Sunday, July 16, 2023

Conceptual Art on the Prairie

 My sister Susan wrote and asked if I remembered the Cadillac Ranch.

Yes I do. I've been there several times. The Ant Farm did that Cadillac project just off some road of Stanley Marsh's ranch in Amarillo. All the cars were vandalized but that didn't really detract from the overall impression from the road. I took a piss off to the side and got a heck of a shock when it hit an electric fence. The 2nd time I was there it had been moved behind the fence.  I went on a tour inside the ranch. That was only one conceptual art piece. There was a peace symbol large enough to be seen from airplanes, a huge banana, a huge pool table with bean bags for ball and cue, a mesa with a fence running along it painted the usual color of the sky so that the top of the mesa seemed from a distance to be floating. The tour was conducted by a cowhand named Stanley who said he got the job because of his name. He said after what he'd seen in the cattle biz he wouldn't eat meat. He said Stanley Marsh got a trademark on the name Cattleyak and his cowhands had try to force breed cattle with yaks. They tried other mixes, one with the largest type bovine with the smallest type. Stanley Marsh was a madman. There was a feature on him in that Texas magazine that was so good called the Mad Hatter of Amarillo (or something). That's because he attended Cullen Davis' trial for murders in Amarillo with a different hat every day. He also got in trouble when he was old for past pederasty. Stanley cowhand said that during Davis trial he and other cowhands had to move the pool table to the top of a building that was within view of Cullen Davis' jail cell, that they had to change the positions every day, and that Marsh told the news people that he was secretly communicating with Davis that way. Stanley cowhand said it was a most interesting job.

Here's more on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Marsh_3#