Utah monolith's McCracken connection: Why people think this 'dead artist' is responsible?

A strange monolith was recently discovered in a remote part of Utah and it had prompted theories of alien placement across the globe. The state employees, who found the metal slab while surveying the land for bighorn sheep, said that they have no idea who drove the monolith into the rock floor. Even though the 12-feet high metal sheet has now disappeared, the riddle of what it is and how it got there, however, has proved irresistible. 

While some internet users wondered if it was planted there by aliens, others thought it might be a tribute to the monolith in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Some people have also reckoned that the monolith may have been placed by a dead artist, John McCracken, who was a minimalist sculptor with an affinity for science fiction. While taking to Twitter, the David Zwirner Gallery, which has exhibited the artists’ work since 1997 and represents his estate, has asserted that the mystery monolith is a bona fide McCracken. 

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While speaking to The NY Times, the artists’ son, Patrick McCracken, said that he was puzzled by the monolith, however, when he heard the news, he thought back to an evening in 2002, when his father said that he would like to leave his artwork in remote places to be discovered later. When asked if he thinks his father was joking then, Patrick said, “No, I thought it was something that he would do”. He added that his father was always inspired by the idea of alien visitors leaving objects that resembled his work, or that his work resembled. 

“This discovery of a monolith piece - that’s very much in line with his (John McCracken) artistic vision,” Patrick said. 

However, a spokesperson from the David Zwirner Gallery told Art News that this is not a work by the late American artist John McCracken. But, they suspect that it is a work by a fellow artist paying homage to McCracken. 

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‘Strangest thing’ 

Meanwhile, the metal ram was discovered on November 18 by officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau. The officials were flying by helicopter, helping Division of Wildlife Resources count bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah, when they spotted that seemed right out of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, had said that the monolith has been about the “strangest thing” that he came across in all his years of flying.

Hatchings had informed that he was flying for the Utah department of public safety when one of the biologists spotted the metal sheet when they just happened to fly directly over the top of it. The pilot said that the object looked manmade and appeared to have been firmly planted in the ground, not dropped from the sky. Utah’s highway petrol had also shared the images of the monolith and said that the metal ram estimated at between 10ft and 12ft high appeared to be planted deep in the ground. 

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