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It's said that New Yorkers rarely, if ever, visit the Statue of Liberty — as if proximity to a beloved landmark makes the locals forget what a big deal it is.
Utahns have a similar relationship with a major landmark, a human-made piece of art history that Gretchen Dietrich, executive director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, calls "one of the most important art works made in the 20th century in the world. Top 10, no question."
That creation is Spiral Jetty, the massive rock formation created at the northern edge of Great Salt Lake in 1970 by artist Robert Smithson.
Spiral Jetty is perhaps the best-known example of the Land Art movement, a period during the 1960s and '70s, primarily, where a group of adventurous artists escaped the strictures of gallery space to create massive works that connected with and became part of their natural surroundings.
In the late '60s and early '70s, Dietrich said, "Land Art was the dominant movement and genre of art being made, definitely in America and other parts of the world as well."
The Land Art movement, which left behind major works around the western United States, gets its due in a new documentary, "Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art." The film premieres this weekend and is making its way across the country. The Utah Film Center has scheduled four screenings around the state this month — including one Saturday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, part of UMFA's Long Live Art! kickoff party that marks the start of the museum's yearlong renovation project.
"Troublemakers" profiles several of the artists at the forefront of the Land Art movement, with particular focus on three major works by three artists: Smithson's Spiral Jetty; Michael Heizer's Double Negative, an artificial gorge cut into a mesa in Nevada; and Walter de Maria's The Lightning Field, a 400-acre expanse with metal rods pointed to the New Mexico sky.
The film's director, James Crump, said "Troublemakers" arrives at a perfect time, because the art world is in a similar state as it was when the Land Art movement began.
So much of artmaking today "is chiefly about objects," Crump said in a phone interview this week. "There's so much conversation in today's art world about value, and the sheer sums of cash that are being thrown at young artists, and the financial aspects of acquisitions, and treating art as if it's a new kind of investable asset class."
In contrast, the Land Art makers he profiles "were making works of art that really couldn't be possessed, per se," Crump said. "They couldn't be shown in galleries, they couldn't be shown in museums. They really were unobtainable that way."
In the film, Crump quotes Heizer — the only one of the three major artists still alive — who called works of Land Art "an obligation," something to be watched over and left alone, like a bird refuge or a national park.
These artists intended their works to become part of nature and be affected by it. "If you look really closely at Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, they were making works with nature in mind," Crump said.
Take, for example, Heizer's Double Negative, in which he carved a gouge at two sides of Mormon Mesa in Nevada — leaving negative space in between. When the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles bought the land on which Double Negative was made, one of Heizer's stipulations was that the museum would not try to conserve or protect the work. Instead, it would be left to the forces of erosion.
Another example is what has happened over 45 years to Spiral Jetty. When Smithson built it in April 1970, the rocks were above the water line. Then the water rose, and the jetty was submerged for three decades. For most of this century, the water has fallen and risen to expose and cover the rocks. For the past few years, because of drought, the jetty and its surrounding area have been dry, the rocks now pink with encrusted salt.
"All of these earth events that are affecting the Spiral Jetty are ones that I think that Robert Smithson would have enjoyed, and he would have welcomed," Crump said. "It gets to the aspect of entropy and decay, things that were driving him for years before he made that piece."
Smithson died in 1973, in a small plane crash while surveying a site for a Land Art project near Amarillo, Texas. His wife, Nancy Holt, who chronicled Spiral Jetty's creation on film, went on to create her own Land Art works — most famously Sun Tunnels (1973-76), in the remote desert of Box Elder County, north of the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Crump said he hopes viewers will take from "Troublemakers" a sense of the artists of the Land Art movement and "their spirit and their sense of risk-taking." He also hopes those artists will inspire today's artists to think bigger.
"There are some very well-known contemporary artists who are considering working out in the open space," Crump said. "I think they will carry the mantle and surprise us with something really ambitious and something that leaves a huge impression."
Twitter: @moviecricket —
'Troublemakers' across Utah
The Utah Film Center has scheduled four free screenings of the documentary "Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art" around the state this month:
Wednesday, Peery's Egyptian Theatre, 2415 Washington Blvd., Ogden.
Thursday, Viridian Event Center, 8030 S. 1825 West, West Jordan.
Saturday, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 410 Campus Center Drive, University of Utah campus, Salt Lake City. (This screening is part of UMFA's Long Live Art! kickoff party, to mark the beginning of its yearlong renovation project.)
Thursday, Jan. 21, Star Hall, 159 E. Center St., Moab.
All screenings begin at 7 p.m.