WRITTEN BY DYLAN JONESThe first thing you realise when
you visit Marfa is that, perhaps
at odds with your expectations,
it has strongly resisted the
trappings of gentrification.
Unlike other countercultural
tourist spots from the past such
as, say, Santa Fe (which is basically a large collection
of small shops selling turquoise jewellery) or Venice
Beach (which is what Oxford Street might look like if
we legalised cannabis), this art-filled, far-flung oasis
in the West Texas desert is a genuine surprise. It is a
town of the past but much talked about as a temple of
the future, an art enclave that has attracted an eclectic,
seemingly unlikely pack of creatives who have helped
transform it into a thriving minimalist arts mecca. For
the past 15 years or so, Marfa (population 1,800 and
not really counting) has been on the alt bucket list,
an art hub built around artist Donald Judd’s Chinati
Foundation and now home to a succession of year-round
art events.
These days, our expectations tend to be based
on what we find on Instagram, but even then the
reality invariably turns out to be busier, tackier, more
expensive, smaller or less exciting than we imagined.
Today, disappointment comes in a presentation box.
But not Marfa. Here, in some of the most desolate
countrysides in the US, you’ll experience the sensation
of capsule actuality. Everything is here – the Prada
installation, the Pizza Foundation, the Marfa Book
Company, the homestead from the film Giant (shot on
Ryan Ranch, an ocean of rippling wheat-coloured grass
that is famously double the size of Manhattan) – and
yet it all exists in divine isolation. There are no strip
malls, no rinky-dink trinket shops, no Starbucks, no
chain stores, no outposts of anything ugly or naff.
Marfa is a sepia-toned boho oasis, not so much
trapped in time as weirdly immune to modernisation.
Developing glacially at its own ever-so-slow-handclap
pace, you sense that no one would notice if someone one
day stole all the clocks.
Judd moved here in 1979 and stayed for the rest
of his life (he died in 1994 at age 65). By then, he had
collected more than 13,000 books, many of which
are housed in a specially curated library in Marfa.
Curiously, Judd didn’t organise his books alphabetically,
but rather in order of their authors’ birth. This skewed
logic seems perfectly reasonable after you’ve spent
some time in the town. Judd made Marfa his own, its
remoteness acting almost as a guard against unwantedinterlopers. Of course, the town has become a modern
pilgrimage site for both artists and Judd enthusiasts,
but to come here you’ve really got to be committed:
being a three-hour drive from the nearest airport, Marfa
remains inviolate.
The contradictions here are almost comic. You have
these vast seas of Judd’s monolithic sculptures and
elsewhere an intimacy that is quietly claustrophobic.
In most of Texas, the sky goes on forever, whereas
here it’s the land that stretches in all directions, a
landscape that acts as a barrier, a deterrent against
attack, protecting the harmony of a small town. Judd
liked to say that he moved to Marfa not just because of
its remoteness, but because of its authenticity, feeling
the need to find a zip code rather than a building to act
as his museum. This authenticity is the very DNA of
Marfa, a place that almost feels spiritual, a home for
questing souls from all four corners.
Art tourism has obviously become big business,
as art fairs start to be more B2C, as galleries and
museums regularly overtake funfairs and theme parks
as family attractions, and as art starts to occupy a
different role in public life – look at the fuss we make
over the discovery of a new Banksy or the arrival of
a new sculpture on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth.
So centres of excellence and destination resorts start
to rival institutionalised nightclubs or lifestyle hotels.
What’s important for the continued integrity of the art
world is making sure these developments don’t simply
become attractions. Marfa, perhaps because of its
geographical predicament, is in no danger of demeaning
itself just yet.
Though the locals have mixed feelings about Marfa
being an art mecca, without art tourism the town would
be made up of rusty road signs and tumbleweed. And
not much else. As an art world Stations Of The Cross, it
holds steady.
Having spent two days in Marfa, I was encouraged
to drive south, towards the West Texas border, through
the Big Bend National Park, where the night skies
are dark as coal and rivers carve temple-like canyons
in ancient limestone. First-time visitors to the area
are given a litany of reasons why they ought to brave
the journey, and with good reason. It is extraordinary.
The four-hour drive rivals any other vista in North
America, an extravagant landscape that is unnervingly
free of people. It is so serene, so eerie, you feel almost
as though you’ve arrived in the wake of some freak
disaster, almost as though all human life has been
eradicated by an invisible alien force. It is one of the
most remote parts of the US. When you eventually
reach the border, you find another kind of disaster, the
old mining town of Terlingua, which offers a glimpse of
how poverty remains terminal in the south. I was going
to stay at a trendy new hotel here, but as this turned
out to be a glorified trailer park, and as the rest of the
town looked like the dictionary definition of desultory,
I got back in the rental, wound my way back to Marfa
and checked in to the Hotel Saint George, the kind
of place where you’re not surprised to find tempura
cauliflower or blistered shishito peppers on the menu. In
Marfa, gentrification is considered and comes complete
with Parmesan fries and a field greens salad.Not just a home to dust, dirt and desolation, Texas
desert town Marfa’s conceptual art scene, led for
years by Donald Judd, also makes it a must-visit
minimalist mecca141IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES (DONALD JUDD, JUDD CUBES), ALAMY
Donald Judd