Art car - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An art car is a vehicle

Vehicle

A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured, such as bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft....

that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art cars are often driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as "Cartists".

Most car artists are ordinary people with no artistic training. Artists are largely self-taught and self funded, though some mainstream trained artists have also worked in the art car medium. Most others agree that creating and driving an art car daily is its own reward. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

and others have designed BMW Art Car

BMW Art Car

The BMW Art Car Project was introduced by the French racecar driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain, who wanted to invite an artist to create a canvas on an automobile. It was in 1975, when Poulain commissioned American artist and friend Alexander Calder to paint the first BMW Art Car...

s and their work has been reflected in racing cars like the BMW V12 LMR.

History

There is some disagreement as to what precisely led to the growth of the art car world. It can be seen as a twining together of several influences - the hippie

Hippie

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

-themed VWs of the late 1960s, the lowrider

Lowrider

]A lowrider is a style of car originated by Chicano communities that sits lower to the ground than most other cars. Many lowriders have their suspension systems modified so that their ride can change height at the flip of a switch...

, as well as a Merry Pranksters

Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...

' creation, the decorated schoolbus known as Further.

During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...

had a psychedelically

Psychedelic art

Psychedelic art is any kind of visual artwork inspired by psychedelic experiences induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. The word "psychedelic" "mind manifesting". By that definition all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic"...

-painted Porsche 356

Porsche 356

The Porsche 356 was the company's first production automobile. It was a lightweight and nimble handling rear-engine rear-wheel-drive 2 door sports car available in hardtop coupe and open configurations. Design innovations continued during the years of manufacture, contributing to its motorsports...

and John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, a paisley

Paisley (design)

Paisley or Paisley pattern is a droplet-shaped vegetable motif of Indian, Pakistani and Persian origin. The pattern is sometimes called "Persian pickles" by American traditionalists, especially quiltmakers,The Persian Pickle Club, Sandra Dallas. St. Martin's Press,...

Rolls Royce. http://www.officialjanis.com/porsche.html Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured many painted VW Buses and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood

Cadillac Fleetwood

Lawrence P. Fisher was the Fisher brother most closely involved with Cadillac in its early years. In 1916 he joined the Fisher Body Company which had been formed by two of his brothers in 1908. Larry was one of four of the seven Fisher brothers who brought Fisher Body Corporation under the General...

seen in the film Escape from New York

Escape from New York

Escape from New York is a 1981 American science fiction action film directed and scored by John Carpenter. He co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Castle. The film is set in the near future in a crime-ridden United States that has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into a maximum security...

).

Artist Larry Fuente was among the first to take motorized appliqué to the limit with his "Mad Cad." Later, artists Jackie Harris and David Best contributed their works to the art car world.

An art car community began to cohere in the 1990s, inspired by movies and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative art display venues such as Burning Man

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...

. One of the main forces behind this is filmmaker and art car artist Harrod Blank

Harrod Blank

Harrod Blank is an American documentary filmmaker and art car artist living in Berkeley, California. He is the son of Gail, a ceramic artist, and filmmaker Les Blank...

, who created the art car documentaries Wild Wheels (1992), Driving The Dream (1998) and Automorphosis (2008). Blank also founded the U.S.'s second largest art car festival in the San Francisco Bay Area: ArtCar Fest. Today many cars are covered by local newspapers and media. The only real way to get an idea of what is out there is to simply hit the road or attend an art car event. A New Year's Eve event in Houston, TX held on December 31, 2010 had over 100 Illuminated entrants, it is titled Gloworama, produced by Art Cars of Houston LLC - their events are limited to illuminated vehicles only.

A well known early art car used for commercial advertisement was the Oscar Meyer Wienie Wagon
Wienermobile
A "Wienermobile" is an automobile shaped like a hot dog on a bun that is used to promote and advertise Oscar Mayer products. It was created in 1936 by Oscar's nephew, Carl G. Mayer, and variants are still used by Oscar Mayer today. In 2004, Oscar Mayer announced a contest whereby customers could...

-- Later versions were known as the Wienermobile. These are bus-sized vehicles styled to appear as a hot dog

Hot dog

A hot dog is a sausage served in a sliced bun. It is very often garnished with mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, relish and/or sauerkraut.-History:...

on a bun. Commercial use of the art car has become popular in the 20th and continues into the 21st century. At the same time visionary applications including cars transformed into religious shrines continues to place visionary self taught artists, student artists and corporate artists side by side on the road and at art car events.

The art car culture was once strongest throughout Texas and the Southeast but now it extends throughout the United States and art car events can be found in many major cities as well as in small country towns. Art cars now very evident in the East, with a large event often held in Baltimore. In Canada, art cars are popular in British Columbia and also in the western Canadian plains with shows in Nanaimo, B.C. and Regina, SK. Other cars can be found throughout the world, most recently in Europe with the European arm of car-hire firm, Avis, supporting the movement..

Artistic styles

Art cars are public and mobile expressions of the artistic need to create. Often these days art cars derive their inspiration from popular culture. Others however, are created by visionary artists in order to express complex visions, philosophies and ideas. There is a wide and varied spectrum of purpose found in art cars. In creating an art car, the "exteriors and interiors of factory-made automobiles are transformed into expressions of individual ideas, values, beliefs and dreams. The cars range from imaginatively painted vehicles to extravagant fantasies whose original bodies are concealed beneath newly sculptured shells" (from Petersen Automotive Museum's Spring 2003 Los Angeles, California exhibit Wild Wheels: Art for the Road Gallery Guide)

Later themes have become more widely focused and more satirical or dark. One of the funniest and most inventive entries in recent memory was titled "Student Driver:" it featured a telephone pole laminated through one corner of the cabin; a leg with roller skate still attached projecting from one wheel well; and sundry jokey dents and marks of mayhem all over the vehicle. Political or educational messages are incorporated when an artist realizes that they can take advantage of the attention they garner to advance a cause. Science fiction themes (monsters, giant insects from Them!

Them! (1954 film)

Them! is a 1954 American black and white science fiction film about man's encounter with a nest of gigantic irradiated ants. It is based on an original story treatment by George Worthing Yates. It was developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes for Warner Bros. Pictures Inc.,...

, flying saucers) are common crowd pleasers. Expressions of the Gothic and the sublime are not unknown. Surrealism is commonplace. In parades and shows, shtick often includes 'arted' bicycles or motor-scooters or costumed roller-skaters weaving among the art cars. Many art car owners are natural-born hams, and incorporate elements of music or street theater in their presentation.

Artistic style must be carefully dove tailed with the constraints of the law. However, the car artist who takes the time to read the rules is generally surprised at how free expression can be (in the United States at least). Although pulled over by police at times the car artist who is fluent in the law will find that the police are glad to be educated as they themselves often do not realize what is possible under the many law codes on the books. For daily driver cartists making sure the art is legal can be a daunting task. For some it is part of the fun.

Art Cars vs. Mutant Vehicles

Art cars have been featured at Burning Man

Burning Man

since its inception but in recent years the festival has been forced to limit the number of vehicles on the playa. As such they have restricted the vehicles that are licensed to what they are now calling "mutant vehicles". There has been some confusion within the Burning Man and Art Car communities over these two terms, with some believing the terms are simply synonyms. According to art car artist and Art Car Fest organizer Philo Northrup, art cars are "street-legal vehicles that have been permanently transformed into mobile sculptures". According to the Burning Man DMV, Mutant Vehicles are "'art on wheels': radically, stunningly, (usually) permanently, and safely modified motorized vehicles". Obviously there is some overlap in these categories. In general if you can still easily tell what kind of a vehicle it was created from, it's probably an art car. If it can't be legally driven in city streets it's probably a mutant vehicle.

Art Cars vs. Customs and Lowriders

While there is no clear line between where a car is called a custom car

Custom car

A custom car is a passenger vehicle that has been modified in either of the following two ways. First, a custom car may be altered to improve its performance, often by altering or replacing the engine and transmission. Second, a custom car may be a personal "styling" statement, making the car look...

and an art car, in general art car has fewer stylistic guidelines and tends more towards folk art

Folk art

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

, whereas a custom car usually strives to stretch the rules of standard automotive design without breaking them. Lowriders and custom cars are often works of art in their own right and some art car parades and gatherings have allowed them as entrants over the years. Lowriders often sport elaborate paint jobs that clearly qualify as art, thus bridging the gap between the two cultures.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Artistic styles

Art Cars vs. Mutant Vehicles

Art Cars vs. Customs and Lowriders

See also

External links