Editors’ note: Amarillo is known worldwide for its public art installations, including Cadillac Ranch. But very few locals have ever seen one of the area’s most significant works of public art, Amarillo Ramp. We asked local artist and educator Jon Revett, the Doris Alexander Distinguished Professor of Art and art program director at West Texas A&M University—and one of the world’s foremost experts on Amarillo Ramp—to introduce it to Brick & Elm readers.
One of the greatest things about art is the connections. I can look at a cave painting and feel what that artist felt 30,000 ago. Art transcends time and space, but sometimes the more intimate interactions demand as strong a connection. Just outside Amarillo is a work of art that does this very thing, but not many local people have heard of Amarillo Ramp.
It’s the most-famous, least-known artwork in the Texas Panhandle.
People from all over the globe come to this area to see Robert Smithson’s third mature work of land art. On a recent tour to the site, however, a local couple tagged along on a tour with their art-world granddaughter. To my surprise, they had never heard of Amarillo Ramp, despite having lived here when the work was built and even knowing the patrons. As an art professor, a big part of my job is explaining art to people so they understand it in a way that makes sense to them. I have published articles and lectured internationally about the sculpture, but these were to insiders of the art world.
This article is not for them. It is for the people of Amarillo. I present the 5 Ws of Amarillo Ramp:
WHO
Robert Smithson is the artist responsible for Amarillo Ramp. Smithson is a pioneer of land art, an art movement popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s, often illustrated by his Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot stone spiral protruding into the Great Salt Lake.
Smithson was born in New Jersey in 1938 and studied art at the Art Students League in New York City. He began as a painter but changed to sculpture once he embraced Minimalism. As Smithson and his Minimalist colleagues boiled art down to its basics, he also became a prolific writer. His 1967 essay, The Monuments of the Passaic, outlines his interest in entropy, especially as it pertains to urban sprawl. These “monuments” are pieces of infrastructure—much like Roman ruins—that seem mundane but could inform future art historians about today’s aesthetics.
Minimalism’s gallery-centric nature began to limit Smithson, so he brought the outside inside with his concept of “Nonsite,” which are sculptures made of objects, photographs and maps of sites beyond the gallery. Next, he abandoned interior space altogether, taking his art outdoors to do things like pouring materials down hills and partially burying a woodshed.
His monumental land art sculptures go a step further, including Spiral Jetty in 1970, which was followed by Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in Emmen, The Netherlands, in 1971.
Smithson then came to Amarillo to scout sites for his third piece of land art, located north of the city limits. He had laid out Amarillo Ramp and was surveying the site from the air when his small plane crashed, killing him, the pilot and a photographer. Despite this tragic loss of an influential American artist, Smithson’s art and writings continue to live on, inspiring generations of artists and art historians.
WHAT
Amarillo Ramp is an earthwork, or a sculpture made from the earth. The name reveals that it is a ramp, but its slope is a broken circle, with the highest peak being 15 feet tall, then gently sloping in a counterclockwise direction to ground level. It is 150 feet in diameter, and its initial form had a flat top approximately 10 feet wide with sloped sides. It was constructed from sandstone quarried about 200 yards away, giving it a red, rocky surface texture. Amarillo Ramp was built in a man-made lake with its “head” rising out of the waves and its “spine” kissing the shore about two-thirds of the way down. The “tail” disappeared into the lake (see photo on previous page).
Amarillo Ramp turned 50 last year and it is showing signs of age. The most noticeable change is the missing lake. About 1980, the dam holding the lake broke and the water escaped downstream, never to return. The lakebed is now filled with the same plants that cover the surrounding landscape. Mesquites have invaded the bottom third of Amarillo Ramp, and a few trees dot it farther up the slope. The rocky surface has eroded, tuning to smooth dirt that now harbors plant growth, though most of the cacti have been removed. Amarillo Ramp is still the same height but the flat surface has slimmed down to about 4 feet.
The piece of land art has softened with age, and looks like someone draped an enormous blanket of plants and dirt over it.
WHERE
Amarillo Ramp is located on private property. It was built in what was once Tecovas Lake, about 15 miles northwest of Amarillo. To the west, a radio tower is the primary feature on a ridge where tiny cars can be seen driving on Boys Ranch Road. To the southwest, the wind farms near I-40 are visible on a clear day, along with the grain elevators of Bushland. To the southeast, a rectangle on the horizon is the tallest tower of the helium plant one passes on the way to Amarillo Ramp. Tecovas Creek still runs through the dry lakebed on its way to the Canadian River, about five miles to the north.
A large steel pipe protrudes from the brush on the road to Amarillo Ramp. After a turn, the pipe runs parallel to the road. As the pipe disappears over a ridge, the abrupt end of the road reveals Amarillo Ramp. Just north of the circular mound lies the remains of the serpentine dam. The steel pipe descends the hill to an old yellow diesel pump, then protrudes into the dirt of the former lakebed. These are the relics of a key-line irrigation system, which at the time was touted as a ranching innovation. The pump represents a historical echo that resounded with Smithson. He put Amarillo Ramp next to it, a nod to another agricultural innovation.
Amarillo Ramp is located on the Frying Pan Ranch, which was the first ranch to use barbed wire. It was founded in 1881 by Henry Sanborn and Joseph Glidden, who were instrumental in the founding of Amarillo. Glidden also held the first patent for “the devil’s rope” and, legally speaking, is considered its inventor. Barbed wire forever changed the American West, dividing up the open range and creating the modern cattle industry. By attaching Amarillo Ramp to this history, Smithson connected his art to something larger, not just in space but across time.
WHEN
On July 10, 1973, Robert Smithson arrived in Amarillo. Almost immediately, he wowed Stanley Marsh 3*, convincing the art patron to pay for a work of land art. At the time, Marsh was the king of the town. He owned a television station, a radio station, a bookstore and the top floor of the tallest building in town. He had begun building a reputation in the art world by supporting a summer residency for the sculptor John Chamberlain, and communicating with the Ant Farm about what would become the Cadillac Ranch. Marsh met the artist Tony Shafrazi on a flight to Iran and invited him to come out to Amarillo. Shafrazi extended this invitation to Smithson, who was in New Mexico with his wife and fellow artist, Nancy Holt.
The 1970s were in full swing when Smithson walked into Toad Hall, the Marsh family’s home. The hangover of the 1960s had passed, and the coming American bicentennial heralded a brighter future. Smithson was riding this optimistic wave when he picked the site and began preparatory work. On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in the plane crash.
The following August, Amarillo Ramp was completed posthumously by Holt, his widow, along with Shafrazi and another artist, Richard Serra.
Smithson’s short 10 days in Amarillo cemented his legacy. Judging by his colleagues’ success, his art career would have been stratospheric had he survived. Three years later, Holt completed her most famous work, Sun Tunnels, launching her art career, all while managing Smithson’s. Shafrazi became a gallerist, representing legendary artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Richard Serra became one of the most famous sculptors known across the globe for his giant undulating sheets of steel.
WHY
Why would an artist at the height of his career come out to the Texas Panhandle to risk his life to make a sculpture out of the land? Robert Smithson’s thinking was rooted in the big picture. He wanted his work to last through the ages and communicate with future generations. Minimalism had given him a vocabulary of simplicity, and he wanted to go back to the beginning. It is no coincidence that Amarillo Ramp resembles a Neolithic work of art, like the Great Serpent Mound or Stonehenge. While the humans who built these structures did not see them as art, we do today because they have become precious to our understanding of ourselves.
This preciousness has been assigned through time to various objects that we call art. In recent history, art objects tend to be paintings and sculpture, which require the care of collectors, galleries and/or museums. The passage of centuries would erase most works of art without these institutions, leaving us only the ruins of architecture and infrastructure.
Robert Smithson was aware of art’s ephemeral nature. His goal was to make art that would communicate throughout time, even if no one was there to take care of it. Ancient artists used earth and stone, so he used the same materials to leave us Amarillo Ramp. Combining this historical process with contemporary theory, he tied the past to present—and left a work of art that doesn’t only stand the test of time, but pays homage to it.
HOW
Because of its location on private property, Amarillo Ramp is not visible to the public without a guide. To request a tour, visit holtsmithsonfoundation.org/amarillo-ramp, then send an email to the address provided.
View images of Amarillo Ramp here.
*From the editors: We recognize the complexity of the legacy of Stanley Marsh. As with Cadillac Ranch, his support was critical to the creation of Amarillo Ramp long before the criminal allegations and stories of sexual misconduct came to light. Brick & Elm does not condone or overlook these aspects of his history and readers should be aware of the full context surrounding Marsh.
