Folk Art in Texas Page: 27
203 p. : ill., ports. ; 29 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Tail Fins Forever
(Or, Anyone Who Names His Zebra "Spot"
Can't Be All Bad)
Text and Photographs by Robert and Linda MitchellWhat would someone do as a follow-up to nam-
ing his house Toad Hall, appearing at John
Erlichman's Santa Fe house dressed as an Indian,
and writing to Pat Nixon offering to put her hats in
a Museum of Decadent Art? He would, of course,
bury ten Cadillacs nose down in a field in the Pan-
handle of Texas. Enter Stanley Marsh 3 (not "third")
of Amarillo.
Marsh operates from his home (named after the
residence of Toad in The Wind in the Willows) just
outside the city, where he lives with his wife and five
children, and from his penthouse office suite atop
Amarillo's tallest building.
Aside from owning a few television stations in
Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, and being heir
to cattle and natural gas fortunes, Stanley Marsh has
interesting-often outrageous-ideas, and, unlike
most, he brings many of them to reality. Take, for
example, his Taj Mahal Theory of Art: The best art
is art that is hidden and unexpected. Marsh first put
his theory to practice in 1969, when he painted a
green 90-by-180-foot pool table somewhere on his
rangeland and then placed on it an immense rack,
a blue-painted box for a cue chalk, a huge vinyl cue
stick, and ten great vinyl balls made by the Amarillo
Tent and Awning Company. Where exactly is the
"World's Only Phantom Soft Pool Table," the
"greatest undertaking of man since the Tower of
Babel"? Hidden, of course.For the unexpected in art, there are surely few
competitors to the ten buried Cadillacs. None would
agree more than those who have driven eastward on
Interstate 40 toward Amarillo, their senses dulled by
the monotony of that vast biological and cultural
wasteland. Then, abruptly, those magnificent tail fins
rise from the horizon, inclined at the same angle as
the Golden Mean or the sides of the Great Pyramids
(or the angle at which the Titanic sank).
This glorious outrage was perpetrated in 1974 by
Marsh and a group of experimental California artists
and architects known as the Ant Farm Underground.
Appreciating Marsh's Theory of Art and inspired by
his ideas, the Ant Farm embedded the noses of the
ten Cadillacs, rounded up by Marsh from various
sources, in two feet of concrete. The cars are not
just random Cadillacs, but are Harley Earl (of twin-
tail aircraft) designs that trace the history of the
Cadillac Tail Fin from 1949 to 1964. Thus immor-
talized is one of the most useless growths ever to
adorn the Great American Automobile. Inciden-
tally, Marsh once wrote to Earl's widow asking if she
would like to rebury her husband at this shrine-no
answer.
Today, the original gaudy colors of the Cadillacs
have been faded by the unrelenting sun and have
been blasted by the blowing sand. And through the
years the curious have stopped, climbed the fence,
walked the few hundred yards to the line of cars* 27 *
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Folk Art in Texas (Book)
This book describes popular folk art of Texas, including basket weaving, hat-making, yard art, sculptures, murals, cemetery art, quilt-making, tattoo art, and other miscellaneous folk art. The index begins on page 198.
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Abernethy, Francis Edward. Folk Art in Texas, book, 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67647/m1/35/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.