Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch, 1974
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by The University of Utah: J. Willard Marriott Digital Library TERMINAL STRUCTURES: ANT FARM’S CADILLAC RANCH, 1974 by Patrick Maguire A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History Department of Art and Art History The University of Utah August 2014 Copyright © Patrick Maguire 2014 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF THESIS APPROVAL The thesis of Patrick Maguire has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Paul Paret , Chair 4/29/2014 Date Approved Lela Graybill , Member 4/29/2014 Date Approved Craig Dworkin , Member 4/29/2014 Date Approved and by Brian Snapp , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of Art and Art History and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT The San Francisco art and architecture collective Ant Farm built Cadillac Ranch in 1974 outside of Amarillo, Texas, to showcase “the rise and fall of the Cadillac tailfin.” The ten vintage Cadillacs buried nose‐first in a row along the old Route 66, with their tailfins jutting up obliquely, is often read as a monument to the golden era of the American automobile. Yet despite (and because of) its continued popularity, the work has rarely been taken seriously as art. This thesis proposes a revaluation of Ant Farm’s iconic project, and represents an attempt to position Cadillac Ranch as an important sculptural installation that speaks to many of the key concerns of the American avant‐garde of the 1960s and 1970s. My title references the Jewish Museum’s 1966 exhibition “Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture,” which sparked the rapid legitimization of minimalist sculpture in the postwar American art world. Reading Cadillac Ranch against this seminal artistic tradition, I argue that the project can be read as a monumental epitaph to the exhausted aesthetic models and sociopolitical narratives of the late‐modern period. Cadillac Ranch memorializes modernism by rehearsing its formal techniques, but as a hybridized, participatory project, it also enacts modernism’s end. This thesis begins by describing the development of the Cadillac Ranch commission through several media forms. From there, the body of the text proceeds through the lens of minimalist sculptural practices, with an in‐depth consideration of the ways in which the project reprograms the formal tactics of minimalism: seriality, industrial materials, readymade objects, etc. Next, I articulate the specificities of Cadillac Ranch’s monumentality, with recourse to texts by Tony Smith and Robert Smithson—two figures who helped precipitate the shift into the expanded field of art making after minimalism’s emergence. This will involve a comparison of the inherent monumentality of Cadillac Ranch to that of large‐scale earthworks, while treating such land art as a dialogue between earth‐ moving practices and media‐performative ones. The last section provides an account of the media afterlife of Cadillac Ranch as it is visible through mass cultural manifestations of its image and name. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………………………....... iii Sections I INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………….............. 1 II MEDIA‐MOBILE: ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION…...……………………………............. 13 III MINIMALISM: OBJECT AND ENCOUNTER.………………………………………........... 19 Auto‐phenomenology……………………………………………………………………….......... 29 The Road…………………….……………………………………………………………………………… 33 Historicity and Temporality…..……………………………………...…………………………. 35 Into the Expanded Field................................................................................... 38 IV THE NEW MONUMENTS.................................................................................... 42 Land Art............................................................................................................ 50 V MEDIA AFTERLIFE.............................................................................................. 58 Postscript........................................................................................................... 62 REFERENCES......................................................................................................... 64 SECTION I INTRODUCTION 2014 marks the fortieth anniversary of the completion of Cadillac Ranch, a sculptural installation and roadside attraction just outside of Amarillo, Texas, consisting of ten vintage Cadillac automobiles buried headfirst in a row parallel to Interstate 40, formally historic U.S. Route 66.1 The project was conceived and executed in 1974 by the San Francisco‐based art and architecture collective Ant Farm (Doug Michels, Chip Lord, and Hudson Marquez) in collaboration with Stanley Marsh 3, an enthusiastic oil and natural gas baron who provided the artists with funding and land on which to build.2 Cadillac Ranch was built “as a monument to the rise and fall of the tailfin,” in the artists’ own words—an archive of nostalgia for the golden era of the American automobile.3 For years, Cadillac Ranch has been a well‐known site, popular among both locals and road‐tripping 1 BuD Lee, “Cadillac Ranch, 1974,” 1974, in Ant Farm, 1968‐1978, eDs. Constance M. Lewallen anD Steve SeiD (Berkeley: University oF CaliFornia Press, 2004), 68. 2 Marsh—who preFers “3” to the more conventional Roman numerals—was For DecaDes the ringleaDer oF Amarillo’s peculiar cultural circus, anD one oF the city’s most well‐known anD visible citizens. BesiDes Cadillac Ranch, Marsh commissioneD numerous works oF art, both public anD private. OF particular note are two projects with automotive resonance: Robert Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp (1973), a graDeD earthen curl on a Dry lakebeD on Marsh’s property, anD the so‐calleD Dynamite Museum, a project begun in the early 1990s that consists oF thousanDs oF mock traFFic signs planteD all over Amarillo. The signs bear jokes, images, anD nonsequiturs. 3 Chip LorD, Automerica: A Trip Down U.S. Highways from World War II to the Future: A Book (New York: Dutton, 1976); reproDuceD in Ant Farm 1968‐1978, eDs. Lewallen anD SeiD, 157. 2 tourists, some of whom pass through Amarillo on a journey to retrace a road that has engrained itself in the American Imaginary, one of the country’s first highways and a crucial artery for westward migration during the 20th century. Situated about 650 ft. south of Interstate 40, the Cadillacs are buried nose‐ first in the dirt at 52‐degree angles. They form a neat, single‐file line, oriented on an east‐west axis, and are buried chronologically, with the earliest car farthest west. The front bumper of each Cadillac has been anchored in cement at the bottom of an eight‐foot hole (subsequently refilled with dirt), allowing the progression of tailfins to obliquely project into the air. The cars were buried with factory paintjobs, but today, every conceivable surface has been covered with spray paint graffiti, many times over. They have also been subjected to structural vandalism—no window or hubcap remains, and much of the remaining metal has been beaten and bent. Cans of spray paint litter the ground near the installation. There is no informational or directional signage, and the work is rarely, if ever, mentioned in Amarillo’s scant tourist literature. Despite all this, the daily stream of visitors to its roadside site attests to the continued popularity and remarkable assimilation of Cadillac Ranch into mainstream cultural consciousness. As high art, however, it has rarely been taken seriously. The current legacy of Cadillac Ranch is defined by the kitsch of postcards and RV parks that bear its name; as an image, it is both recognizable and visually interesting, but apparently unworthy of critical reflection. Perhaps aesthetic accessibility has repelled scholars otherwise interested in Ant Farm’s work. Ten cars are buried in Texas. Take a 3 picture, make your mark and move along. But what if we take the joke seriously? Such a question is quite a pertinent one for Ant Farm, who present problems to the historian attempting to categorize and make sense out of their diverse oeuvre, which includes performances and drawings, architecture and video. Scholars have not by any measure ignored Ant Farm, but Cadillac Ranch, by far the group’s most famous project, has never been the subject of a sustained analysis. The common assessment of the work, as a critique and/or celebration of consumer culture, is not incorrect—Lord claims “Cadillac Ranch was intended to be as much a monument to the glory of the tailfin as a burial of the gas guzzler”4—but it does not tell the whole story. The project is only truly activated through the various discourses of postwar art, and the ways in which Cadillac Ranch engages the automobile, that most American of image‐objects, go beyond simple celebration or critique. In hope of addressing this oversight, and with a historicist attitude coincident with four decades of popular recognition and critical neglect, this thesis thus proposes a revaluation of Ant Farm’s iconic project, and represents an attempt to position Cadillac Ranch as an important sculptural installation that speaks to many of the key concerns of the American avant‐garde of the 1960s and 1970s. Pop art, minimalism, and land art practices all find themselves refracted through Ant Farm’s kitschy automotive lens. One encounters a degree of 4 Paul Harris, “How the US Fell Out oF Love with