NARRATOR: Marfa is a town in West Texas
on the high plains of the Chihuahuan Desert,
at the junction of US highways 90 and 67.
It's a three-hour drive from El Paso, an hour and a half
from Big Bend National Park, and an hour to the Mexico border.
It was established in 1883 as a water and freight
stop along the railroad and was supposedly
named by the railroad chief's wife,
after the faithful strong-willed servant in Dostoyevsky's "The
Brothers Karamazov."
It's a nice idea, although unlikely,
seeing as the novel would have been released not long
before and only in Russian.
But no matter, Marfa's Main Street,
and the buildings that line it, were
commissioned by successful cattle barons in the area.
There's the Presidio County Courthouse, a theater,
and a cinema, among other buildings
that still stand that have mostly found other uses.
The US military built Fort DA Russell here
before the First World War, stationing chemical warfare
brigades, an airfield for flight training, and US border patrol.
But since the military pulled out
after the end of World War II, the population
has steadily declined and now hovers around 2,000.
The Coen brothers shot "No Country for Old Men"
just outside of town.
And James Dean's last film "Giant"
was filmed here 50 years before.
Hotel Paisano, where you can still
stay and enjoy dinner and drinks on the patio,
housed the actors.
"Transparent" creator Jill Soloway's new series,
"I Love Dick" is filmed here too.
Tourists sometimes stop here to try to catch the Marfa mystery
lights, an unexplained night phenomenon that
has been reported since the town's founding.
But we didn't investigate.
We were here for a different reason, the same reason that
brings about 40,000 tourists a year, and that's this guy--
Donald Judd.
In the early 1970s, artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa
and purchased the former military buildings
you see here, an outpost of Fort Russell,
right by the tracks and this still-operating feed mill.
There's the quartermaster's house,
which Judd adapted for he and his family to live in,
and two army hangars, which became spaces
for him to live, work, and store and display his art.
Here's the old Land Rover he used to visit
his ranches outside Marfa.
And next to that, the pergola he built with a communal table
beneath.
He also constructed the pool and planted cottonwood trees
around it for shade.
All the furniture you see, including the grill,
were his designs, built because he couldn't really
find furniture that he liked.
Judd hired local adobe experts to build walls
around the complex, following in the tradition of Southwestern
and Mexican homes, built up to the street
with interior courtyards, providing
privacy and protection from wind and weather.
Symmetry was important to Judd.
The proportions of the passageways
correspond to those of the exterior gate.
The volume of the pergola relates
to the pool, as well as the chicken coop and greenhouse.
This interior U-shaped courtyard is in fact an artwork.
Judd kept the outer wall of the complex plumb,
but allowed this inner wall to follow
the natural slope of the land.
If you're going to stray from symmetry,
he thought, there needs to be a reason.
It's here through the pivoting door, also of Judd's design,
that you can experience his work exactly as he wanted you to.
Permanent installations in natural light
and made to coexist with the materials
and architecture of the space.
For Judd, these weren't sculptures,
but what he called specific objects, a new kind
of three-dimensional art that was neither painting
nor sculpture.
For him, these works were not compositions of parts,
but the thing as a whole.
In the case of the vertical stack pieces you see here,
he considered it whole because the space in between the forms
is part of the work.
The negative space is exactly equal to the positives.
This was an active space where Judd sometimes slept,
and where he lived among the Stickley furniture he admired.
In the next rooms are a kitchen and a winter bedroom
where he kept his collection of pottery and Navajo blankets.
In the other rooms of the hangars,
you'll find Judd's personal libraries.
This is the one where he kept his pre-20th century
books, divided by region.
He designed the bookcases with an extended bottom shelf
to be used as a step, and the day bed and table as well,
the surface of which is arranged as he left it
when he died quite suddenly of lymphoma in 1994.
It becomes clear in these spaces that Judd
was not just an artist, but a designer, collector,
avid reader, writer, architect, and in the widest sense
a creator of space.
And he created a lot more space around Marfa than just here,
which we'll get to, but not until we address our greatest
need--
burritos.
After fortifying ourselves at the delectable and reasonably
priced Marfa Burrito, run by Ramona Tejada,
and which you cannot avoid learning,
has also been enjoyed by Matthew McConaughey,
we decided to poke around town and explore a bit.
There are a number of good venues
here for seeing art made by people other than Donald Judd.
And one of these is Ballroom Marfa, a nonprofit organization
and art space based in a converted dance hall that
hosts exhibitions, screens films, and puts
on an array of performances, events, and festivals.
We caught an intriguing show titled "Strange Attractor,"
describing order that can be embedded in chaos.
It features some very good work, exploring
what the curator describes as the uncertainties
and poetics of networks, environmental events,
technology, and sound.
The highlight for me was this large-scale tapestry
by Douglas Ross, which you approach
from its abstract reverse side.
As you make your way around it, the intricate weave
coheres into an image of a landscape strewn with rubble
and tire impressions.
We don't know where this is or when it is,
but we know it was a digital image translated into Jacquard
weave, a highly intricate process
employing perforated cards and considered
to be a kind of proto-computer.
I was transfixed.
After that, we walked over to the Wrong store,
an airy, delightful space that used to be a church
and is now part gallery, part shop.
They had prints by "Art Assignment"
alum Nathaniel Russell, the fantastic painted wood objects
of Marfa artist Camp Bosworth, and a most excellent gun
miniskirt from Fancy Pony Land, which
you can rest assured I bought.
We stopped by the wonderful little shop
called Freda, which sells jewelry, clothing, and records,
and then checked out the Cobra Rock Boot Company
and admired the expertly handmade leather goods,
made mostly on site by owners and designers Colt Miller
and Logan Caldbeck, in this workshop and on this machinery.
Then it was onto the relatively new and lovely Hotel Saint
George, which houses the Marfa Book Company.
They have books of course, but also
interesting and locally made gifts and flat files
of artwork for sale.
They also sponsor readings and events throughout the year
and serve as a kind of cultural hub for Marfa.
We grabbed iced coffees at Frama, a coffee shop /
laundromat / ice cream parlor, before driving northwest
of town on Highway 90.
It was about a 30-minute drive to our next destination.
And on our way, we passed this astounding tethered
aerostat radar system, property of the US Customs and Border
Protection, and which we all agreed
would be the most magnificent artwork ever made
if it were indeed an artwork.
It's instead a roving surveillance device, a.k.a.,
a giant and very visible big brother that
monitors the US-Mexico border.
But what we were seeking out was Prada Marfa,
a project by artist Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset.
It's what it looks like--
a Prada boutique in the middle of the desert.
But when you pull off the road to get a closer look,
you see that it's impenetrable, a seeming relic
from the booming years leading up to the 2008 recession.
On display are shoes and handbags from Prada's Fall
2005 collection, the year the work was made.
But you can't get in.
There's no door handle, no one works there,
and what looked to be windows in the back are mirrors.
It's a pilgrimage site for sure.
The collection of locks on the fencing that surround it
show that.
And not just for art tourists, but
for anyone seeking out a curiosity, or a sweet Instagram
backdrop.
We weren't alone there for long.
As soon as one group left, another
arrived, until we had the uncanny experience of seeing
the Ballroom Marfa crew that maintains it,
and local site representative Boyd Elder arrive and open it
up for a scheduled cleaning.
Like Marfa itself, it's an unexpected art oddity
in the middle of nowhere, and a befitting
locus for contemplating the reach and the limits of art
market forces.
That evening, we had an amazingly
delicious and enjoyable meal at Stellina,
a warm, welcoming and unstuffy restaurant
where we rehashed our day and plotted out the next.
In the morning, we followed these helpful signs
to Do Your Thing Coffee, again, appreciating
Nat Russell's design work and fueled up for the day ahead.
It was time for Chinati.
In 1979, Judd and the Dia Art Foundation
purchased the land and buildings of the de-commissioned Fort DA
Russell to see out Judd's vision of maintaining
permanent installations of his own large scale artworks
and those of his contemporaries.
In the years since, the original buildings, spread
over 340 acres, have been transformed
from dilapidated ruins into the place you can now visit,
run by the independent and nonprofit
Chinati Foundation, named after nearby mountains.
We started with the two enormous former artillery
sheds that now house Judd's 100 untitled works in mill
aluminum.
And yes, they're just that--
100 works made of milled aluminum,
each with the same outer dimensions,
but unique in their interior arrangement of planes.
The building determined the installation.
And the installation determined the building,
which Judd adapted by turning what
were garage doors into windows and adding
a vaulted roof on top of the original flat one that leaked.
The space is flooded with natural light
that changes dramatically throughout the day.
And as we walked among and through the objects
and around the space, I marveled at how remarkably unminimal
this is.
Judd rejected the description of his work as minimalist,
and is even so strongly associated with the term.
But here there is so much to look at.
These objects reflect light, cast shadows,
and direct your eye around the room.
You notice how their proportions relate
to the scale of the building, the windows,
the concrete divisions on the floor.
Everything is considered.
And you can't take the works out of here.
They're all made to co-exist--
the objects, the building, the landscape.
In many ways, it's all just one thing.
The art is what happens between you,
these things, and this space.
And there's a whole other shed full of these works.
We broke for lunch and headed to Food Shark, a food truck that
serves Mediterranean-inspired dishes like lamb kebabs
and Marfalafel.
They turned some old cars in this old bus into shaded places
you can dine in.
And by the time we were done, we were
ready to chinati some more.
As we were saying, Judd wasn't only
interested in the optimal display of his own work.
And he invited a number of other artists
to create works at Chinati.
Dan Flavin was one of these, and his work here
is installed in six former barracks.
You enter each U-shaped building on one side
and make your way down the length of the wing,
where you encounter parallel tilted corridors containing
barriers of colored fluorescent lights.
Each fixture holds two differently colored
bulbs, shining in opposite directions,
installed with space between that
allows you to view the other side, but not pass through.
You then retrace your steps across to the other side
of the U, pass from natural light to artificial light,
and explore this particular interaction
of colored fluorescence from the other side.
You're not quite sure what you're seeing exactly.
And the cast and temperature of the light
seems to shift as you orient yourself differently
around the space.
Each of the six buildings use combinations
of just four colors--
pink, green, yellow, and blue.
And the experience of all of them
is by turns optically entrancing, laborious,
and then transcendent.
After exploring several more installations
by other artists spread across the enormous campus,
it was time to return to Judd.
We'd seen these from a distance and finally
approached the progression of concrete structures
that run along the border of the property.
There are 60 units that have the same measurements, each
of which were cast and assembled on site,
a process that took four years.
Judd organized the units into 15 distinct formations,
evenly spaced, and all determined
by a firm set of parameters.
The entire work spans a total of about 3,000 feet,
or a little more than half a mile.
The thing is, this shot is beautiful.
And the actual experience was beautiful too.
But watching this footage feels nothing
like actually being there.
You see the nearby pronghorn looking at us, yes.
And you see how the structures frame magnificent views
of the landscape.
But you can't notice the plywood grain
visible in the cast concrete.
You don't feel the heat or the breeze
or see the dust or the tiny lizard skittering about.
Watching this, you cannot feel the scale of each volume
and relationship to your own body,
to those you're there with, and to the vast surroundings.
You're asked not to take photographs
while visiting to encourage a more
direct engagement with the art.
Of course, we did have a camera there.
But we didn't use it until after we spent some unmediated time
with the works first.
Let's be real, it's a huge pain to get here.
By the time you're here, you can't help
but shed some of the impatience that
accompanies our daily lives.
And you're willing, or you should
be, to give these works a small fraction of the consideration
and attention that brought them into being.
We've spent a good bit of our day in and out of the sun
and in the heady space of powerful art,
contemplating the ideas of artists past.
And we needed a good dose of the present,
which Marfa, we were happy to find, generously offers.
Our Chinati guide and half the town were heading to City Hall
to witness the swearing in of Marfa's new mayor.
And so we followed them.
Ann Marie Nafziger has lived in Marfa since 2003,
is an artist who makes paintings that look like this,
was formerly the director of Education and Outreach
at the Chinati Foundation, and also worked
for Marfa public schools.
You can read a fair bit about the divide between the art
people of Marfa and the rest of those who live here.
You can read about the high cost of housing, that over 50%
of residents live below the poverty line.
But here we saw with seemed to us
as an instance, and a very public one,
of unity between the town populations.
The arts organizations of Marfa are
huge drivers of the economy.
They provide jobs, aid to local schools,
and they do waive admission fees for locals.
It's complicated, and we don't know the half of it,
but watching public servants take their oaths of office
made us optimistic.
Our last stop was the most recent addition
to the Chinati collection--
Robert Irwin's installation that opened in 2016
and was 17 years in the making.
It's an artwork in the form of a building, which
is new but occupies the site and follows the footprint of Fort
Russell's former hospital.
It's C-shaped, and in the middle is a courtyard
lined with trees with an arrangement of basalt columns
in the middle.
You enter the building on the left
and encounter darkly painted walls,
punctuated by raised windows.
With a long expanse of taut scrim,
or semi-transparent cloth that bisects your passageway,
you make your way along and turn the corner,
eventually passing through successive layers of scrim
until you reach the building's midpoint, where everything
abruptly transitions from dark to light.
I'm a somewhat jaded art viewer, often measuring my responses.
But oh my, this transition is incredible.
I'm regretting all my previous reckless uses of the word
incredible because this experience far exceeds
99% of art encounters I've had.
When I was talking to a local later that day
and likened this to passing from life into death,
they said that's traumatic.
But I'm sticking with it.
I hope this is what death is like.
But moving on, you experience the mirror image
of the previous corridor, this time in white.
Irwin is often called a light and space artist.
And that actually describes the work quite well.
That's all this work is, really.
Irwin's very particular arrangement
of space and conscientious positioning of materials
heightens your senses and compels
you to consider the cyclical nature
of time and of the universe.
Sorry, I got dramatic again.
So the crazy thing is that Marfa may be tiny,
but we didn't see everything.
We've shown you but a sliver of the impact that Judd
had on Marfa, and only a portion of the innovative new work
in programming and food and shopping
that the city has to offer.
Donald Judd came to Marfa because the Southwest
captivated him, and because he wanted
to get away from the, quote, "harsh and glib situation
within art in New York."
He chose Marfa because he liked the land,
it wasn't crowded, it's near Mexico,
and was the best-looking and most practical.
And he focused so much attention here
because he thought that museums and the usual
places we find art were insufficient.
He wrote in 1987, "somewhere, a portion of contemporary art
has to exist as an example of what the art and its context
were meant to be."
And as unlikely a place as this may seem,
it's as good an example as I've found.
And it's worth seeking out.
The "Art Assignment" is funded in part by viewers like you,
through patreon.com, a subscription-based platform
that allows you to support creators
you like in the form of a monthly donation.
Special thanks to our grand master
of the arts, Indianapolis Homes Realty.
If you'd like to support the show,
check out our page at patreon.com/artistassignment.
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