Posted on 01/29/2006 8:32:24 PM PST by woofie
MARFA, Texas— Rolling southeast on Highway 90 from El Paso, the telephone polls blur into the horizon, white antelope tails bob near ranchers' water troughs and one Prada shoe and handbag store blurs by.
The shoe store is the first inkling that Marfa, Texas, isn't like the rest of the small towns that dot the highway to Big Bend.
One part Taos circa 1980, one part hipster New York arena, and one part dusty West Texas town, it's become almost embarrassing for an art aficionado to have not been there.
"(Marfa) has been in Paris Vogue, Dwell, New York Times and every contemporary magazine and newspaper you can think of," said Marfa art gallery owner Ree Willaford. "Anyone who's into art or design and architecture knows about it. Or should."
In the 1970s minimalist art savant Donald Judd made his home on these rolling plains of the high Chihuahuan desert. Unobstructed by the tall buildings, smog and congestion of New York, he was allowed to make his work in quiet solitude.
"That was the point," said Marfa gallery owner and ex-New Mexican, Dennis Dickinson. "Three hours across the Chihuahuan desert slows you down."
Judd was, as the story goes, tired of seeing how art galleries in New York, Los Angeles and other places showed his work. His large minimalist constructions— boxes, ladders and furniture— didn't look right when they were cramped up against gallery walls or poorly displayed in a museum.
So, said Nick Terry of the Chinati Foundation, which oversees the work these days, Judd went in search of a place that he could show his work in, a place that would be large and cool enough to do it justice.
He found Marfa.
With the help of the Dia Foundation of New York, Judd bought 340 acres of a former U.S. Army base.
Desert mecca
It's become an art destination for hipsters. And, like hipsters are want to do, the art elite has brought minimalist art galleries, hip hotels and gourmet restaurants that have started to sprout like the yucca in the desert.
Galleries like Ballroom Marfa, exhibitions 2d Marfa and others are gaining international reputations for important and interesting art shows.
Judd felt at home here, at home to make his groundbreaking art away from, ironically, those same art hipsters.
Even at extra-legal speeds, it's still a three-hour drive from El Paso. Then, all of a sudden, near the hamlet of Valentine, Texas (a town of 200 that's only claim to fame is its postmark), the Prada Marfa blurs by.
It's the perfect introduction to the art world of Marfa.
The replica of a Prada shoe store is an art piece, a site-specific permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen & Dragset. Built in October 2005, the store, of course, has been vandalized. Now repaired, it's set to sit the rest of days on this dusty highway. Prada Marfa was funded by the Art Production Fund and Ballroom Marfa.
Sure, some elements of this whole thing seem bizarre. Really, what do you do with a fake shoe store (that only has left-footed shoes) in the middle of nowhere?
Bright lights, small town
The only thing on the horizon is the mysterious Marfa Lights, a phenomenon that some say are distant car lights, but others say are ghostlike mysterious burning fireballs that have been reported in the area since the late 1800s.
"I never believed in them until I saw one, bright as the sun, run along the fence line," said Boyd Elder, a Marfa local and artist.
Marfa is one of the epicenters of the new art world, an irreverent yet serious art world that embraces projects like the Prada Marfa.
One visit to the Chinati Foundation, which maintain's the old Army base full of work by Judd and his friends, and you'll get it.
Step into the Dan Flavin hallways lit with fluorescent tubes, or the bizarre world of John Chamberlain's crushed cars and you'll understand that this isn't any Canyon Road.
Every October the town fills to the brim, doubling its size to more than 4,000, when the Chinati Foundation hosts its open house. Last year the band Yo La Tengo played at a run-down hotel.
But the new Marfa is at odds with the little town where Coors is still $2 a can at Ray's Bar.
Maybe the Loteria de Marfa says it all.
In the Brown Recluse coffee shop, near the used books and cowboy boots, the poster of the Mexican loteria card game with a Marfa twist shows "El Abogodo," or lawyer, "Un Otro Abogodao," and "El amigo de Abogado," all wearing suits, bolo ties and cowboy boots in the tongue-in-cheek version of the child's game in the local coffee shop.
Some locals don't like the changes.
"Well, there's going to be people who don't like change no matter what's going on," Willaford said.
The changes have made property values go through the roof and caused a stir about carpetbagging hipsters moving into the quaint ranches and adobes around town.
The word "chinazi" is sometimes thrown around.
Hipster hotels, with Santa Fe-priced rooms like mod The Thunderbird have replaced the old-fashioned hotels that used to line the streets of town.
Boots and books
The center of the town's activity seems to be the Marfa Book Co., an art-book store and coffee shop that must be the only place within 300 miles that you can get soy latte. Its modern furniture and bright colors are at odds with the rest of the town's brow and gray buildings. But there are still remnants of the old town. For example, vintage boots for sale at the thrift store Downtown are $12, while a coffee shop is fetching three times that for unshined boots up the street.
Today, two of the highest-profile galleries in Marfa are run by ex-New Mexicans.
Dennis Dickinson owns what could be the most Juddlike gallery in town, exhibitions 2d Marfa, which specializes in minimalist work.
His gallery, an old house that was painted white, has an assortment of simple art and high-dollar furniture that would look at home in SoHo.
"Certainly," Dickinson said, "the bigger numbers are Texans and Americans, but there are quite a number of people from around the world. There was a Japanese woman in (the gallery) a few weeks ago who was doing her dissertation on Judd's furniture."
"The work I sell here," and he sells quite a bit, he said, "is what my old boss would call 'unsalable art.' ''
A lifelong Judd fan, Dickinson once wrote a nasty letter to the Los Angeles County Museum because a Judd sculpture was dusty.
The other is Galleri Urbane, owned by Jason and Ree Willaford, who fled Silver City last year.
"(Silver City) sort of ended up getting worse instead of better, that's how we ended up in Marfa," she said. For the annual Chinati open house the Willafords rented a small gallery space in 2004. The work— much of it by New Mexican artists like Peter Vofheski and Suzanne Sbarge and Jason Willaford— sold.
"We slept in back. We had coolers of food. It was definitely the guerrilla gallery. We sold a lot of work and didn't know we would," she said. "We had a great time and met a lot of great people."
Not long after that, the Willafords moved to Marfa.
"You know it's funny," she said. "It's really good in Marfa."
I think that illustrators are looked down on by modern artists simply because illustrators actually know how to draw and paint, something that modern artists usually are not too good at.
Modern artists somehow think that is more noble to prostitute oneself to the art world with incomprehensible mediocrity than it is to learn true skills and make something that you can sell to the public.
My 2 cents, anyway.
I admit to liking 3, 4, and 9. At least I like the photographs of them.
When soldiers came home, when the Baby Boom happened, and then Vietnam, there was a massive cultural shift. Now paperback books were junk, while the REAL writers were supposed to write New Journalism; movies weren't to entertain, they were to slap you around and shatter your perceptions about the world.
Don't get me wrong--I love plenty of the products of the late-20th century era of "relevence"...but that's just the problem with art--since the mid-century in New York (check out Tom Wolfe's writing about this), art was looked at in this new era as something that was either one of the building blocks for cultural change or junk.
Someone working in the illustrative traditions of American magazines and pop art--Maxfield Parish or Rockwell--was not going to be capable of bring art out of the decorative tradition and bring it into this new age of "meaningful" art. That "old fashioned" art was actually just unpretentious art--the artists knew they weren't changing the world with their paintings. But they were part of the old that had to be cast aside, in favor of art that would be a blow against oppression and all the other stuff the artists' boho friends were into.
The first of these moldy "old" traditions to go had to be representation, which to these young turks had been corrupted by its common availability in entertainment magazines. Worse, it was available to MOM AND DAD!!! , the eternal enemies of the young turks. And since good and bad and all that "moral" crap was really silly, when these artists knew the world was gray, they certainly couldn't be painting purely illustrative visions of the real world as it was.
So if you knock off the most basic illustrative idea--this painted thing represents this real life object--what are you left with?
Nothing. Literally--when you discard the use of illustration, then the artist is free to create his or her own language...
...which of course means that since you've dropped the visual language EVERYONE knows, and you invent your own language, then NO ONE, naturally, knows what you're saying.
The true mark of success? No one (the public) "gets" your stuff. (I often think of Woody Allen, who decided Hannah and Her Sisters was a failure...because it made more money than his movies usually did.) The young artist gets bad reviews from The Man, his parents don't understand him--YES! SUCCESS! He high-fives his fellow artists, who also make this expressionist stuff that has to be translated, not appreciated.
And the only people used to reading this stuff and getting this are those others who do the same thing. The art as an aesthetic object is gone, replaced by what politics the artist has and then expresses in this art, which only those who think like he does enjoy seeing (because they already agree with what he's saying).
Have you ever noticed that whenever a book, or record, or movie is touted as "controversial" or "challenging" in the MSM it is NEVER something with a conservative point of view?
This stuff is never challenging to liberals...because all of this stuff is merely supporting the liberal orthodoxy. It's ironic how the libs are so quick to call others on propaganda, when all of their art merely supports their point of view.
And that's all modern art is now. The artists turn their back on the mainstream they loathe (because they never grew out of their useful rebellion, which is a phase one needs to pass through before making one's own decisions about what's right and wrong) and merely talk to other people who think just like them.
As opposed to just making something beautiful. Which is a lot harder than making something ugly that is valued because it supports someone's ideology.
I don't really think that art has ever been confined to decoration, over the centuries, starting right with cave art, it's served lots of purposes, with religion probably being the main one, politics second perhaps. And history has always been dominated by war and horror, though it's hard to argue that horror did not reach a peak with WWII.
In any case, I don't think I can dispute that modern art goes hand in hand with the cultural shift of the second half of the 20th century (though arguably modern art began with the Impressionist rebellion against the Academy), however we may account for that shift. I do distrust on principle those who wish to shape any sort of "shift" that's taking place, since they generally wish to include others in that "shift" whether the others want to be shifted or not.
RE midcentury art, I'm usually more inclined to enjoy the architecture, furniture, household and industrial art of the era, all of which are constrained by serving practical functions, than I do the so called "fine" art. I have a copy of "Painted Word," probably I should get it out again.
"So if you knock off the most basic illustrative idea--this painted thing represents this real life object--what are you left with?"
Yeah, agreed. I notice that the art departments at my alma mater, UM, along with the one at the other university in town, FIU, seem to be in some decline. Not surprising when one considers that a decision had been made not to teach actual skills any longer. You start to wonder why they bother with an art department, and in fact it seems that the powers that be at those universities have been wondering the same thing.
"It's ironic how the libs are so quick to call others on propaganda, when all of their art merely supports their point of view.
Also ironic to me is that once one has made the decision to abandon skills and technique, the end result is often obsession with the very thing that was meant to be abandoned, technique. It's interesting to note that many of the more well know representational artists, while acknowledging the importance of accuracy, warn against over concentration on technique.
"And that's all modern art is now. The artists turn their back on the mainstream they loathe (because they never grew out of their useful rebellion, which is a phase one needs to pass through before making one's own decisions about what's right and wrong) and merely talk to other people who think just like them.
Another irony is that in the art world, they are no longer the counter culture, they are the mainstream.
For myself, I agree, I'd like art to be something beautiful along with having the ability to evoke emotion and feeling.
RP, would you like to comment on this discussion, I know you might have a different viewpoint?
Darkwolf said: Art is still seen as decorative, as something "extra,"
Actually, that's been the American attitude towards art since the Puritans arrived. As a cheap Yankee, I have to say the only pieces of art in our house are the ones we inherited and what I make (which rotate quite a bit). Every now and then I buy a new piece. But there are millions of people out there. What is on their walls? Framed museum posters?
Tom Wolfe's writing is wonderful: we do The Painted Word in my Art Criticism class, but quite often students don't get the humor of it.
My feeling is that much of the wilder, crazier (shall we say "Steve Martin"?) art is becoming the academy. There is so much (often awful) installation work around; it's ubiquitous and empty.
My problem with illustration is that it often doesn't reach far into content, or meaning. (Same could be said of the new installation work as well.) Rockwell had some pieces that went deeper than the surface, but often they are amusing and that's about it. There is a love of honest brushwork, since the late 19th century, that has a great deal to do with the "quality" of art. The trouble is, there's a great deal of schlocky brushwork too; and more often than not, viewers don't know the difference.
Part of the problem is the lack of art education. The arts, and education of it, are seen as unnecessary. But the arts are a part of us as humans, and I see it as essential that we learn what was expressed in the past and how to judge the forms and content of it: from Beethoven to Pollock. Then people can make their own informed decisions.
Like Darkwolf, I see a lack of originality. There is nothing more lacking in originality than postmodernism. What an empty, pointless recycling of %#&@, but if supported with like-wise pointless, wordy criticism, collectors will feel intimidated and will probably buy it. And then the Smiths have to buy what the Jones' bought, regardless of how much they like it or how little it means.
Since the camera was invented, I don't have a great love of realistic work that is so busy replicating the "real" world that there are few personal touches within it. I really like abstraction and all its variations on a continuum: from almost "realistic" to completely non-objective (like Mondrain). The possibilities are endless.
I actually think that we may be entering a period of synthesis, much like that of Giotto and Masaccio. It took artists about 100 to understand and move beyond the work of Giotto. Perhaps the same could be said to be true of the early 20th century: from Expressionism and Cubism to Abstract Expressionism.
I hope to see more truly creative abstraction with deeply human content. I see it sometimes in the work of Elizabeth Murray, Anselm Kiefer, Melvin Edwards, Martin Puryear and others.
arkwolf said: Art is still seen as decorative, as something "extra," Actually, that's been the American attitude towards art since the Puritans arrived.
Yes. My point being, that's what the po-mo crowd were rebelling against, and it's something that STILL infects the art schools.
I think the same can be said of any genre of artwork, truthfully. I tend to like illustration, for whatever reason. Of course, it should reflect whatever is being illustrated, but that doesn't necessarily confine it to shallowness.
"Like Darkwolf, I see a lack of originality.
I think that's fairly inevitable at some level, not everyone can invent the wheel. But I notice in figure drawing classes that everyone's work looks very different, even though it's all of the same model, so I also think that originality is pretty much inevitable.
But I also think the stress placed by modern art schools on originality (at the expense of technique) tends to stifle it rather than encourage it, since IMO a solid understanding of a craft can give an individual the freedom to truly attain originality.
"Since the camera was invented, I don't have a great love of realistic work that is so busy replicating the "real" world that there are few personal touches within it.
Here I am on the same page with you, although a lover of "realism," I really don't like the so called photorealism or super realism. Making a painting that looks like a photograph seems pointless. Since the invention of the camera relieved artists of the need for strict "recording" they are free to pursue art in whatever direction appeals to them or to their market. IMO the appeal of "realism" is exactly that everyone's personal realism is different, their own reality is reflected in their work.
Of one thing I'm convinced - no matter where artists move in the next 100 years, if the public doesn't understand it, if it remains confined to the art world, it's value will be questionable. I personally don't see why people won't accept purely abstract work, there is already a fair acceptance by the public of modern stuff. OTOH, I'm fairly certain that there will always be a demand of representational work at some level, people have too much love of images that evoke memories or illustrate things that are important to them. But I do wonder, what with the computer age, 3-D holograms, etc. how long folk will be painting with the 16th century tools and techniques that are still so popular today.
For instance, one doesn't see too many professional hand letterers anymore. This is not to say that the people doing computer graphics are not artists, they are. But I also think everyone can acknowledge that calligraphy done by the human hand has a quality that a computer cannot achieve.
The 2 guys I really despise are Thomas Kincaid "painter of light" and Terry Redlins. I guess their stuff falls into the realism category, but it's nauseating. But the public adores them and has made them both wealthy in the extreme. So I guess, on second thought, the public is going to have to follow along behind the art world. But the art world is going to have to have some good stuff.
Art that SEEMS to get away from the human--whatever the talent of those involved using the technology--loses so much, which is one reason that abstract art, also, isn't nearly as popular as representational art. I don't mean the human hand, I mean human perception, and abstract art is like someone else's dreams--people like to tell them, but most people don't like listening to them, because they're cut out of the loop.
Agree. But the problem is even earlier in the process than RP says. Illustration DOESN'T reach into content or meaning because that's where an interpretation of things one cannot know comes in. For example, an illustration of a mother and child will look a certain way because it's easy to assume what's going on there; an Artistic interpretation, though, will presume to know what's REALLY going on in there. Thus, slanted artwork that pushes an agenda, but there's your meaning.
Illustration is an admission that the artist is being most truthful showing what the eyes see. Beyond that, we get into politics with a small p, where meaning or value comes first, and a piece is executed to express that. I'm NOT saying that's wrong, I'm just saying that it is wrong that it has completely overtaken all other considerations in the art world right now.
I'm entranced by that comment, thanks for posting it. I'm going to save it to a Word document where I file thoughts on art.
Agreed. The quest for meaning and originality is going to be the death of the university art system, if they don't back it up with a little substance. It's like trying to paint a boat or car without doing the prep work. If you skip the preparation, the job just won't last.
What a great discussion guys!
i think marfa should be vistited before judged. i've lived here for most of my life and i think it is a wonderful place. the artists who have moved here have began to clean-up our little town of marfa. the town was beginning to look run-down. i am a local...not someone who moved here for the art.
The Prada is just for show...some people don't understand common courtesy and choose to destroy other's property.
Many people have made money coming out here . the foundations and organizations that have been formed have saved the economy for those who agree with it or not
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