When artist Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass—a 340-ton granite boulder perched above a cavern of “negative space”—was installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2012, the reaction of more than a few people was, “It’s just a rock. How can it be art?” Two years later, director Doug Pray presents a kind of response in his documentary Levitated Mass.
The film, now playing in L.A. and expanding to other cities soon, tracks the installation from the discovery of the boulder at a Riverside, California, quarry in 2005 to the opening of the work on LACMA’s lawn. Along the way, Pray weaves in a brief yet substantive profile of Heizer, his career as a land artist, and his first, abandoned attempt to mount Levitated Mass in 1968. The director clearly respects Heizer’s art and its impact on American culture. He speaks to museum directors, curators, and other creative types who unilaterally praise Heizer’s work and its scale. But the documentary is not an aesthetic defense of Levitated Mass. What makes Heizer’s sculpture art—indeed what’s crucial to all art—is its capacity to move people. And Pray potently captures this power—not at LACMA, but when the boulder is being transported to the museum.
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