Course: Arguments 2023
Instructor: Guillermo Arsuaga
In the process of its developing “secondness”, the subsequent influence and framing of arenas to be, we can imply the true power of decay. As Karl Marx states, “Decay is the laboratory of life”.Evolution festers non-linearly through the epochs, making room for growth, leaving space for decomposition. One must recognize the value of architectural ruin in the advancement of civilization. The primal notion that natalist beginnings incur nihilist endings is logically fallacious because it encourages a throwaway mentality towards architecture and the Cadillac Ranch’s exemplary and developing frameworks for us to reinterpret our creations.
In Cadillac Ranch, just as the idea of succession underscores the secondness of the site, it is important to understand what precedes it. The trajectory of the Cadillac Ranch can be widely traced by two complex and mutually inclusive timelines: that of memory and culture, and that of the physical object. At the intersection of these timelines is the evolutionary diagram Ant Farm wanted to create through their art – from its conception to its disappearance through decay – and the mobilization of the Cadillac, a cultural icon of the American dream that emerged from their fascination with cars, as a simulacrum.
Initially, Chip Lord from Ant Farm contends that they recognized the acts of vandalism as a challenge. However, housing the Cadillacs within a glass enclosure or an electric fence was deemed impractical, relegating the destiny of the artwork to the untamed influences of natures and cultures. The sincerity of Ant Farm’s response affirms the understanding that James Nesbit's concept of the "second site" serves as a retrospective analytical tool to understand the organic evolution of design in its site and drafts their evolutionary diagram.
The artwork engages with the chronology of memories and cultures through the act of public participation and operates on the timeline of the physical object through its production. Rejecting viewers as passive consumers of media, Ant Farm’s Cadillac Ranch probes the ways in which audiences become the producers of meaning through the passage of time. They consciously replace their nihilist authority, turning architecture into a medium with a time-specific message.
Public engagement with the artwork began to exhibit the changing nature of popular memory and revealed the elaborate ways in which Ant Farm understood mainstream popular culture and its representation. For a fleeting moment, the vehicles reclaimed their original shades in an endeavor by Hampton Inn, a motel chain, to restore Route 66’s landmarks. In less than twenty-four hours the new paint and plaque succumbed to fresh layers of graffiti airing the urgency with which American culture was trying to figure out what to do with such an art form. Theorist Erika Doss studied the documented shift from the official and didactic ‘monument’ to the more subjective and symbolic ‘memorial’ in American culture in the 1970s and 80s – at the precise moment of the installation. From the Black Lives Matter movement to advertising campaigns of luxury fashion houses, the Cadillac Ranch traverses between mass culture, high culture, and counterculture. It is precisely these vast arrays of cultural allusions and modes of communication that sharpen its ability to reflect temporalities.
The enmeshing of cultures and symbolism recurs in Ant Farms' other projects too. Referring back to the iconic Cadillac in another performative art project entitled ‘Media Burn’, Chip Lord states: “It has the giant tailfin of the Dream Car era. It is a Cadillac and still conveys the power and prestige that that implies. It contains the myth of 350 horsepower and uses it to demolish forty-two TV sets. It embodies the lure of the demolition derby, the calculated planning of a lunar launch, the freedom of the open road, and the reality of cars that crash and burn.”
Turning back to the production of the physical object, Patrick Maguire investigates the key concerns of the American avant-garde at the time and brilliantly notices the satire of Ant Farm’s sculptural installation. He states, “The Cadillac Ranch memorializes modernism by rehearsing its formal techniques, but as a hybridized, participatory project, it also enacts modernism’s end.” In the book entitled ‘Buildings Must Die’, reflecting on new ways for architectural decay to exist in our world, Stephen Cairns and Jane Jacobs explain the purist version of architectural modernism which prioritizes formal clarity, light and hygiene – all of which are embodied in the form, position, color and organization of the Cadillacs. They are arranged in a neat, single-file line, aligning to an east-west axis and are buried nose-deep in chronological order, with the oldest vehicle positioned farthest to the west. Pioneers of modern architecture like Le Corbusier asserted that in America, "Cleanliness is a national virtue," characterized by an absence of dirt and dust. Ant Farm's resignation of control and encouragement of modes of participation then directly confronts the formality of its organization to produce a value for the specific moment and state in which it is being viewed. In agreement with the perceptions of art historian Alois Reigl, the advantages of age value eclipses that of historical value. The latter can be understood only by those possessing specific knowledge about the context within the broader scope of historical events whilst age value is inherently apparent and universally valid.
Akin to anything inhabiting our planet, art and architecture, too, must face the consequences of the recklessness of time. In Ant Farm’s pursuit for planned obsolescence, they unveiled a new way for architecture to endure: one in which original histories have been effaced to make room for new cultural moments, but of which traces remain as memories.
- Nisbet, James. Second Site. Princeton University Press, 2021.
- Cairns, Stephen, and Jane M. Jacobs. "Buildings must die." A perverse view of (2014).
- Doss, Erika. Memorial mania: Public feeling in America. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
- Maguire, Patrick. Terminal structures: Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch, 1974. The University of Utah, 2014.
- Rymsza-Pawlowska, M. J. "Between Reception and Interpretation: The Historical Practice of Ant Farm." ASAP/Journal 4.1 (2019): 167-188.
- Blog, Exposition Art. “Cadillac Ranch - Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels.” Medium, 21 May 2018.