The Tail[fin] of Ten Caddies

Route 66: an historical landmark stretching an extensive 2,448 miles across America’s great landscape, making stops from Chicago, Illinois all the way to Santa Monica, California. It was one of America’s first transnational road networks to connect the east to the west in 1926. One stop along the way is the country-western hub of Amarillo, Texas; home of the “free” 72 oz. steak, helium deposits and, for some, the epitome of the “Lone Star State.” Being the home of oil and cowboys and all these country-western icons, it would be a shock to know that Amarillo was also home to one of the great Pop-Art pieces that paved the way for modern art outside of big, urbanized areas such as New York or Chicago.

Founded in 1968, Chip Lord and Doug Michels created the group Ant Farm, producing avant-garde pieces that usually focused on pop icons, pieces to make America view the objects in a different manner than they had originally been created, such as Media Burn (1975) and Eternal Frame (1975). Then, along came Stanley Marsh 3, an Amarillo local, a philanthropist and millionaire who believed in and was entertained by the Ant Farm’s projects. This, in turn, led to Marsh helping to fund and nurture the artists’ idea to create a piece that, little did they know, would become an American pop culture icon. Stanley Marsh provided the land, space, and money for the Ant Farm to bring their concept to life. The artists came up with the idea for this installation piece when they came upon an ad that featured the history of the Cadillac tailfin. This haphazard conception of art created a relationship between Marsh and the group; Marsh stated himself that his art is “a legalized form of insanity.”[1]

With a max budget of $3,000 ($300 for each car), Lord and Michels found themselves at a car lot and ended up buying ten Cadillac models from dates ranging from 1949 to 1963, each specifically chosen for their defining moment in the Cadillac tailfin transformation (excluding those years that showed little to no difference in the transformation of the tailfin). The installation itself first went into the ground on Marsh’s land in 1974 and was completed that same year. There were talks about having the piece installed further back on the property into a more private area on Marsh’s land, but the group and Marsh decided that it would be better seen and experienced in closer proximity of the I-40 Interstate.

The 10 Cadillac models, with their “tail” ends sticking out of the ground, are evenly spaced in a line parallel from East to West with the tail lights of each car at the same vertical level, all converging to create an order within the madness of burying cars in the ground. Lord, from Ant Farm, went on record to say that there is a “planned obsolescence” in the piece that may seem unconventional and bizarre to some who are unfamiliar with avant-garde art.[2] Out in an open field with the public allowed to be a part of the exhibit, Cadillac Ranch is sort of an art oasis in the middle of a windy dirt field, an exposed no-man’s land deep in the clichéd heart of Texas. If you do not know what you are looking for, from the highway, it looks like a weird flash of color that sort of blurs past you at 75 miles per hour. But if your destination is the colorful haven in an expanse of brown dusty land, then you pull off on an access road and approach cautiously, wondering if you are allowed to be there or if you are currently breaking the law.

What is so amazing about Cadillac Ranch is that you don’t just look at the work from afar; you participate in its creation (now its deterioration), and are welcomed and encouraged to do so. As you approach, you become part of the exhibit, walking in, out, between, (and for the brave) atop the Cadillac models that were given to the public as a gift of art. You bring your own spray paint, or (if you’re cheap like me), you hope someone has left some behind so you can take an active part in making Cadillac Ranch not just apart of Amarillo, but also a part of you, of us. The aesthetic value of these artful cars that represent mechanics and modern engineering, juxtaposed with the surrounding provincial and undeveloped land, which reference for me the pastoral life prior to great industrial revolutions, creates a story that is bigger than the common person only stopping by to take a picture with the famed cars. It speaks to all of us who are so entrenched in a fast-paced life, reminding us that we that must stop and look at our surroundings and realize how far civilization has come.

You look closely at the cars and you can see layers upon layers of spray paint, working its way to deteriorate the now hidden, metal car exteriors that used to be chromatic and shine brilliantly in the sun, cruising down the Main Streets of towns where they showed off a person’s presence and sophistication. The underlying message buried beneath the years of spray paint is “a combination of critical piece and tribute piece.”[3] The readymade installation is a tribute to the “apex of American automobile design” praising the rise and fall of the American Cadillac tail fin: it is a “status symbol. The planned obsolescence. The going up the ladder from Chevrolet to Pontiac and finally arriving at Cadillac,” as Chip promptly explains.[4] The installation of Cadillacs also alludes to a consumer-driven society that only strives for material, sophisticated objects that are purchased to show-off power and economic value. Michael Sorkin puts it perfectly:

The learned Darwinian assembly ontology of the tailfin is at once a living catalog of a transcendent artifact and a sly riff on the

utter meaninglessness of consumption-driven style. The interring of the car ­— the immobilization that turns into architecture —

suggests the inevitable doom of the entire project of the automobile.[5]

In other words, the subtext of the piece is predicting that American consumerism will inevitably bring destruction to the beauty that was once intricately involved in creating a mobile piece of luxury that families could bring home to idolize right in their driveways.The installation of having 10 individual items stand on their own in a particular pattern seems to be a derivative of Stonehenge, the architecture that seems to have started it all and which still poses the question of “why?” Cadillac Ranch poses the same question, why? I believe that is the reason Ant Farm and Marsh created the piece; to make the audience reach deeper than the aesthetic value to discover a greater meaning of why things are done or why they are done in such a fashion. The allusion to Stonehenge gives a cult-like feel to the work, a grounds for worship, but worshiping what exactly? In my opinion, the artist wanted the audience to not take the beauty for granted and appreciate the artisanal design of an everyday object as an object greater than its materiality, much like what the Cadillac represents in American history.

Featured in many popular culture references—the Pixar movie Cars and Bruce Springsteen’s version of Cadillac Ranch just to name a few—the work of public art has become a necessary stop along the trans-American highway. It is living architecture that is forever changing, due to elements and human interaction. It is a cultural icon that brings much traffic to this region of the United States. It is also a backlash statement to the general idea that high-modern art can only exist in the most urbanized and sophisticated areas. By installing Cadillac Ranch here in Amarillo along America’s great connecting interstate system, Ant Farm and Stanley Marsh 3 put those ideals into solid form, proving that art does not solely reside in the pretentious high-rises in New York and the cityscapes of Chicago. High art can reside anywhere where there are creative minds and a fertile atmosphere (pun intended).

[1] Stanley Marsh 3, Smithsonian Museum, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/travel/art-is-a-legalized-form-of-insanity-and-i-do-it-very-well-stanley-marsh-3-a/?no-ist (accessed April 4, 2016).

[2] Constance Lewallen, Steve Seid, Ant Farm, 1968-1978 (Berkley, CA: University of California Press: 2004), 72.

[3] Constance Lewallen, 72.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 12.