The Art Tourist speeds across Texas

Mountain oasis home to Minimalist work in progress

by Terry Talty

Marfa, Tx – It was rainy and we'd already watched the sun come up along the Texas-Mexico border, heading 80 miles per hour into it, for the past three hours. Past the border patrol barracks, guided by small, minimalist signs saying Chinati Foundation, we dead-ended at a simple Texas ranch-style house surrounded by an evenly gray sky and similarly even green land. Hellloooooo, the resident volunteer docents greeted visitors as if we were in Tibet, not Texas. We were told we would be allowed to carry along cameras if we signed a release saying the photographs were only for personal use and not for sale.

We took more than 100 digital images from the time we walked out through the light rain to the WWII armament storage buildings that are modified minimalist containers for what is now a Donald Judd installation of some aluminum cubes. What fun a camera is when you're looking at art.

So, we get prepped to look at the aluminum boxes,"100 Untitled Works in Milled Aluminum,≤ which we expect to be the epitome of minimalism. We were not to touch the milled aluminum because finger acids and oils will permanently etch the metal."This is our most fragile work,≤ our very mellow, Tibbetan, architecture-student docent told us.

I'm prepared to do the Chevy Chase thing he did in"Vacation≤ at the Grand Canyon."Okay, greatest work of minimalist art; yeah, seen it.≤

And instead I was awestruck giddy. I was smiling, laughing out loud, seeing exactly one hundred aluminum, visual, origami-box-like, careful, smooth, clean-lined sculptures. The occasional etched fingerprint did take away from the minimalism – they were too intriguing on these very even, rhythmic, cool surfaces.

As people walked through the buildings looking at the pieces, their reflections would show up in the aluminum of the sculptures. They would show up differently on each box becaus, while they are all the same size, there are subtle variations in construction – the top surface is attached at a diagonal so one can see into this box, or see into the sides of another, or through another.  At one point, the delicate light of the gray morning made one box look like it was made of glass, and the one next to it, made of stone, and we were clicking pretend shutter sound at all of this. From one location all the boxes in the middle reflected the red of the brick wall, and the two outside rows of boxes were green. It made you smile. I asked if anyone had seen this on a sunny day, an a woman who lives in Marfa said, yes, she had. It's beautiful. There is more contrast between the tops and the sides. The metal is very reflective, it's bright in here on a sunny day. It was an amazing amplifier of the outside – I was laughing at how much fun it was to see stuff – this stuff.

But the photographs --- as always, disappointing. The camera just doesn't have as much fun as eyes do.