Tail fins forever ; Celebrating Cadillac's finned history.(Brief Article)

From now until May 28, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles will be crawling with Cadillacs, both the three-dimension-al kind and the two-dimensional. The exhibit is called ``Fantasy and Fins: The Artist and the Automobile,'' and it's sponsored by Cadillac, which explains why there are so many Caddys on the museum's second floor.

We stopped by during the opening, when the artists themselves were there. Right off the escalator we met Hudson Marquez, creator of the Cadillac Ranch, a series of Cadillacs buried nose-deep in farmland near what used to be Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas.

``I had been drawing Cadillacs for years and years,'' Marquez explained, standing in front of drawings and photos of the ranch. ``Then I found Stanley Marsh; he was on a list of eccentric millionaires who might finance your art project.''

Marsh did, and Marquez set out to buy the cars and hire the backhoes.

Near Marquez, museum director Dick Messer was overseeing the installation of a golden metal-flaked Cadillac chassis.

``You should see the car they're working on,'' he said, showing us a drawing. Stylin'.

``What we're trying to show is not just the tail fins and chrome of the Cadillacs, we're trying to educate people about cars and art,'' he said.