Michael Heizer completes monumental City sculpture in Nevada desert | Hacker News Reader

Michael Heizer completes monumental City sculpture in Nevada desert

dezeen.com

12 pointsoedmarap8 comments

After looking at the linked images, I am terribly underwhelmed by the project. The only significant thing about the work is its size and honestly who cares?

What a colossal waste of time and money.

What's the point of typing out such a shallow dismissal? Are you into large-scale sculptural art? Would you know how to judge such a piece of art in general? If it's about the size, have you seen it in person to know the effect it has on you? It's called City. Did you consider the implications of that? Maybe the emptiness of it is the point?

This is like a "modern art bad" reddit comment.

There's been a tendency in the art world in the last 50 years or so to defend every work and dismiss any criticism as someone not knowing what they are talking about or being a philistine. Yet it is also widely accepted that the entire field of visual arts has been in a malaise for quite some time.

There are failures in every walk of life, yet no one in the art world can accept that a work of art can be a failure. I think this mentality is partly responsible for the general decline in the public perception of modern art.

I've seen enough, I don't need to see anymore to tell you it's bad.

> This is like a "modern art bad" reddit comment.

No, not exactly, it’s an opinion. If the art is in essence a critique on “what is a city”, critiques of the installation itself as “what is art” is equally fair game.

> Would you know how to judge such a piece of art in general?

How is this a fair question? Would Heizer know how to judge a city?

Makes me wonder if there were persons like these in Mayan and Aztec society who created a random, huge art piece that archaeologists are today puzzled by.

As I understand it, this is awe inspiring when experienced in real life. Pictures just don't do it justice, or so I am told.

a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32529260

Reply on news.ycombinator.com