While the counterculture’s back-to-the-land dreams proved fleeting, a group of ’60s artists pursuing a radical vision had better luck, journeying west to create convention-defying Earthworks. Known for his hermitlike practice, Michael Heizer is one of the genre’s biggest names.
After years working on a sort of futurist Tikal in the Nevada desert, Heizer here offers huge boulders levitated into wall niches, and monumental, painted-steel platforms supporting contoured forms. The last resemble bones, and given their title, “Altars,” they suggest sacrificial offerings: an apt metaphor for an artist who’s given everything for his art.—Howard Halle