Art

“The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.”
Herbert Marcuse

Leaving Yosemite National Park, you will continue climbing until you reach Tioga Pass. From Tioga Pass you will begin an incredibly long, steep descent down to the town of Lee Vining. From this point on you will be traveling across the great American desert.

As you travel south on highway 395 you will pass 100 miles west of Death Valley on your way to Joshua Tree National Park. The desert will keep getting harsher, dryer, and more forbidding with each mile. The desert conditions culminate in the vast desert between Joshua Tree National Park and Arizona.

You will spend weeks in this harsh, strangely beautiful landscape. Riding your bicycle across the desert during the day and sleeping under the stars at night, you can’t help but soak up the desert scenery. The rocks, the cactus, and the sand will be your constant companions.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Scottsdale, Arizona
Crossing this vast desert beforehand helps explain why it is such a profound experience to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert masterpiece, Taliesin West. After spending weeks in the desert, you will be mentally and spiritually prepared to understand how his work harmonizes with the desert landscape.

One of the truly beautiful, redeeming qualities of human beings is that certain artists’ work enhances the beauty of the natural world. A Japanese garden, for example, manages to make something serenely beautiful with just the bare minimum of natural materials.

Wright believed in designing structures that are in harmony with the natural environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. Taliesin West is a wonderful example of Wright’s organic architecture because the structures are made of the rocks and sand of the Sonoran Desert and subtly embrace the contours of the foothills of the McDowell Mountains.

Taliesin West is set in a Sonoran Desert Preserve of approximately 500 acres. Frank Lloyd Wright and his apprentices constructed the buildings and grounds over a period of twenty years. In addition to its buildings, Taliesin West contains beautiful terraces, landscaped gardens, and walkways with dramatic views of the Valley of the Sun.

Taliesin West is also an active, working school of architecture. Perhaps that is why the tour guides are so knowledgeable. Their guided tours will help you to understand the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and to appreciate why he is considered the greatest American architect.

Donald Judd

Marfa, Texas
Donald Judd moved to Marfa from New York City in 1971. He needed large spaces in which to install his art. He purchased two aircraft hangars and some smaller buildings and began to permanently install his art. Over time, the area around Marfa became known as a cultural center for contemporary art.

Falling in love with the beautiful, high desert landscape surrounding Marfa, Judd purchased a ranch in the area for his personal residence. The Dia Art Foundation in New York helped Judd purchase decommissioned Fort D. A. Russell. Judd began transforming the fort’s structures into art exhibition spaces in 1979.

Judd’s plan was to house large collections of individual artists’ work on permanent display. Judd believed the prevailing model of a museum where art is shown for short periods of time offers the visitor neither the appropriate time nor space necessary to develop a true understanding of the artist or their work as they intended. Donald Judd died in 1994. The Chinati Foundation has assumed responsibility for his unique artistic mission.

Robert Irwin

Marfa, Texas
Robert Irwin is one of the best known members of the Southern California movement known as Light and Space. The Light and Space movement focuses on the experience of perception itself rather than on producing conventional works of art. The grounds of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa provide a magnificent setting for Robert Irwin’s first permanent installation in America. The critic Lawrence Weschler comments on Irwin’s stature as an artist as follows, “I think you could make a very strong case that he is one of the ten most important living American artists.” Robert Irwin says simply that his work is intended “To make you a little more aware than you were the day before of how beautiful the world is.” That is exactly the reason I ride my bicycle around America, so I decided to stop in Marfa and visit the grounds of the Chinati Foundation.

Robert Irwin’s installation in Marfa is a building with large, regularly spaced windows looking outward to the desert landscape. Only natural light from the windows is present. The Texas sky and the desert landscape are visible through the windows. This view creates a natural landscape “painting” which is in a state of constant change as opposed to being a static work of art. This installation literally took my breath away the first time I visited. A visit to the grounds of the Chinati Foundation is highly recommended during your stay in Marfa.

Society as a Work of Art

I deeply admire individual expression in all its various forms. Only individuals write books, compose music, create art, choreograph dance, write scripts, direct movies, design buildings, and start businesses. I believe the proper role of government is to help individuals flourish so they can create these higher goods. My idea of “Society as a Work of Art” would be a society in which artists, writers, musicians, and entrepreneurs flourish. Here are my ideas about how to nurture “Society as a Work of Art.”

1. Individuals must be free to create and express themselves provided their activities don’t harm others.
2. No one can be creative in the face of financial destitution. Therefore, every citizen should receive a small monthly stipend. Everyone should be treated equally with absolutely no means testing. There should be no other social programs with their accompanying expensive bureaucracy, typically long wait lists, and complex rules. In my opinion, a small universal basic income will almost certainly precipitate a renaissance of creativity and prosperity!
3. Public education from kindergarten to graduate school should be available free of charge to everyone. Private education should also be allowed and encouraged. Elementary school teachers should be required to have at least a master’s degree, just as they do in Finland. Why is it that public education in the richest nation on earth falls far short of the high standards set by Finland’s world class education system? Surely, America can afford to compensate teachers commensurate with the goal that only the very best and brightest should be employed to teach our children!
4. School curriculums must include the basics: English, mathematics, foreign languages, computer programming, entrepreneurship, science and ecology, history and civics, and nutrition and fitness. School curriculums should also include these electives: art, music, dance, film studies, creative writing, and bicycle repair!

Turn to Chapter 14, if you would like to learn more about Larry Baggett, the real life inspiration for the idea that bicycle repair should be taught in America’s middle schools. I once suggested to Larry that the final exam for his bicycle repair course should be for his junior high students to build a perfectly true, precisely tensioned, and correctly dished rear wheel!

5. In order to facilitate the free exchange of ideas and to foster a culture that values art in all its forms, every community should have a beautiful library, a community center with a Starbucks quality coffee shop manned by local high school students who are studying entrepreneurship, and high quality, well run athletic facilities. Student artworks can be displayed at the community coffee shop. Every community needs a book club, a film club, a theater group, a chess club, and a hiking club. A vibrant cultural and athletic commons helps displace mindless materialism and status seeking. No effort should be spared to make the public commons as beautiful and inclusive as possible!
6. Certain systems should be the exclusive province of government. These include natural resources, public lands, public infrastructure, public utilities, public education, the money supply, taxes, banking, single payer medicine, public safety, national defense, and the rule of law.
7. The government must do everything in its power to eliminate inequality and facilitate a level playing field. The tax system should be steeply progressive and, to the extent possible, paperless. We need to amend our constitution to eliminate budget deficits except for legitimate national emergencies. It is deeply immoral, in my opinion, to burden future generations with the current generation’s expenses. Hereditary wealth should be taxed so as to create a level playing field for subsequent generations. Monopolies should be eliminated by converting them into public utilities.
8. Articles of incorporation must require the board of directors to consider all stake holders, including the environment, when determining corporate policy and making business decisions. Failure to consider all stakeholders must lead to criminal liability for individual board members.
9. Because human life depends on the health of the earth’s ecosystems, citizens must be taught from kindergarten onward that minimizing personal consumption is an absolute moral imperative!
10. The automobile should be forbidden within city limits and replaced with smooth, wide sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and a high quality public transportation system. The automobile contributes to social isolation and alienation, causes urban sprawl, kills humans and untold numbers of wildlife, poisons the air, and destroys physical fitness. Walking and cycling should be part of day-to-day life so that physical fitness is virtually assured!