Cadillac Ranch Afternoon

by Joan Carroll

Title

Cadillac Ranch Afternoon

Artist

Joan Carroll

Medium

Photograph - Digital Art

Description

In the bright afternoon sunlight you get a good look at all the 'day-glo paint splooge' on the stripped down cars at Cadillac Ranch along Route 66 near Amarillo TX. With all the rains in the spring of 2015, the area was quite muddy and it looks like the cars have just run off the road and ended nose down in the mud! In reality, Cadillac Ranch was invented and built by a group of art-hippies imported from San Francisco. They called themselves The Ant Farm, and their silent partner was Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh 3. He wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals, and the hippies came up with a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac tail fin. Ten Caddies were driven into one of Stanley Marsh 3's fields, then half-buried, nose-down, in the dirt (supposedly at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza). They faced west in a line, from the 1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan de Ville, their tail fins held high for all to see on the empty Texas panhandle. That was in 1974. People would stop along the highway, walk out to view the cars -- then deface them or rip off pieces as souvenirs. Stanley Marsh 3 and The Ant Farm were tolerant of this public deconstruction of their art -- although it doomed the tail fins -- and eventually came to encourage it. Decades have passed. The Cadillacs have now been in the ground as art longer than they were on the road as cars. They are stripped to their battered frames, splattered in day-glo paint splooge, barely recognizable as automobiles" let alone Cadillacs! But still the people visit!

FEATURED PHOTO, First Friday Gallery Group 1x day group, 7/9/15

FEATURED PHOTO, The Sales Fairy Group group, 6/29/15

FEATURED PHOTO, Out of the Ordinary group, 6/29/15

Uploaded

June 24th, 2015

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Viewed 2,641 Times  -  Last Visitor from Ottawa, ON - Canada on 04/18/2024 at 4:08 PM

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