Text Andreas K. VETTER | PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CHAPTER №X »STATE OF THE ART« — SUMMER 2024
What is the connection between a car and the visual arts? A motorized car is auto-mobile and autonomous; it was built to be on the road. The same applies to art: it stems from an inner movement, stands on its own and is constantly seeking new paths. Interesting things have emerged from both encounters.
The beginning. You learn it in creative writing. Presumably. It is recommended to start a speech or an article––preferably with rhetorical finesse––with a joke or at least a bon mot. Here, however, everything starts with an obituary. It just has to be, since he was so important: a brief remembrance of Marcello Gandini, the great Italian designer who left us forever a few months ago. His legacy is motorized and enchanting. Not only car enthusiasts feel that certain something when they stand in front of a Lancia Stratos, a Lamborghini Miura, but above all the Lamborghini Countach, which proves that automotive design of this kind is undoubtedly one of the points of contact with fine art and its sculptural bodies. Leaving aside the pleasure of sitting in these vehicles and being able to drive them, smelling their scent and enjoying their sound, it is their pure form and materiality alone that are so powerful that we are touched aesthetically and sensually. This is why cultural society has long paid homage to the mobile, which the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti brought into the museum in 1909 with the statement that a car roaring is »more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace«. At first, it was mainly photography and advertising graphics that took an artistic approach to the then very young technology. Then, in 1951, a museum, the famous MoMA in New York, decided to exhibit eight vehicles of equal value – curated by architect Philip Johnson. When the same institution finally added the first automobile to its collection of art and design 21 years later––an Italian Cisitalia 202 GT––it was finally established as a cultural asset. This is interesting, because Battista »Pinin« Farina, who had created the car in 1946, was not an artist but a designer. Nevertheless, those responsible at the MoMA did not question its inclusion in the fine arts at the time––apparently because the object-related aesthetic quality in form and material created an appropriate effect. Thanks to the simple clarity of its design, the immensely appealing big thing oscillates between toy character and living being thanks to its softly shaped body, the many sympathetic curves and the puppy-like front. This immediately perceived attraction, or rather beauty, caused the red sports car, which was ultimately created as a utility object, to tip into a new dimension: from object status to work of art.
Cisitalia 202 GT (1946), Pininfarina Design Studio, Cambiano, Turin
In this context, it is worth noting that while works of art have existed for tens of thousands of years, the examination of the automobile in art is very recent. However, the first reflections on the then unusually fast-moving and thoroughly technoid vehicle emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, and many an artist such as Pablo Picasso (Facel Vega), the writer Erich Maria Remarque (Bugatti), the musician John Lennon (Rolls-Royce) or the artist Joseph Beuys (Bentley) moved the vehicle, which soon became part of their private living space, with great awareness and pleasure. The 1960s and 70s marked an early high point, when the artistic approach to the automobile also expanded into a contemporary freedom of interaction––through depiction in paintings and photography, in which movement, technology and form are reflected. And today? Seventy years after that boom period, the situation is quite disparate. It seems as if everyone involved in the automotive world is subject to a fundamental uncertainty––the manufacturing companies and associations, the politicians with their different orientations and the extremely heterogeneous clientele in terms of demands and preferences. It is an interplay characterized by the insight into environmental pollution and consumer constraints, but also by the enthusiasm for innovative technologies and materials as well as the will to reform transport intelligently. Not for a long time has there been so many new concepts, technologies and designs to present, learn about, discuss and weigh up. In this respect, it is also up to the art scene to react to this.
But how does art do that? Imagine being an artist yourself, and it wouldn’t be a matter of designing a car, i.e. initiating a complex process and shaping technology, safety, economy and brand language into an overall design. Nor would it be a matter of buying one and getting by with hobbies, everyday pragmatism and a credit line. Rather, there would be absolute freedom of making. On the one hand, you would be standing in a frighteningly empty space, thrown back on your own head, on your own ideas and abilities, and on the other hand, you would be surrounded by countless real vehicles and types that you could deal with, their images, their history and stories, the implications and philosophical aspects of automobile culture. Oh holy Christophorus! If necessary, we could also ask Apollo with his chariot of the sun for inspiration, who, after all, would also be responsible as the god of fine arts. So what to do? What strategies are recommended for an artistic approach to the subject? Well, you could stylize the car and present it in its specific capacity as a design icon, as can be found in museums or in object photography very early on, but also in the hyper-realistic oil paintings of Don Eddy in the 1970s. Art generates a »image of the car«, which is not far removed from myth or fetish. And advertising is only too happy to pick up on this appeal when it comes to marketing this important industrial product: »Unique like a work of art« or »The most beautiful form of technology«, as VW and Alfa Romeo deliberately alluded to in their advertising.
Fabian Oefner, »Disintegrating X – Lamborghini Miura SV (1972)«, 2018
The intellectual, rational path is also conceivable: analysis. Fabian Oefner’s oeuvre is a very impressive example. The Swiss artist, who lives in the USA, developed a very unconventional approach to the automobile through meticulous visual dismantling. For example, he accompanied an Italian restoration team as they carefully dismantled one of the rare cars for maintenance and photographed more than a thousand components of the car’s original technology in individual shots in their workshop. These are then used to create digitally generated compositional views of a vehicle based on the principle of exploded views. Oefner’s aim is to use this analysis to visualize the complex functional structure of such an object and to amaze us with the paradoxical coincidence of design and disintegration, as he calls it: »I want to explore what surrounds us like this and arouse people’s curiosity.« Of course, we are aware that up to 10,000 individual parts normally come together to form a multifunctional module under the bodywork of a standard motor vehicle, behind the dashboard or in the upholstered seats. However, we always forget this. In view of these images, we have to realize for better or worse that the beauty of a Cisitalia 202 GT, as shown in the MoMA, or the silver Lamborghini Miura SV by Fabian Oefner is de facto not as materially homogeneous as the massive marble sculpture of the Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre. An automobile is a magical work of technology and skill. No wonder the French philosopher and Citroën DS enthusiast Roland Barthes once wrote: »I believe that the automobile today is the fairly exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. In other words: a great epochal creation designed with passion by unknown artists …« So there we have it again, art. So the automobile itself can be seen as an object of art. However, with its smooth sheet metal, which virtually invites surface design, it can also be a canvas or a picture support. The Paris-based designer Sonia Delaunay, for example, presented her avant-garde fashion in 1925 in a stylistically adapted Citroën, painted in a check design. Pablo Picasso also painted a car in 1958, more precisely the left flank of a car of the same brand, a blue Citroën DS 19. A journalist had visited him in exile in France with this car, and the artist, who was obviously very pleased about this, even signed his secretly painted motif. The most famous series of artistically designed bodies or creatively interpreted vehicles was initiated by the BMW brand in 1975: the BMW Art Car. Up to the current project by Julie Mehretu, which is presented in the cover story of this Chapter №X, titled »STATE OF THE ART«, 20 examples have been created to date on the basis of various BMW models––designed by Calder, Lichtenstein, Warhol or Koons. This strategy of artistic creation could be described as a reaction, as a specific view of an everyday object that is very central to people, whereby it naturally changes significantly and is viewed and treated completely differently after processing.
Asta Gröting, »Goethe’s traveling carriage, Adenauer’s Mercedes and my Smart«, 2012
A fourth approach to art attempts to explore and elaborate on the profound, on hidden qualities. The effect is often a poetic quality that suddenly turns the previously banal into the extraordinary. Such ambiguity is well exemplified in a work by Asta Gröting, whose title actually describes it completely: »Goethe’s traveling carriage, Adenauer’s Mercedes and my Smart«. The artist, who works in Berlin, installed three sub-views of this strange compilation of vehicles, each of which has an inherent importance: the genius writer’s carriage for the world, the Federal Chancellor’s limousine for post-war Germany and finally the knobbly little car for herself. However, you don’t see what is obvious, but what is normally hidden, i.e. the chassis, dampers, etc.––and you are supposed to think for yourself, pondering about mobility itself, about technical diligence, travel, history and the German people. The basis are scans of the originals, the end product is a soft form or thin layer of polyurethane that lies succinctly on the gallery floor.
Erwin Wurm, »UFO«, 2006
Another creative impetus used by art is the strategy of alienation, with which it creates uncertainty in the perception of familiar things and thus hopes to raise awareness. While excessive irritation can sometimes cause aversion, playing with change in a light-hearted way can be quite fun. This is why works such as those by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, which make use of a humorous deformation that retains a socially critical tenor but is more likely to make you smile. Think of his delivery van, whose rear end bends up against the wall of a house, or the fat cars that have been created since the 2000s. Wurm transforms an existing car with styrofoam, fiberglass and polyurethane so that it is almost crushed by its bulges––an obese body that is more than a reflection of the affluent society. Or he lets it float like a cloud-like blue disc, like a dream vision or a UFO, with the original greenhouse of a Porsche 924 inside. The audience recognizes that it was originally a normal car, but cannot escape the deformation of form and meaning. With a similarly playful irreverence, the Scotsman Chris Labrooy quoted the iconic Palm Springs motifs of mid-century modernist painting, as we know them from David Hockney. However, in his digital painting series »Palm Springs Porsche 911«, Labrooy cheekily replaced the shimmering water of a pool with twelve equally blue Carrera RSs, which bob close together and visually simulate the waves with their typical roofline. A contemporary further development of pop art painting, which even back then liked to devote itself to the car, only the VW Beetle, and not its sporty descendant.
Chris Labrooy, Series »Palm Springs Porsche 911« (Twelve Porsche 911 Carrera RS in a pool), n.d.
The next path that art could take would be that of questioning. By transposing the automobile from its usual position and form into a completely absurd one, viewers experience an irritating sense of uncertainty. Conrad Shawcross does this very skillfully by hanging a Lotus at an angle and upside down. The appearance and functionality, indeed the entire type of vehicle, are thus counteracted: from a desirable sports car, it becomes a huge, useless and helpless thing.
The last of the tactics presented here goes even further––provocation. It is particularly popular with artists who love dramatic and powerful actions. In addition, the public reacts most intensely to this, which is easy to do with the automobile as a workpiece, because in our product world it is not only one of the most expensive, but often also one of the most personally cherished possessions.
Conrad Shawcross, »Golden Lotus (Inverted)«, 2019; installation view Saatchi Gallery, London
It is understandable that a video intervention by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, in which she smashed the windows of parked cars in Zurich city center with a steel flower while prancing past, was not viewed without emotion. The sculptures by French artist César Baldaccini had a comparably echoey effect. In the context of Nouveau Réalisme, in 1960 he began to press car bodies into so-called Compressions dirigées, so that the public was suddenly not standing in front of a conventional sculpture, but in front of a metal cube that was nothing other than the result of a scrap metal pressing and contained a complete car. The contemporaneous works of the US American John Chamberlain, who assembled individual dented and rusted metal parts of defunct road cruisers into highly decorative sculptures, also became well known. The art world had to react to this provocation––a creative tactic that eventually weakened in its authentic, formal-aesthetic and socio-critical effect, so that conceptual successors such as Kevin Beasley can no longer do justice to it. You always have to be careful that it doesn’t become too banal, as was the case in 2011 when the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media mounted its exhibition »Car Culture« with numerous deformed vehicles, Beetles placed on top of each other in balls, a Mercedes rolled over by a tank or an SL filled to the brim with oil. HA Schult, who is not exactly sure of his style, was also involved with a car wreck installation »Crying Cars«.
Dirk Skreber, »untitled (Crash 1)«, 2009
What is important is the intense effect due to a new type of work statement that occurs in this thematic field related to the automobile: the decay of the glamorous product, the brutality of deformation or the dangerousness of fast movement. Dirk Skreber achieves this with skill. His everyday vehicles wrapped around steel poles are shocking, as it is impossible to escape the force of the assumed accident and the inevitable lethality of mobility associated with it. Interestingly, this effect of disturbance is mixed with a sense of cruel sculptural beauty. The best way to reassure oneself about a possible good outcome is with Marshall McLuhan’s ambivalent analysis of the times from 1964: »Behind the wheel, we transform ourselves into superhumans.« Nevertheless: the automobile in question … is dead.
The end. And so this text ends as it began––not with a joke, but once again with a memento mori. A remembrance of the many beautiful automotive companions of mankind that have lost their lives through fate––be it an accident, a burst piston, a natural disaster or simply shameful neglect and the associated nasty rust. After all––here, in the protected environment of art, we can be sure of the safety and care of our favorites.
