Art, Art Cars & the Beautification of our Urban Communities by John Catso

Cadillac Ranch on Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas where 10 vintage Cadillac cars are buried in the dirt of a field.

What is art? Is art important?
  We need art in our lives to enhance the subtle energies of humanity & hopefully bring us deep feelings of inspiration, empowerment, awe, joy & other emotions. Art is something that stimulates an individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. Whether experiencing the art or performing it, a beneficial energy is created in the process .

As the artist Pablo Picasso once stated; "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life".

It's a best practice to experience forms of art that inspires us in many different way. Art can be a visionary form of objectification & create a healing stamp on the subconscious when experienced.

 One object today that is ubiquitous in our everyday life is the automobile/car or motorcar, which is used for transportation on roads. A relatively new creation of humanity as we know it, the year 1886 is regarded as the birth year of the car when German inventor Karl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Of course there has been many many others produce manufacture cars since then & in very large quantities, spreading across the world even now through mass consumerism.

Cars are one of the leading causes of air pollution & climate change ... Passenger vehicles & commercial, are a major pollution contributor, producing significant amounts of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and other pollution. Vehicle pollutants harm our health and contain greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Burning gasoline and diesel fuel creates harmful byproducts like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, benzene, and formaldehyde. In addition, vehicles emit carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.

At some point in time after automobile mass productions became the norm & humans bought many cars, is the marriage of art & car; the Art Car. Art cars are sometimes but not always driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as "Cartists."
The Art Car is a very interesting new genre in art history that could also be considered a form of ultimate Street Art, although it existed before this term was ever coined.

One definition we came up with (with help from internet) is -  An art car is an automobile vehicle that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression.  An Art Car is basically a mixed media sculpture on wheels ( unless the wheels have been removed ) , a hand painted (or air brushed) expression on a canvas of metal, steel, plastic & rubber, sometimes utilizing 3d objects. 
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Beyond the 2D applications of paints,  3 dimensional objects can be affixed or even the whole car itself can be stripped down, reshaped,  and morphed into what is sometimes called Mutant Vehicles (more on that later).

An Art Car can be mobile & driven on roads or even a stationary object acting as an installation.

One example of stationary cars acting as outdoor Art Car sculpture is Cadillac Ranch on the road just West of Amarillo, Texas.  In 1974, a row of ten vintage tail fin Cadillac cars (1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan de Ville ) were half buried nose down into a dirt field along the Route 66 highway there.  These Great Monuments, we are told, represent America's hopes and dreams, art and commerce, materialism and spiritualism, folly and fame. Cadillac Ranch has since become a ritual road side attraction site for those who travel along the mother road. The remnants of the still buried cars are now covered in ever changing layers of bright colored spray paints and this installation also exists as a participatory event.

 In 1955, 70 years after the first 1886 automobile creation in Germany, Los Angeles artist Kenneth Howard aka Von Dutch ( 1929-1992) hand painted flames on a 1955  Mercedes 300 SL  owned by Earl Bruce. Von Dutch was inspired by the hand painted fearsome images & flames on WW2 fighter planes and he was part of the nascent pin striping hot rods/vehicle culture of Southern California. This particular  Mercedes was actually the first of it's kind stateside so the car itself was seen by most sports car guys as an absolute shrine to German ingenuity and technology. Like art, opinions can vary & some people found this to be "desecrating a shrine" and the art car version was not well received at the time, although surely it attracted great interest as art.

1955 Mercedes 300 SL by Von Dutch

Alexander Calder version of 1975 BMW CSL

Carmaker BMW is a leader in many things automobile & this includes the culture of Art Cars, as they have been a trendsetter in it since at least 1975 when .American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976) put his art style on two 1975 3.0 CSL racing cars,
The result wasn’t just a claim of the first Art Car, or that this car was raced at Le Mans in 1975, but the inauguration of BMW’s Art Cars as we know the series today.
Calder’s piece formed the foundations for BMW’s ‘Art Car’ collection and many other contemporary artists ( Andy Warhol, Sandro Chia, Ken Done, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney & others) have since given their hand to this oeuvre, as both official and unofficial versions.

In 1979  artist Frank Stella painted a BMW M1  Procar  as part of his "Polar Coordinates" art series. In 1987 Keith Haring painted a red BMW Z1 at an art gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany with his signature style and distinctive range of emblematic signs.

    In 1996 Dallas, Texas, artist Jimmy Sasso was tasked to paint a 1996 BMW 320i for a marketing promotion involving a popular radio station Using oil based mediums, the car took 3-4 days to complete this mixture of abstraction & hand drawn symbols.

1996 BMW 320i Art Car painted by Sasso in Dallas, Texas.

1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V Limousine owned by John Lennon

 John Lennon Rolls Royce John Lennon of the Beatles bought the 1965 Phantom V limousine before he even owned a driver’s license.  Originally black with black leather upholstery, Lennon grew bored of the all-black vehicle & he was inspired to commission a garish paint job in the Romany style. An artist named Steve Weaver completed the work in May 1967. The bill was £290, about $9,200 in today’s dollars.

     Here in 2021 Art Cars are emerging as a popular expressive art form and important as  a  beautification of our urban areas & roads in communities. Aside from the cultural enhancements  is the recycle aspect or idea of making beauty out of a utilitarian machine that is a major cause of Global Warming and is helping to destroy our planet we all live on.  Keeping these 10,20 & even beyond 30 year old cars alive and on the road is truly an art in itself. A labor of love, an art object.
    Through the power of art an up-cycle recycle process occurs to transform a lowly used air polluting car into a roving art statement to be enjoyed and appreciated by the many, without anyone going to a gallery or museum.  An old car can become elevated into an art object & generate happiness to others and help heal society through these creations as they rove around not as a mere car but as art too.
In present day cities, artists are helping to spread this inspiring tradition & elevate our consciousness through the arts & propagate good energies using cars as that expressive vehicle.

   A 1991 Chevrolet Blazer S10   -- This artwork titled Dream Warrior by Sasso, was  started in early 2020 to artfully help heal a society in fear & repression from events. This vehicle for art blends into the urban landscapes as well as organically into natural settings, yet the colors, art & visual story create a bridge for the viewer into the fantastical realm of art appreciations sometimes without even realizing. Free form drawings & brushwork create "energetic movement mixed with bright color and juxtapositions to inspire one into happiness".  the artist uses it as a vehicle to  bring about art awareness as well as explore nature .

1989 Mercedes Benz 500 SEL painted by ARTtogo.com in 2019 Los Angeles.

      Swirling lines into organic shapes and symbols, writings & trans cultural surrealism adorn a 1989 Mercedes Benz 500 SEL that was painted in 2019 & sometimes roams the streets of Los Angeles getting 8 mpg but drives really great, smoothly sailing down the 405 freeway or stuck in traffic to the beaches. This Art Car generates much fanfare from viewers and inspires all to witness the greatness of art in our communities.

-- All Mutant Vehicles are Art Cars but not all Art Cars are Mutant Vehicles. -

One unique genre of the Art Car, is the Mutant Vehicles of Burning Man.  Burning Man, comprised of Black Rock City, a temporary art city which emerges in the sometimes hostile environment of the Black Rock Desert, a remote landscape in Nevada.
    A yearly event taking place over 8 days in late August, at least since the year 1991 at this location, Burning Man features various modes of camping, lots of people offering fun among large sculptural forms, performance art, sculpture installations, as well as Art Cars called Mutant Vehicles which roam the areas night & day, lit up with light, flames or even lasers & carrying people around while sometimes blaring loud music.
     With a speed limit of 5 mph, these mutants come in all sizes and shapes as they adorn the beautiful surrealistic flat desert called the Playa, an ancient dry lake bed made of hard packed white sand that sometimes blows up into sudden dust storms with white out conditions.
As NPR once reported, "Once considered an underground gathering for bohemians and free spirits of all stripes, Burning Man has since evolved into a destination for social media influencers, celebrities and the Silicon Valley elite."
    A Leave No Trace extreme camping event, Burning Man is mainly a huge art thing encouraging creative self expression & general well being. A unique cultural experience of sharing amongst like minded humans who like to laugh and have fun in an absurd atmosphere of art. Everyone is an artist and encouraged to participate in whatever form they wish. Dancing is an art. Hospitality is an art. Sleeping is an art. Fashion is an art. Photography. Cooking too.
  An acrobat balances on an Art Car/Mutant Vehicle called Playa Taxi. This 2004 Suzuki Aerio was painted in Los Angeles & seen on the playa.

A 2004 Suzuki Aerio transformed into an Art Car at Burning Man by ARTtogo.com

Boeing 747 turned into the worlds largest art car at Burning Man Project 2017.

The 747 Project, a giant Boeing 747, the world’s most iconic airplane, this is a 1985 Varig cargo conversion that once carried passengers in Brazil. This plane in 2017 was transformed into the largest art car mutant vehicle  on earth.
   The goal is to transform the plane into a new kind of vehicle inside which dreams, inspired by the same spirit of flight that took the Wright brothers to the skies, can come alive. The jet invites people inside for a “journey through life towards one’s future” & also hosts all night dance parties with music.
Art Car? Now you know.

Thank you for reading and hope you have learned something about art that you did not know before. Please add comments if you like Art Cars & want to see more of them.