Double Negative

 art -(to be removed, see EN descr.), earthwork (archaeology)

A site specific sculture by Michael Heizer and Heizer's first prominent "earthwork."

Double Negative consists of two trenches cut into the eastern edge of the Mormon Mesa in 1969-70.
The trenches line up across a large gap formed by the natural shape of the mesa edge. Including this open area across the gap, the trenches together measure 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 30 feet wide.
240,000 tons of rock, mostly rhyolite and sandstone, were displaced in the construction of the trenches.
Double Negative, though a notable piece of art, is essentially no more than a big trench (and even then, not a complete trench, as it crosses empty space). In that, it consists more of what was than what currently is. Constructing Double Negative was an act of construction only inasmuch as something was taken away, and that this removal constituted a creative act. In that the artwork is itself negative space (and when it crosses empty space, it is doubly negative space, as the title suggests), it begs meditation on the principle of art as creation, when Heizer has not in fact added but substracted.

Double Negative belongs to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through the gift of Virginia Dwan.