals allude to the contrast between robustness and fragility, while the obelisks appear to be a clear reference by Dali to the work of Italian master Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Artūras Tamašauskas, Cactus, 2018. Metal and aluminum sculpture, 40 x 30 x 22 cm / 2.50 kg.

Artūras Tamašauskas: Cactus

Typical desert vegetation consists of xerophilous plants, life forms that prefer an arid environment because their leaves, lacking chlorophyll, are able to withstand long periods of drought and retain water in the presence of moisture. Succulent plants, such as the cactus, the undisputed symbol of desert flora, are capable of storing large amounts of water in the stem or hypogeal organs, as well as eliminating excessive transpiration in hard, impermeable tissues. These peculiarities, together with the peculiar and sympathetic aesthetics of the said plant, have made the cactus an extremely popular subject, both in fashion and in art and design, where it is considered to be allusive to extremely profound values, predominantly centered on its ability to adapt, a virtue necessary in the presence of hostile situations, such as adverse conditions in which such a plant manages to thrive. The Artmajeur artist's work, probably inspired by the aforementioned meanings, brings to mind Franco Mello and Guido Drocco's iconic Cactus, a design object made for Gufram in 1972, which, although conceived as a clothes hanger, represents a "totem" and, at the same time, a "sculpture." Just such a Cactus, like Artmajeur's, presents itself as an ironic, curious, playful and irreverent object with a rather developed emotional and communicational functionality.