Michael Heizer built Double Negative in 1969-70, and in the early days eyewitnesses were sparse. Curator Jan van der Marck told the story of visiting Double Negative and Walter de Maria’s Las Vegas Piece on a Viriginia Dwan-organized junket in early 1970, blazing across the desert with German art volks in the back of Heizer’s truck.
MoMA curator Jennifer Licht seems to have gone with Heizer in November 1971, just before she made the presentation to the trustees on the museum’s acquisitions committee about Double Negative, Las Vegas Piece, and Spiral Jetty that appears in Calvin Tomkins’ 1972 New Yorker feature on earth art.
I say seems because that is the implication of the annotations on these two pieces of Michael Heizer ephemera that just turned up at auction in Los Angeles, from Licht’s collection. One, a loop of dynamite fuse taped to a sheet of paper, is labeled “Dynamite from Double Negative (from Michael Heizer)” and “Overton, Nevada November 1971.” That’s the town at the base of Mormon Mesa where Double Negative is.
The other sheet is a disparate list of items that someone (else) has annotated with, “Heizer work notes, Nevada, November 1971.”
The notes mention Montana several times: “Butte KOA [campground],” “Missoula Dept Engineering,” “Mill Creek [Trail] photos.” Heizer traveled and scouted sites for works in Montana, but the closest thing to a direct work reference is “NESW,” which is also the name of an earth work he planned in 1967, partially executed in the desert with funding from Robert Scull, and then realized in full in 2002 at Dia Beacon; it’s his set of holes in the floor. Except for being annotated as from Nevada, their connection to Double Negative seems unclear to me, especially as work notes for a work that’d been done for almost two years by that point.
[a few minutes later update] greg.org hero Julian Myers notes that Goplen & Yokoyama were Heizer’s engineers in Berkeley, and “NESW blues” could be blueprints, which was calling to get “one copy to me.” Myers also recalls a possible second round of excavation at Double Negative after the initial late 1969 phase. But Tomkins and Virginia Dwan visited it “a year and a half since the piece was finished,” so the summer of 1971, and found erosion and some graffiti. Perhaps after this visit, and after thwarting Dwan’s sale of the work, Heizer (and Licht?) went back to touch it up with some dynamite.
Also, did anyone dare to ask the artist if they are works? They sure are objects, artifacts, ephemera. And if they’re what they appear to be, they are incredible, exceptional, and—until they’re sold—invaluable.
18 Aug 2026 Lot 143, Michael Heizer, Double Negative Working Notes and Blasting Fuse (two works), est. $3-5,000 [lamodern]
Previously, related: A report from the Las Vegas Piece junket
Walter De Maria’s Las Vegas Piece
Backroads Backstory: Walter De Maria on Michael Heizer
Double Double, on Sturtevant’s Heizer Double Negative