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Art cars
Car Show
Art cars
"Animal print" art car, with owner dressed in matching motif.An art
car is a
vehicle that has its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic
expression. Art car owners often dress in a matching motif (much like their
previous generation
hippie counterparts) when displaying their cars.
Overview
Art cars are public and mobile expressions of the artistic need to create. 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)
The origins of the art car have been debated. Some would consider the
lowriders as the first art cars since airbrushed graphics are commonly painted
on the trunk lid and hood panels. During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin had
a psychedelic-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon, a paisley Rolls Royce.
[1]
[2] Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured
many Day-Glo painted
VW Buses and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood seen
in the film Escape From New York). But cartistry truly attained unstoppable
momentum as a social and artistic movement in the 1990s, on the spur of movies
and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative
art display venues such as Burning Man.
At this writing, Art Cars are a nationwide (and Canada-wide) phenomenon. In
the U.S. Art Cars are strongest throughout Texas and the Southeast, in the
Minnesota/Wisconsin area, and on the west coast. They are least evident in the
Northeast, although there is a large Baltimore show. In Canada, Art Cars are
very big in British Columbia and also in the western Canadian plains (see
Artcar Society of Canada) with shows in Nanaimo, B.C. and Regina, SK.
Some art cars
The Worthington Bottle Car
One of the earliest examples are the
Bottle Cars built in the 1920s to advertise Worthington Beer in England. The five cars were fitted out with boiler plate
bodies to resemble the shape of a bottle laid on its side - each one weighed
about 2.3 tons.
The Nevada Car
Built on an
International Harvester pickup truck as a community project during
Reno,
Nevada's Reno Days event. Features a "supercharger" on the hood which
is actually the motor head unit from a
Kirby Sani-Tronic vacuum cleaner. Owned and (formerly) driven by Patrick Dailey of
Novato, California, who states: " Wherever we go people are always trying to
give us more junk to put on it." and "...we hardly ever have to buy our own
gas." As of summer 2005 the Nevada Car is stored in Boulder City, Nevada,
in need of engine repairs.
Buddha Buggy
Buddha Buggy
A 1987 Honda
CRX, the
Buddha Buggy features a 1.6 m high detachable Nepalese Buddhist
stupa on the
roof, with strings of prayer flags running up to the golden pinnacle of the
stupa. In back, a 300 mm golden Buddha, holding a miniature pagoda, is flanked
by intent Laptop Buddhas. These are but a few of the 50 golden statuettes,
mostly on Buddhist or Asian spiritual themes, that adorn the car and stupa.
Adding to the effect are twirling
yin-yang hubcaps, psychedelic-era stickers, and the vanity license plates,
TOOCOOL. Not visible are the image is a 330 mm high
porcelain Amitabha Buddha in its niche in the stupa, and
[3] paintings of the Buddha], comic dragons, a cartoon portrait of the
owner, comets, a flying saucer with 2 green aliens, and toothy, two-legged
fishes. The car's interior includes a velvet altarcloth-draped dashboard with
brass Tibetan incense burners, statues, and gold tassels; a painted explosion of
cosmic love inside the doors; and a temporary installation of spiritual beings
meditating in a circle in the back cargo area. The Buddha Buggy is the work of
its
Seattle, Washington owner,
Larry Neilson, and
his many collaborators. It has appeared at Art Car events all over the
western U.S. and Canada, including the
Tacoma_Art_Museum and
San Jose (CA) Museum of Art.
Camera Van
A van entirely covered with photographic and videocameras and featuring a
video display, built by filmmaker and art car guru
Harrod Blank. This vehicle has the distinction of being one of the few works
of art that actually looks back at the viewer, as it photographs and
videotapes them using some of the cameras mounted upon it, and has the ability
to play the video back on the external screen, allowing you to watch it -
watching you as you are watching it watch you. (Seen in
Oakland, California.) More at
[4]
Flying Saucer
This is an otherwise conventional VW Beetle but with aluminum arching skirts
all around that make the platform completely circular. In place of the sun roof
is somewhat hemispherical transparent plastic dome. (Seen in a Berkeley,
California parade.)
Oh my God!
A 1965
Volkswagen Beetle with the California license plate OMYGAWD, which features exotic plastic fruits and
vegetables, a world globe and the phrase "Oh my God" painted in dozens of
languages. A creation of
Harrod Blank, this Beetle was featured in the 1992 documentary Wild Wheels (the
documentary featured a scene in a courtroom where Blank was seen contesting a
parking citation to the point that art cars and their respective artists were
usually subjected to police harassment).
Phone Car
"Teleman" and the Phone Car
Created by business owner, Howard Davis (seen here as his alter-ego, Teleman),
as a way to promote his business telephone company. It was featured in various
magazines including Motor Trend and Weekly World News, and was also in the
Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles for its exhibit on art cars.
The Phone
Car is built on a 1975 Volkswagen Beetle frame and has a tinted glass
windshield which allows the driver to see clearly out of it. It also has a
telephone ringer as its horn, so instead of a honk, it rings!
Rocket Car
A car that looks like a
Buck Rogers style art deco
rocket ship, complete with a gauge-filled cockpit interior which appears
to be suitable for a jet aircraft.
Furthur and Further
The
day-glo painted schoolbus Further is a 'remake' of the original bus known as "Furthur"
(the original) which is the actual real-life Merry Pranksters' hippie bus whose destination sign read simply "Furthur"
and which "tootled the multitudes" in 1964 in 'real life' and in Tom Wolfe's
book
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test The bus is also prominently mentioned in
the
Grateful Dead's song "(That's it for) The Other One", as "the bus to
never-ever land" with "...Cowboy Neal (Neal
Cassady) at the wheel...".
H-Wing Carfighter
A "next generation" art car is the
H-Wing Carfighter, a science fiction-themed 1995 Honda Civic del Sol SI
two-seater. Designed after a Rebel Alliance A-Wing fighter from Star Wars, it
features external laser cannons, lighting effects and an automated R2-D2 "Astromech
droid". The interior features computers and other gadgetry. Many modifications
are made from "found" parts including sports equipment, plumbing fixtures, and
toys. The overall design blends elements of real war machines through the ages,
such as World War Two fighter planes, with the fictional. H-Wing is a member of
Road Squadron, a collection of science fiction-related art cars, and generated a
great deal of web traffic when featured on Fark.com and Slashdot.
Note that the interior continues the striped design.
History
Mankind's fascination with decorating vehicles probably predates the custom
of Roman charioteers adorning their chariots with objects of a personal nature.
More recently, in the
Roaring Twenties people who wished to express their free spirit often
decorated old cars ("flivvers") with sexy or bizarre cartoon characters, such as
Betty Boop. One can imagine rows of these raffish vehicles pulled up at a
roadhouse where gargantuan drinking bouts would be accompanied by uninhibited
jazz, lewd dancing, and eventual trips to the 'back seat.'
There is some dispute as to what precisely started the Art Car Movement. It
can be seen as a twining together of several influences - the
hippie-themed
VWs of the late 1960s, the low rider
kustom kars, the
Merry Pranksters'
Further,
and artist
David Best,
could all be deemed as contributors. More of a latecomer, but an ever-present
influence, has been filmmaker
Harrod Blank, who has not only made 3 full-length documentary films
on Art Cars, but has made three outstanding arted vehicles himself, and who
founded the U.S.'s second largest Art Car festival in the San Francisco Bay Area
(q.v.)
A well known early art car used for commercial advertisement was the Oscar
Meyer Wienie Wagon - Later versions were known as the
Oscar
Meyer Wienermobile. These are bus-sized vehicles styled to appear as a
hot dog on a bun. Later themes
have become more widely focused and more satirical or dark in theme: the Latte
Mobile, the Copper Car,
the Carthedral, the Vain Van,
Jahmbi the Tiki Bus, the Camera Van,
Mirabilis Statuarius Vehiculum, The Grape (Revenge of the Road Kill), Rocket
Van, Titanic Limo. 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. Science fiction themes (monsters, giant insects from
THEM, 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.
Art cars have been surfaced with stone, with brick, with computer boards,
with pennies, with tree bark. There is an ever-expanding search for new
frontiers and new effects: spinning windmills, orifices spewing flames, steam,
or smoke, things that light up after dark, random noise generators, mini
performance stages on roofs, truck beds, skirts. An art cartist is limited only
by his/her imagination. Sympathetic souls often turn up to compensate for gaps
in technical expertise, enabling the artist to reach beyond perceived physical
limitations and achieve an artistic triumph. Providing an example of the
unexpected and wondrous, Art Cars bring surprise and laughter wherever they
roam, helping to defuse road rage on the congested highways of the U.S.A. As one
Cartist said, "It gets 500 smiles to the gallon."
Art car events
External links
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