31 March 2011 Truck load of art burning near the highway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txSLBtjw5K8

Culture, Rolling Into Towns on Big Rigs

“Trucks transport 70 percent of the freight in the United States, according to the Department of Transportation. And if a prominent New York artist and his friends have their way, a tiny fraction of that total — six 18-wheelers full, to be exact — will soon be a variety of cargo not usually found barreling down the interstate: art, fresh from painters’ studios; poets’, playwrights’ and songwriters’ pens; and filmmakers’ cameras.

“For those with long memories of the lore of art and the open road, the project may bring to mind the 1979 comic song “Truckload of Art,” by the Texas artist and songwriter Terry Allen, among the musicians recruited by Mr. Fischl to participate. In the song a group of New York artists rent a “spankin’ new, white-shiny, chrome-plated cab-over Peterbilt” and fill it with “hot avant-garde” to drive to California and show up their West Coast counterparts... “

“Mr. Fischl said the project was raising money from some of the participating artists as well as from foundations and corporations. Though a few artists he approached declined to take part — “There were artists who were scared, I think, that it sounded nationalistic or patriotic with the capital P” — most, he said, seemed eager to have a chance to reach audiences outside museums and galleries and commercial theaters.

“The art world has become incredibly insular,” he said. “There’s such a disconnect between what artists are trying to do and how what they make ultimately gets used.”

Though he first considered conducting the tour by train, he said, he and others felt that trucks would allow them to go more places.

“Plus, when these trucks come to town and unfold, people are going to be totally curious about what’s inside them, in the same way they are when the circus or Nascar comes to town,” he added. “Americans love trucks; they aren’t intimidated by them..”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/arts/design/eric-fischls-america-now-and-here-project.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

Cassi Creek:

This brings to mind the old Chautauqua events that brought education, culture, and sometimes-political assimilation to a willing audience disguised as education as they traveled about the nation from their New York base and center. The organization still exists, thrives, and serves an ever-eager populace.

http://www.ciweb.org/our-mission/

The traveling art show calls out to be named “Chatruqua,” in honor of the traditional events.

The song, Truck Load of Art” is a sad bit of commentary on the people who dwell in the valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas rivers. While the major cities in this basin have art museums, symphony orchestras, and the other trappings of advanced societies, beyond the suburbs, in the towns that are populated by thousands, there is less interest in such “big city” things. NASCAR drivers at fan events draw larger crowds than do Pulitzer winners. There is likely no chess club at the local high school but there will be athletes who stay in school only in hopes of a jock scholarship and recruitment that they will never honestly have a ghost of a chance receiving.

I’d be thrilled to see a truckload of art and some assorted writers, poets, and artists pull up and disgorge cultural happenings. We’ve already seen the Harley-Davidson trailer museum and the art museum at the university we both attend. A truckload of Monet, Manet, and Delacroix would be fun to see. So would a rotation of Picasso, Reubens, & Van Gough. I’d like to hear a number of authors and poets read from their works, knowing that they forged those pages single-handedly and with honest intent, rather than by spending a say with a ghostwriter and then showing up two weeks later to sign off on the dust jacket but never reading the purported work at all.

I’d like to see this plan unfold and provide a local market for our friends who pull really good works of art from their eyes, brains, and hands.

But I don’t think it will really succeed in bringing culture to the masses. Americans may not be intimidated by trucks, but they are intimidated by art.









Truckload of Art Lyrics

Artist: Terry Allen

Song: Truckload of Art

Album: Lubbock (On Everything)

Recitation:

Once upon a time…

Sometime ago back on the east coast

In New York City, to be exact…

A bunch of artists and painters and

sculptors and musicians and

poets and writers and dancers

and architects

Started feeling real superior

to their ego-counter-parts

Out on the West Coast…so,

They all got together and decided

They would show those snotty surfer upstarts

A thing or two about the Big Apple

And…they hired themselves a truck

It was a big, spanking new white-shiny

Chrome-plated cab-over

Peterbilt…

With mud flaps, stereo, TV, AM & FM radio,

Leather seats and a naugahide sleeper…

All fresh

with new American Flag decals and "ART ARK"

Printed on the side of the door

with solid 24-karat gold leaf type…

And they filled up this truck

with the most significant piles

And influential heaps of Art Work

To ever be assembled in Modern Times,

And it sent it West…to chide

Cajole, humble and humiliate…the Golden Bear.

And this is the true story of that truck…



A Truckload of Art

From New York City

Came rollin down the road

Yeah the driver was singing

And the sunset was pretty

But the truck turned over

And she rolled off the road

(chorus0

Yeah a Truckload of Art

is burning near the highway

Precious objects are scattered

All over the ground

And it's a terrible sight

If a person were to see it

But there weren't nobody around

(Yodel)

Yeah the driver went sailing

High in the sky

Landing in the gold lap of the Lord

Who smiled and then said

"Son, you're better off dead

Than haulin a truckload

full of hot avant-garde



(chorus)



Yes…an important artwork

Was thrown burning to the ground

Tragically…landing in the weeds

And the smoke could be seen

Ahhh for miles all around

Yeah but nobody…knows what it means



Yes…a Truckload of Art

Is burning near the highway

And it's a tough job for the highway patrol

Ahhh they'll soon see the smoke

An come runnin to poke

Then dig a deep ditch

And throw the arts in a hole



(Yodel)

Yeah a Truckload of Art

Is burning near the highway

And it's raging far-out of control

And what the critics have cheered

Is now shattered and queered

And their noble reviews

Have been stewed on the road



So if you set out to bring “Art” to the middle states, bring lots of marshmallows too.