Posted on 01/29/2006 8:32:24 PM PST by woofie
Gage Hotel, Marathon.
Hmmm. Both Midland and El Paso are less than 200 miles away. They have to have at least one latte bar.
Modern art is all about artist communicating with other artists and ignoring the public.
Art USED to be about artists communicating with other human beings. But like architects, modern artists have to prove that their expensive education makes them smarter than everyone else. Doing so by taking on something truly unique--like making something beautiful that is also original enough so it can withstand the critical brickbats of the New York art set--is too much of a challenge.
So they go for the easy task of making something that's merely different. I can say "OK, I've never seen anything like this before"--but so what? Originality for its own sake is useless. Something both original AND beautiful? Now THAT is the test of a true artist.
I'd have to take a long time to give you some examples of living artists whose works are both uniqe AND beautiful.
Marfa was also a racehorse of the 80s, opr was it the 70s/
Is post 9 a Dan Flavin? His work is there too? I do like his play of color.
I can understand Judd's feeling that his works might not be shown as he envisioned them at most museums. But the work seems a bit repetitious in the images of Marfa that I've seen. It might be a cool experience to see the pieces echoing down the hall, reflecting each other. But I just don't see a deeper meaning in Minimal Art beyond the experience.
Care to enlighten me?
This is what my stepmom says about what's going on in Marfa (so you get a local opinion):
The Prada is not a store. It is a false display window. Sitting in a cow pasture LOL!!! with no safe place to stop or pull off of the Highway 90. It is vandalized about every 2 weeks. Even though there is only left shoes there and all the purses are stripped of all insides and unusable. Very highly published fact but they still keep tearing up the building and taking the showy trash. It between Valentine and Van Horn. 46 miles from Marfa. Only about 30 miles from Van Horn. Weird, very weird the entire thing.
Ballroom Marfa!! HAHA!!! Everyone thought that someone was opening a place to go dancing and drink. Where there would be bands that were not "Mexican country players." Nope it is a gallery. With paintings that look like they were done by drunk monkeys that were not allowed to go to the bathroom until it was all finished.
Lots of people coming out here with much more money than good sense. If they need to make money, they won't. But that is of course only my opinion.
Think Zen and throw in some leftover yoga...
Which? Do you mean the diner scene or one of the others was at the Gage?
Posted too quickly ! I believe the Gage was where some of the cast stayed.
Funny, I don't think of Marfa as near the Mexican border, but I guess in the greater scheme of things, it is. I think of it as "near Alpine."
When you say "near the border," I think of Presidio or Lajitas or Langtry, in that neck of the woods.
Oh, I see. I found a good article this morning while googling around, trying to find out where some of the scenes were shot. It was by a film person, written a few days before the opening of the movie in 1956.
It mentioned the Paisano Hotel in Marfa as the headquarters, but didn't say much of anything about other scenes--just that the Big House was built on a rancher's land and was just half-house, pretty much. Became a fancy barn when the movie production shut down.
I've never been that far out, only to Marathon a few times and Alpine twice, that I can remember (a couple of other times as a kid, which I don't remember). So, I was not among the thousands who got to watch the movie being made on-location. They had grandstands erected and several hundred people got to watch each day as they were shooting. They shot with live, wild sound, which was unheard of at the time. Most of the interior shots were back at Warner Bros. studio lot, though.
When they wrapped up production and showed the uncut film in L.A. for the cast and crew in 1955, James Dean was finally "let loose" and went tearing out, headed to a stock car race he was entered in. Died the next day in the famous car wreck.
I loved when everyone flew in to the little Jett Rink Airport for the hotel opening. I lived at the time just a couple of miles straight down the road from the real "63-shades-of-green" Shamrock Hilton and thought this was all true-to-life and the way it all happened just a few years before, lol. (I was a grade-schooler.)
You're close compared to most...It is close to Alpine. Not too far from Ft. Davis.
But it is close to the border there. And when you look at the map of the county, Marfa is sort of at the edge of things.
I like the area. Hoping next year to get over and visit my Dad who lives about 65 miles away from Alpine.
Other words of wisdom from my stepmother. Now you know she's not looking at it like I might, cause I think if things between Marfa and Ft. Davis and Alpine get better, it'll be good for the people who live there unless they price it out of the kazoo, and I expect if that happened, the limiting factor of how many people could end up there would be water. As it is, El Paso's scrambling for water they would like to take out of that area.
anyway, this is what she told me today:
Marfa is 76 miles from I 10. 250 miles from Midland - Odessa. 190 miles from El Paso. However there is plenty of drive through tourist going to Big Bend. It has been my experience that they are traveling on pinched pennies and not buying art in the galleries.
She may or may not be right.
Anyway, I get much of my inspiration (I"m a writer) from illustration, have more books of book illustrations (SF,fantasy generally) than many artists I know. I asked my friend why illustration is looked down by "artists".
Over the years we have revisited the question, but he frequently comes back to the same answer. "Norman Rockwell was an illustrator, and his subject matter appealed to the average person, who is precisely what many artists DON'T want to be. They want to distinguish themselves, make a scandal."
95% of the contemporary art I own and love is illustration. So you ARE an artist.
But we, the viewer, see that they're sleeping in the open land, under the stars. A very cool moment in a terrific movie. (If you've seen it I have a few words for you: "Your parachute didn't open!")
Well, other than passing through on the way to CA a few times as a very young person, all my experience in that little corner of heaven was on the way from Dallas to Terlingua and on the way back to Dallas from Terlingua, three times.
It was a ritual to go in one way, through Marathon and come out a different way, through Alpine. We'd meet the Houston and San Angelo contingent in Marathon and then there is a special totem to the chili gods in a trailer park on the way into town - I believe it's at Study Butte, but seems like it's earlier than that - that we had to stop and kiss and give offerings to.
After that, coming back out was just a matter of seeing different breath-taking scenery on the way back to Monahans and points east. No one would ever take me to Marfa or go with me if I was driving, although I always begged.
I haven't seen that, but now I guess I'll have to! Thanks--I did read about it in my googling today.
I haven't been there too much myself, but my dad fell in love with the area after going to a star party in the Ft Davis area and moved out there first chance he got.
I kid him that he moved out there cause it's over a hundred miles to the nearest Walmart, a place he used to visit much too often back in Houston and in Irving.
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