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Marfa, Marfa

Rasquachismo and Minimalism in Far West Texas

Marfa, Marfa cover image

Book

Pages: 200

Illustrations: 62 color illustrations

Release Date: October 20, 2026

Author: Josh T Franco

Marfa, Texas is a world-renowned art pilgrimage site. When Donald Judd moved there in 1971, he permanently installed works of art in and around town. Catalyzed by Judd’s presence, the small Southwest town is now home to galleries, arts foundations, festivals, and studios. In Marfa, Marfa, Josh T Franco examines the minimalist frameworks and aesthetic paradigms Judd brought to Marfa and how they intersect with the rasquache sensibilities of Marfa’s local Chicanx, Mexican American, and Catholic communities. Franco draws on his own family history in the town as well as Marfa’s complex history, culture, and memory, analyzing archival documents alongside the art institutions that all make up the town’s identity. Marfa, Marfa employs a decolonial and experimental method to examine minimalist and Chicanx art through objects for public display, local dialects, and domestic observations, ultimately demonstrating Marfa’s unique role as a crossroads of minimalism and rasquachismo.

Praise

“Josh T Franco addresses two conceptual frameworks governing Marfa: the legacy of sculptor Donald Judd’s Minimalist work—including the Chinati foundation—and the local Mexican American, Indigenous, and Catholic communities. Key to the success of the text is its intellectual refusal to separate these discourses and aesthetic paradigms, intimately linking their creative endeavors, their systems of meaning, their modes of fabrication, and their sites of pilgrimage.” - Jennifer A. González, Professor of the History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz

"In theorizing Marfa's Indigenous presence and its Chicanx creative culture alongside Donald Judd's minimalist structures, Josh T Franco has forged a new art history. This is an exhilarating and important book." - Julia Bryan-Wilson, professor of Contemporary Art at Columbia University

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Author/Editor Bios

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Josh T Franco is an independent artist and art historian.

Table Of Contents

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List of Illustrations  ix
Invocation  xi
Introduction. Rasquachismo, Minimalism  1
1. Pilgrim, Approach
2. Marfa, Aztlán
3. Making, Aesthesis
Conclusion. Love, Yard (Hanging Out in Marfa)
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3921-1 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3417-9 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6274-5 /