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Saturday 10 September 2016

"He did not go to Rome..." / Beyond the dark places

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Dusk settles in over Prada Marfa, an art installation in Valentine, Texas. Created by artists Elmgreen and Dragset in 2005, the installation is modeled after a Prada boutique and features some of the brand's goods from that year.: photo by Patrick Semansky / AP, 6 September 6, 2016

He did not go to Rome
not that Protestant Cemetery
The poet who proposed for himself the old labours
the mountain and the desert
went finally into the desert to lie down
in the artists' colony desolation
of the dying flame
of a small fame
mixing / Memory and desire
his name remembered among the poets of the dead land
who are no more
in the dark places beyond the mountain and the desert
as dusk settles in over the branding and
 the cyclone hits




Lightning in the sky during cyclone Morgana on the outskirts of Rome, Italy: photo by Stefano Montesi, 6 September 2016


Prada Marfa, by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Marfa, Texas.: photo by Peter Guthrie, 27 May 2007

Prada Marfa | by informedmindstravel

Prada Marfa. Elmgreen and Dragset's 'Prada Marfa' -- near Valentine, Texas.: photo by informedmindstravel, 27 November 2005

Prada Marfa | by informedmindstravel

Prada Marfa. Elmgreen and Dragset's 'Prada Marfa' -- near Valentine, Texas.: photo by informedmindstravel, 27 November 2005

Prada Marfa | by informedmindstravel

Prada Marfa. Elmgreen and Dragset's 'Prada Marfa' -- near Valentine, Texas.: photo by informedmindstravel, 27 November 2005

prada marfa | by yi

prada marfa: photo by yi, 26 May 2007


prada marfa | by yi

prada marfa
: photo by yi, 26 May 2007

Prada, Marfa | by Chris Barrus

 Prada, Marfa. Installation art in moonlight. [Valentine, Texas]: photo by Chrs Barrus, 24 April 2013

Prada, Marfa | by Chris Barrus
Prada, Marfa. Installation art in moonlight. [Valentine, Texas]: photo by Chrs Barrus, 24 April 2013
Prada, Marfa | by Chris Barrus

Prada, Marfa. Accessorize! [Valentine, Texas]
: photo by Chrs Barrus, 24 April 2013

Prada, Marfa | by Chris Barrus
Prada, Marfa. Accessorize! [Valentine, Texas]: photo by Chrs Barrus, 24 April 2013

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Jornada del Muerto, Socorro County, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. September 2016
Untitled | by el zopilote

Jornada del Muerto, Socorro County, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. September 2016
Untitled | by el zopilote

Jornada del Muerto, Socorro County, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. September 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Socorro, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Bernalillo, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Bernalillo, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by el zopilote

Bernalillo, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016
Untitled | by el zopilote

Sandia Pueblo, New Mexico: photo by J. Guadelupe Lizárraga. August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Laundromat, Conrad, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 15 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Laundromat, Conrad, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 15 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Laundromat, Conrad, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 15 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Salt desert, Utah]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 31 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Salt desert, Utah]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 31 August 2016
Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Salt desert, Utah]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 31 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Motel, Kalispell, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 16 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Motel, Kalispell, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 16 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Motel, Kalispell, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 16 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Shelby, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 13 August 2016


Untitled | by lucas.deshazer

[Shelby, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 13 August 2016

Untitled | by lucas.deshazer


[Shelby, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer. 13 August 2016

In the dark places beyond the mountain and the desert, where we live







A gun enthusiast fires his Kimber 1911 pistol at the LAX Firing Range in Inglewood, California: photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP, 7 September 2016









Apple CEO Tim Cook shows an iPhone 7 to performer Maddie Ziegler during an event to announce new products in San Francisco: photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP, 7 September 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waits in her car after arriving at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York: photo by Brian Snyder / Reuters, 6 September 2016







Water from Roanoke Sound pounds the Virginia Dare Trail in Manteo, North Carolina as Tropical Storm Hermine passes the Outer Banks: photo by Tom Copeland / AP, 3 September 2016

4 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TC said...

Boy howdy, Ma! Them there New Yawk Aht moneybags, I tell you! Plum loco! A Prada outlet shop right here on our back forty, and -- Nothing but right shoes! Purses with little cameras staring at you from the bottom! Junior knew right off he shoulda never busted in!
__

from: What Is Art? Can a bunny in the desert tell us? Texas Monthly, November 2013:

After sculptor Donald Judd startled the art world in the seventies by leaving Manhattan for this faraway corner of the Chihuahuan Desert, Marfa had become a kind of pilgrimage site. On a former Army base at the edge of town, Judd established the Chinati Foundation, a museum dedicated to large-scale, permanent installations, such as his own concrete and aluminum boxes, which drew visitors from around the world. Over time, locals had grown used to German art critics descending on the Dairy Queen or black-clad L.A. architects raving about the light. In the past decade, more and more of the pilgrims had started moving to town for good. Wealthy Texans from the big cities now kept second (or third) homes there; Tim Crowley, a lawyer from Houston, and his wife, Lynn Goode, had bought and restored more than a dozen buildings in town, encouraging posh friends such as renowned defense attorney Dick DeGuerin to do the same. Walking up Highland Avenue these days, past the neon sign of one of the smallest NPR affiliates in America, past the plate-glass windows of the Marfa Book Company, past the vintage-television display at Future Shark Cafeteria, a Marfan might encounter any number of painters, sculptors, musicians, and poets. He might bump into writer Deborah Eisenberg, on a fellowship with the Lannan Foundation, at the Hotel Paisano, or Jake Gyllenhaal, in town for a Railroad Revival Tour concert, tossing a football on the street. Even Beyoncé had visited, staying in one of the restored trailers at the campground and hotel El Cosmico.

...Prada Marfa. Back in 2005, the Scandinavian art duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset caused a flap by displaying six Prada bags and twenty Prada shoes (rights only) in a glass-front adobe located about thirty miles farther down the highway, near Valentine. Though the artists intended their piece as a critique of consumer culture, many in Marfa decried it as plop art, arguing that it exploited the town’s reputation and marred the landscape. The piece was supposed to naturally decay, but two days after it went up, someone sprayed “Dum Dum” across the front and stole all the purses and fourteen of the shoes. Others riddled the installation with bullets. While the merchandise was restocked and the windows replaced with Plexiglas, eight years later graffiti still covered the back and cigarette burns perforated the awnings.

TC said...

[Texas Monthly continues:]

If you know much about Marfa these days, chances are you read about it in the Wall Street Journal or Vanity Fair, or heard about it on NPR, or saw it featured on CNN. In the past decade, the town of two thousand has been showered with breathless press. The New York Times wrote about it at least half a dozen times in three years, the Smithsonian recently named it one of the top twenty small towns in America, and 60 Minutes ran a segment this year titled “Marfa, Texas: The Capital of Quirkiness.” NPR, meanwhile, hailed it as “nothing less than an arts-world station of the cross.”

The vast majority of those stories tend to ignore most of Marfa’s residents. Despite all the hipsters, Marfa remains a working-class town, where unemployment hovers at around 9 percent and the median household income is $33,000 per year. Three quarters of the population is Hispanic. To some extent, the prosperity of the arts community—which involves around 10 percent of the people who live there—masks the economic difficulties of the majority. Other than tourism and government, there’s no principal industry in Marfa. The public schools, the state agencies, and the Border Patrol are the main employers. The town has no pharmacy, no locksmith, and no vet. For all the attention, it remains a fundamentally austere and remote place.

...emotions ran ... high [locally] over Prada Marfa, not only because the installation was plopped onto the landscape that Judd had prized but also because its allusion to high fashion seemed utterly tone-deaf to the economic reality of the town. Former resident Melissa Keane remembered the opening on October 1, 2005: “The area ranchers stood in denim and cowboy boots beside New Yorkers dressed up to their necks in black, saying things like, ‘Isn’t it sad that it’s out in the middle of nowhere?’”

TC said...

And... in case you're interested (you aren't) in following the MONEY MONEY MONEY, keep in mind the websites of the "nonprofits" which have bought up this patch of West Texas and made it over into their very own high-gloss new-yawk-aht-ranch/tourist destination have been VERY careful NOT to hypertextualize the mentioned-in-passing names you really need to know. The less you hear about them, in fact, the more likely it is that...

Yvonne Force Villareal, the NY moneybags behind Prada Marfa. Don't miss her creative piece on "discovering" Burning Man, for Vogue, a few years back. And check out her honeyed relations with a thang called Ballroom Marfa, y'all. Some gal that is, Chester.

The real bonafide, throw-up-in your-own-mouth article, I reckon.

"The overall wardrobe seen at any given glimpse ranges from minimal (sunblock only) to maximal (full-blown post-apocalyptic Blade Runner baroque). You dodge back and forth into your RV, tent, or teepee to change all day long: The sun is intense during the day, and it can get near freezing at night. Last summer I selected the most eccentric high-fashion pieces in my closet (vintage Gucci baby-blue fur and a Dior lace-and-gold gown) and mixed them up with matching fake fur and metallic go-go-dancer leg warmers and miniskirt combos. But I swore then that if I returned I would step up my desert look a few notches with some one-of-a-kind creations. So a few weeks ago I took a trip to New York’s Garment District. I can’t believe it has taken me decades living in NYC to finally get to Spandex House! Strolling down Thirty-eighth Street, I found some great fake-fur prints, too. The theme this year is “evolution,” so my immediate inspiration was the early-woman looks of Wilma Flintstone meeting the future with Barbarella. Since I have not sewn a thing since ninth grade home-economics class, I asked one of my most talented friends—the designer Lucy Barnes—if she could meet me for a few hours to give some creative direction on how to cut a form. We got together in the Long Island’s North Fork last week, and instead of giving me a few hours, she created fabulous designs and had her intern, Isabella Oliver-Rutigliano, help sew up some of the one-shoulder gowns and ragged-edged furs. Lucy dug into her drawers of exquisite scraps of lace, jewels, feathers, and beads to give depth and concept to the clothes. Four days later, we had four dresses and six fake furs (in his-and-hers matching versions). One dress was made of holographic leopard-print spandex with vintage rust-colored lace and silver metal inserts; another was in iridescent coral-colored velvet with a long black lace train and oversize gold sequins sewn up the back like primal vertebrae. For day wear, we made a tie-dye pink-and-orange halter dress with a train, a black leather beaded choker, and Brazilian weavings. The furs included fake zebra and tiger capes cut zig-zag and sewn with teeth made out of seashells and wooden beads, and a long white faux fox embedded with LEDs to glow at night. The last dress Lucy whipped up was a “slime amoeba” look with peacock feathers and green beads sewn onto pea-green silk-satin organza, and silver chains sewn with shells as a neck strap. Handmade desert couture—I am hoping for no dust storms!"

I loved the part where Lucy had to dig into her drawers. But maybe you had to be there.

And while you're at it, check out her honeyed relations with a thang called Ballroom Marfa, y'all.

Moving on up the regional hierarchy of confused-seed-money... You might want to try: J. Patrick Lannan, Sr. Much bigger deal, this dude. Which big in-you-face murican corporations DIDN'T he own?

Dig a bit, see what you find on this great Aht Charity Baron. Don't miss the old Chicago Tribune bit on Mr Lannan, and how he disinherited his whole family in order to... what was it? "Support" "Aht"???

It was supposed to happen in, I think, Palm Beach. But hey, the real estate is a lot cheaper in West Texas.

Give us a break.