THE PARADISE (1976)

THE PARADISE (1976)

The Paradise, 1976 as shown in the The Great American Rodeo Show, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, 1976

The Paradise, 1976 as shown in the The Great American Rodeo Show, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, 1976

“Eleven artists were invited by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 1975 to investigate the Fort Worth Rodeo. The artists were all given open access behind the scenes: the rodeo grounds, cowboy quarters, areas behind the chutes, the rodeo parade, etc., for the week of the spectacle. (In Forth Worth the rodeo is treated basically like an act of God.) When the week was over, the artists selected spaces in the museum to make works to be exhibited the following year in conjunction with the 1976 (U.S. Bicentennial) rodeo.

"The piece I made for the exhibition was based on the three basic places where rodeo cowboys live their lives: honky-tonk lounges, motel rooms, and rodeo arenas. The LOUNGE consisted of a jukebox (DESPERARTE ROOMS) programmed with cheatin’, lyin’ and dyin’ songs (pretty much the entire gamut of country music); the MOTEL was a dresser covered with masculine debris strewn around a television (video monitor) that played a video I made called 'Snuff Queen.' 

“Eleven artists were invited by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 1975 to investigate the Fort Worth Rodeo. The artists were all given open access behind the scenes: the rodeo grounds, cowboy quarters, areas behind the chutes, the rodeo parade, etc., for the week of the spectacle. (In Forth Worth the rodeo is treated basically like an act of God.) When the week was over, the artists selected spaces in the museum to make works to be exhibited the following year in conjunction with the 1976 (U.S. Bicentennial) rodeo.

"The piece I made for the exhibition was based on the three basic places where rodeo cowboys live their lives: honky-tonk lounges, motel rooms, and rodeo arenas. The LOUNGE consisted of a jukebox (DESPERARTE ROOMS) programmed with cheatin’, lyin’ and dyin’ songs (pretty much the entire gamut of country music); the MOTEL was a dresser covered with masculine debris strewn around a television (video monitor) that played a video I made called 'Snuff Queen.' 

"It featured Jo Harvey Allen as a 'high-haired honky-tonk woman' making up her face at her vanity in a motel she shared with a giant palomino stallion. The ARENA section was behind a tall white fence and featured a large expanse of dirt with a bed that had a 'grave' dug in it with a shovel sticking out. The outside façade was pink and made to resemble a honky-tonk exterior with neons, a desert planter box, and an oyster-shell parking lot.”
– Terry Allen

"It featured Jo Harvey Allen as a 'high-haired honky-tonk woman' making up her face at her vanity in a motel she shared with a giant palomino stallion. The ARENA section was behind a tall white fence and featured a large expanse of dirt with a bed that had a 'grave' dug in it with a shovel sticking out. The outside façade was pink and made to resemble a honky-tonk exterior with neons, a desert planter box, and an oyster-shell parking lot.”
– Terry Allen