Sunday Morning Musings: I Am Prepared To Declare At Least The Utah One... A Genuine McCracken

Other than the one in the Netherlands, I am now not particularly convinced that any of the others were anything other than knock-offs. I do think the Netherlands version will ultimately be. . . authenticated. But it may take another six months, before a definitive list is released or confirmed by representative agents -- of the artist's estate.

So, I do believe (as I said two weeks ago) there will be more genuine McCrackens found -- and not just in Mars like rocky-red desert venues. But only time will tell. This piece by Sarah Seigel, says it all -- for me, at least. Do go read it all, as this is just a small part of her wonderful essay:

. . .It’s likely that the monolith was. . . that of the late John McCracken, a renowned minimalist artist who was born in Berkeley in 1934. He honed his skills as a sculptor at an art school in Oakland in the ’50s and ’60s, and it was here that he found his trademark West Coast, minimalist style. . . .

For those familiar with McCracken’s art, it’s strikingly obvious why the deceased artist has become a focal point of the monolith mystery: Throughout his career, McCracken produced a variety of steel sculptures that look nearly identical to the monolith placed in Utah. His work is predominantly composed of free-standing, metallic and triangular structures. Besides the striking resemblance between McCracken’s art and the monolith, reports from his son, Patrick McCracken, make it plausible that John McCracken is the man behind the monolith. . . .

The most compelling evidence is a conversation the father-and-son pair had in the spring of 2002, when John McCracken lived in a small adobe house in New Mexico.

“We were standing outside looking at the stars, and he said something to the effect of that he would like to leave his artwork in remote places to be discovered later,” Patrick McCracken told The New York Times. “He wasn’t your average sort of dad. He believed in advanced alien races that were able to visit Earth. To his mind, these aliens had been visiting Earth for a very long time, and they were not malevolent. They wanted to help humanity to get past this time of our evolution where all we do is fight each other. . . .”

It’s easy to feel small and meaningless, especially now that the majority of our life takes place online and our planet seems to be plagued by insurmountable problems. To me, the monolith serves as a gentle reminder that what we leave behind on Earth matters and will continue to matter long after we are gone. Even if it isn’t John McCracken’s monolith, I’d like to believe that it is. There is something indescribably poetic about a dying artist hiding futuristic sculptures in the desert. . . .

And while the monolith has now vanished as quickly as it appeared, it still lives vividly in my imagination. The alienlike monolith, unearthed in the final few months of 2020 — a year pulled directly from a dystopian novel playbook — may have surpassed even John McCracken’s wildest extraterrestrial dreams. . . .

Will one be found near those White Oak Mountain ridge-lines, or the White Tank ones, Uhuru, the Solomon Islands or even closer to home, on the Sawatch range, or in the Garden of the Gods? We shall see. . . smiling ear to ear, and baking again. . . here. Be excellent to one another, until we find [one] another. . . .

नमस्ते