Instagram Finally Discovers the Meaning Behind LACMA’s Levitated Mass
LACMA’s Levitated Mass has been one of the art world’s most perplexing pieces since its installation in 2012. Art critics have struggled with it, museums have mocked it and it may have made at least one artist temporarily lose his mind. But recently, Levitated Mass’s Instagram fans may have stumbled on its true meaning and turned it into a social media star.
For a professional appreciator of art, sculptor Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass can be hard to wrap your head around. For starters, it does not actually levitate. What’s even more confounding? Heizer’s 1982 Levitated Mass does, dutifully, outside the IBM building on Madison Avenue: a long rectangular section of boulder hovering perpetually under the rushing water underneath.
But a structural oversight on the Heizer’s 2012 Levitated Mass left this boulder, this time 340 tons, sitting rather than levitating. It’s bulk is visibly aided by metal struts that made it’s Wikipedia article quip succinctly, “With the addition of the support shelves, the illusion does not occur.”
And, technically, without said levitation it is just a Mass; a Mass that cost museum donors $10 million dollars to transport it a highly-publicized 105 miles from quarry to museum front, wrapped in high-count Egyptian cotton.
Art critics have struggled with exactly what to say about it. One Los Angeles Times writer thought an instruction manual would be best and penned “How to look at Michael Heizer’s giant rock at LACMA” and suggested perhaps taking it in from far away, or maybe from safely inside LACMA surrounded by exhibits.
Other museums poked fun. French museum Observatoire du Land Art moved 340 grams of dust around in a toy dump truck to “echo” Levitated Mass’ journey to LACMA. The Aspen Art Museum commissioned a one-half scale helium balloon replica of Levitated Mass’s central boulder called “Levitating Mass.”
One artist, after contemplating Levitated Mass at length one night, was driven to dress up like a museum guard, glue on a fake mustache and graffiti “Help I’m a rock” on its side. When Museum officials at LACMA asked him why — he had signed his name to the piece and was fairly easy to track down — he said voices had “selected” him to “help the rock express itself” and “let the boulder unburden itself of its pent up sorrow.” The police decided not to press charges and expressed concern for his mental health.
Levitated Mass’ creator, has had little to say about any of the criticism other than to assert that, “I rarely explain or comment on my work.” And in that vacuum, critics and artists have struggled. But while Levitated Mass may not be a critical success, its Instagram fans have given it something even more modern: social media success.
Outside of art circles, outside of LACMA where the Levitated Mass features frequently on lists of free things to do in LA, no one seems concerned about Levitated Mass’s back story. And freed from all of its baggage, Levitated Mass is enjoying a new incarnation as an Instagram star.
The hashstag #LevitatedMass features dozens of people positioning themselves with forced perspective and pretending to hold it up. Toddlers do it, couples do it, and even groups of school children crouch underneath it and pretend to strain under its weight.
And the Levitated Mass doesn’t just get support. Some people prefer to jump over it like giants…
Squish it between their fingers like a Kids in the Hall sketch,
Or let their pets get in on the action.
Some simply pull faces of mock disbelief at 680,000 pounds of rock, the best approximation of modern wonder on a social media service where you can scroll past the pyramids and the Sphinx without even switching hashtags.
One man Photoshopped it so beautifully that there’s nothing for it but to stop and contemplate its levity all over again.
En masse, alternatively crouching and squinting and bending for the perfect short, Levitated Mass’s fans don’t look entirely unlike the spectators of the monolith in Space Odyssey 2001. And Michael Heizer has taken us all back in time, to a place of wonder that originates somewhere deeper and earlier than art criticism or language itself. Metal supports or no, Levitated Mass is one of the largest megaliths moved since ancient times. And that is awe-inspiring in itself. And there’s magic in watching the mass even if it’s not captured in art history books but on Instagram.
