By CINDA CHAVICH

(MARFA, TX.) – Marfa, Texas, sits at the base of the Chinati Mountains, out in the flat, featureless desert where James Dean’s last movie, Giant, was set.

When Hollywood came to Marfa back in 1955, it was the biggest thing that ever hit this dusty Texas town, stuck as it is at the end of the rail line and a lonely, three-hour drive from the nearest major airport. But Marfa’s glory days were fleeting - lean years left the once mighty ranching industry in decline and even Dean fans dwindled.  Like the epic movie’s abandoned set, a skeleton of the grand Reata homestead that still sits on a ranch just out of town, Marfa was crumbling in the desert sun.

Then something happened that most long-time locals still don’t quite understand – New York sculptor Donald Judd moved to town and Marfa (pop. 2,500) became the world Mecca of minimalist modern art.

MODERN MARFA

Today there’s a steady stream of sophisticated, big city pilgrims making their way to Marfa and their interest in this tiny west Texas outpost has left its mark. The rejuvenated main street has a couple of good galleries, a wine bar, and a book store that stocks glossy, expensive volumes  with titles like Art and Feminism or  Here is New York, merchandise aimed squarely at the “New Marfans” who are moving in.

This is a town where couples in black sip cappuccino, while strong cowboy coffee is still brewed over campfires and served from rustic chuck wagons.  Next to the thrift store, where the locals shop for used jeans and cowboy boots, Brooklyn-based designer Evan Hughes has a satellite store selling industrial home furnishings. And while ranchers and local Border Patrol cops gather at Carmen’s Café or La Carreta for gorditas and burritos, the urbane crowd patronizes Maiya’s, a sleek little bistro that might have been plucked right out of Manhattan.

“This town is all about those paradoxes and contrasts,” says Mimi Dopson, a potter who sells her work at the Hecho en Marfa gallery up the street. Dopson and her husband Bob moved to this part of Texas from Austin, where he was once a dentist. While they love the region for “the weather, the climate and the solitude,” like many others, these artists arrived after Judd, described as the “father of modern Minimalism,” put Marfa on the map.

SPACE INVADERS

Known for his simple serialized constructions and large installations  - boxes and cubes wrought in plywood, concrete and anodized aluminum - Judd was looking for breathing space when he escaped from New York and headed for Marfa.

There’s no doubt that this chunk of the Chihuahuan Desert is a stark, minimalist landscape, an environment as spare and vast as his work.

Big sky, scattered clumps of grease wood bushes, prickly pear cactus, and distant blue-grey mesas are about all that break the visual monotony of the straight stretches of asphalt that bisect the region. The scenery can be bleak and is not that alluring unless it’s miles of empty space that you’re after.

But this is exactly what attracted Judd - some say space was his medium. And one visit to Marfa, the historic ranching town that he remade in his own image of Minimalism, is all even the uninitiated art lover needs to grasp the concept.

“Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the

art and its context were meant to be,” wrote Judd, an outspoken critic of traditional galleries and their inherent inadequacies for large installations.

Judd arrived in the mid-1970s and, with the help of the New York-based Dia Art Foundation, acquired all kinds of “space” in and around Marfa. He renovated houses and derelict warehouse buildings, a beautiful downtown bank and an abandoned army fort – massive interiors that became the galleries and studios of his non-profit Chinati Foundation.

Now, some 10,000 art lovers from around the globe beat a path across the austere, hardpan plains every year to view the large, permanent installations created by Judd and his closest colleagues, celebrated  artists like Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain. It’s just what Judd would have wanted – for others to travel in his footsteps to a place like Marfa, where everything extraneous is stripped away and the space becomes part of the experience.

CHINATI FOUNDATION

Since cancer claimed Judd in 1994, the Chinati Foundation has continued its founder’s work with a small staff and board that includes former National Gallery  of Canada curator Brydon Smith and Rob Weiner,  Chinati’s assistant director and Judd’s former assistant. The collection continues to slowly evolve but Weiner says it will never become the kind of art museum that Judd detested – anthology-style collections the uncompromising artist once described as “freshman English forever.”

“This is the capstone of Judd’s achievement – it’s really an anti-museum,” says Weiner, surveying the emptiness outside his office at the centre of the former army base. “Most contemporary art museums are designed to show a wide range of artists, and a limited number of those artists’ works.

“This was conceived to show the work of three artists – but to show a proper representation of those artists.”

In fact, Chinati now features more than three artists’ work. Along with Judd, Flavin and Chamberlain, there are permanent installations by Ilya Kabakov, Carl Andre, Richard Long, Roni Horn, Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen – pieces that range from a massive rusting horseshoe suspended on an outdoor pillar to an eerie recreation of a hastily-abandoned Soviet school house, complete with tattered books and dusty Russian toys. Now, there is an artist-in-residence program which attracts applicants from around the world (Toronto artist Nestor Kruger worked there in 2002), plus a university internship program for art students like Miriam Martincic.

“I’ve come here to be with the collection, to soak up stuff,” says Martincic, a personable woman from Ohio whose duties include conducting the daily tours of the sprawling compound and maintaining the exhibits.

“It’s like a pilgrimage to get here,” she explains, carefully avoiding personal  interpretation of Judd’s vision. “It takes three or four hours and that drive creates a context for the work.”

Walking through the massive brick artillery sheds, where German POWs were held during WWII, it’s easy to appreciate Judd’s creative use of emptiness. Here, where his 100 satiny milled aluminum boxes sit in precise rows, serenely reflecting each other and the buckskin-hued desert beyond, the sheer spectacle of it all invites you to linger and contemplate every nuance of shadow and light.

Outside, there is more Judd – fifteen concrete blocks scattered along a half-mile stretch of desert plain like some linear, modern-day Stonehenge.  Nearby, six huge, 6,000-square-foot, U-shaped barracks house Dan Flavin’s $1.78 million (US) “Marfa project”, a monumental example of this sculptor’s work in the reflective  medium of multi-coloured fluorescent light.

It can take hours to even do a cursory trek through the 340- acre site and the scale is all part of the experience.  Trudging up and down the tilting corridors, into and out of a dozen doorways, to encounter Flavin’s lime jello striated lights as you round one corner, or to see how his intense blue light bleeds into yellow at another, adds to the drama.

Visitors can take the tour of Chinati for $10, which includes both the army base buildings and the town galleries, like the converted mohair and woolen mill that now houses an impressive collection of Chamberlain’s crushed car sculptures. Since his death, Judd’s home, studio and personal art collection  in Marfa have been held by a separate foundation administered by his children, and are closed to public scrutiny.

CULTURE CLASH

But this is likely how the artist would have wanted it, too. His presence in Marfa for more than two decades was always controversial and did little to endear him to the townspeople. Reclusive and irascible (Judd made repeated complaints about the noise from the local feed plant disturbing his solitude), he mixed little with the locals.

Some townspeople were suspicious of Judd. When he built a high privacy wall around the buildings where he established his first studio, they wondered what he was doing there.  Some accused him of being a devil worshipper.  And when he began to buy up more derelict buildings in the town, they began to refer to its main street derisively as Judd-ville.

When Judd began holding an annual open house at Chinati, complete with a grand party and free Mexican meal, some Marfans learned to appreciate his austere art, but many locals still stayed away. One rancher admitted he’d never been to Chinati’s museum on the edge of town, but noted that “they started building a bridge out there and never finished it,” referring to Judd’s concrete pieces that can be seen from the highway. Others are more concerned about the “second wave” of new residents and investors, wealthy business people from Houston, Dallas and beyond who fly into Marfa in their own private planes for weekends but don’t contribute to the community.

“We’ve got a lot of lawyers and real estate speculators here now,” said a woman who didn’t want to be identified. “They buy property cheap, and sell high. Before these people came, the town wasn’t as pretty, but it was more viable.”

Local businesses – like the food store and beauty college  - are gone. Five years ago, a two-bedroom adobe in need of repair might fetch $30,000 – today prices have risen ten fold. Some say Marfa is destined to become the next Santa Fe.

It’s not surprising that the politically progressive artist community occasionally raises hackles here in the land where George W. Bush has his roots. A provocative piece created in August by visiting Icelandic artist Hlynur Hallsson created a stir nearly as serious as Canada’s “moron” incident. Hallsson’s four graffiti-style sentences, scrawled on a wall in a converted slaughterhouse, declaring that  "the real axis of evil are Israel, USA and the UK”, “Ariel Sharon is the top terrorist,” “George W. Bush is an idiot,” and “Iceland is banana republic number one, " created such a split between “old” and “new Marfans” that the Chinati Foundation agreed to cover the windows of the gallery. A few days later the artist unveiled a second exhibit, painted over the first, which declared "the Axis of Evil is North Korea, Iraq and Iran," "Osama bin Laden is the top terrorist,” “George W. Bush is a good leader,” and “Iceland is not a banana republic."  The purpose, said the artist, was to inspire discussion of the issues – something he certainly achieved in this conservative corner of rural America.

Marfa has become a shrine to Judd and his ego, an artsy little oasis in the middle of a vast and remote desert. It’s a place where two of America’s most antithetic cultures clash, and that will always make it an interesting place to visit.

IF YOU GO:

American Airlines offers daily, non-stop flights from most major Canadian cities to Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. Air Canada, Continental, United, Delta and US Airways also offer service to Texas.  Then it’s a short secondary flight to Odessa/Midland, the closest airpoit to Marfa, where you can rent a car to make the 3-hour drive to Marfa. A round trip flight from Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Calgary) to Odessa/Midland TX starts at $800 CND.

In Marfa, you can stay at the newly-renovated Hotel Paisano (866-729-3669 or www.hotelpaisano.com). This 1930s gem, with it’s Spanish architecture is a National Historic Landmark. It was the headquarters of the Giant cast and crew in 1955 and you’ll find lots of James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor clippings and photos displayed in the lobby ($90-$170 US). Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid have been recent guests but it you’d rather see where Mick Jagger vacations, check out the luxe Cibolo Creek Ranch 33 miles southof town on Highway 67 (915-229-3737). Rooms start at $450  (US) including meals.

To see the amazing art of Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and others visit The Chinati Foundation (1 Calvary Row; 915-729-4362; www.chinati.org). Viewing is by tour only, Thursday through Sunday, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (closed Mondays) and by appointment only the rest of the week. Admission is $10 per person, $5 for students and seniors.

Nearby towns like Alpine and Fort Davis are similarly savvy and worth visiting for their historic sites and services. The Reata restaurant in Alpine, named for the famed homestead in the movie Giant, offers chef Grady Spears’ famous cowboy cuisine, from tenderloin tamales with pecan mash to smoked quail with jalapeno cheddar grits and molasses glaze.  Or visit La Casita in Alpine for good homestyle Mexican food, and Bread & Breakfast for excellent morning fare.  In Fort Davis, a stool at the Drugstore soda fountain makes a classic Texas burger. For more information about  Marfa and environs, visit www.marfatx.com  or see www.traveltex.com  to obtain special discount coupons called Buckaroo Bucks, created specifically for Canadian travelers.

(a version of this feature appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper)

©Cinda Chavich

www.tastereport.com