Car = Art?

Cars

Look at your car. Ignore the kerbed alloy and the parking dent and the fact that you didn’t get around to cleaning it last weekend. Look beyond all that. Look at its forms, its details, its edges and curves. How does it make you feel when you really look at it? If it leaves you cold, it’s a crime. There’s no excuse for lazy, passionless car design; you have been cheated. If – even when it’s parked – the looks suggest speed and freedom and all the other things you love about driving your car, the designer has done his job. The very best-looking cars are simply beautiful; if you own a DS or a Miura or an Alfa 8C, just looking at it might be enough.

alfa-8c

But is it art? You might get the same instinctive, irrational, love it-loathe it reaction to a car as you do to a painting or a sculpture, but can it qualify as a work of art? I’m going to argue that it doesn’t, but it does get very close. Perhaps a car magazine shouldn’t be attempting to answer such big questions – but one definition of art is that it exists purely for its own sake. The shape of your car does not; the designer has had to package an engine in a given position and a given number of seats and doors, and wrap it all in a shape that slips efficiently through the air and won’t try to take off over 100mph.

This is design, not art, but the car industry has produced some of the most emotive design of the last century. The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote when the Citroen DS was launched in 1955 that the car was now the “exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”

The comparison between architecture and car design is a good one. Buildings and cars each have a function beyond their physical appearance; we ought to care how they look, and too often are let down. The comparison of cars with cathedrals is even better. One is a place of worship, the other an object of worship. It’s hard to separate how they look from what they represent. Believers look at a great church and see divinity in its beauty and the fact that it was built at all. Our reaction to great cars is maybe a little more prosaic, but the same thing happens; we look at a Ferrari 250 and can’t dissociate its looks from the knowledge that it is fast and rare and expensive and sensationally exciting to drive.

ferrari-250-lusso

So, some examples of the greatest car design/art. We’ve wanted our cars to look good since Edwardian times; as soon as we’d cracked getting them to drive at more than a few miles per hour and for more than a few miles without breaking down, we’ve wanted them to look more than purely functional. Those ungainly, upright things with bicycle mudguards and their guts on public display soon gave way to styled, streamlined sheet metal.

bugatti-atlantic

Despite a much shorter history, great car design, like great art, forms movements, grouped around a certain place or time. Europe in the mid-thirties gave us the first real rush of beauty with the 1935 Alfa Romeo 8C and the 1937 Bugatti Atlantic.  Fifties America was another locus; the cars weren’t always beautiful but, like pop art, they were an incredibly self-confident reflection of an incredibly self-confident society which the car itself had helped create. Back to Italy for the sixties, where designers with names like Old Masters created first bewitching, almost unobtainable coupes and roadsters for Ferrari and others, before producing the Miura: the first supercar, and arguably the most beautiful car ever drawn, though we won’t get bogged down in that row here.

1935-afla-8c

And just like art, attribution is everything; despite being designed 43 years ago, a pedantic but amusing row still simmers between Gandini and Giugiaro – now old men – over who really created the Miura.

lamborghini-miura

But how many truly beautiful cars have there been since then? Car designers have always had to work around the constraints imposed on them by the engineers and aerodynamicists. There’s an argument that the constraints are now too tight for designers to create anything beautiful. Add the legal requirements of all the countries where the car sells and, according to Jaguar design chief Ian Callum, skinning a car becomes a ‘join the dots exercise’. Callum knows good design; one critic wrote that his Aston Martin DB7 has ‘the sort of beauty the car world is lucky to see once in a generation”. His seductive XK coupe and XF saloon have re-established Jaguar’s reputation as a maker of the world’s best-looking cars, anchored by the ’49 XK120, the ’61 E-type and the ’68 XJ, but he isn’t sure he could do something as unfettered as the DB7 again.

aston-martin-db7

It isn’t Callum’s work, but the Bugatti Veyron exemplifies his thinking. At €1.2m, handbuilt in tiny numbers and with no purpose other than to delight its owners it ought to be a visual masterpiece, as ‘30s Bugattis were. But the Veyron’s styling is its least-discussed attribute; the demands of packaging its monstrous mechanicals, cooling its 1001 horsepower engine and preventing it from taking flight at 253mph mean that when you first encounter it you’re surprised by its unthreatening, unremarkable egg-shape.

bugatti-veyron

But we are still making great looking cars, if not cars that border on art. Look at the new Alfa 8C, or even the Fiat 500, cars whose visual appeal is so strong that discerning car people are prepared to ignore the fact that they’re not that great to drive. Patrick le Quement, about to retire after 43 years as a car designer and 22 as the head of Renault design is more sanguine than Callum. “Yes, we’re all suffering a little bit, and the European pedestrian protection rules mean the noses of our cars look a little bit like Le Mans-ready Porsche 911s, but ingenious engineers will find us a little more flexibility. I think we could be entering a new golden era.”

By Ben Oliver

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35 Responses to “Car = Art?”

  1. Gerald Williams

    Not all cars are art; but my Mazda MX5 stood out from all the other cars on the dealer’s forecourt on a very dull day (in August 2008) – I knew nothing about Mazdas until then. I had no technical opinion of it. But yellow and black… like UMA THURMAN (in her jumpsuit in ‘Kill Bill’), only in the shape of a car. It was an attraction, an emotional decision – soon backed up with the facts of what a great little car the MX-5 is. So, yes, I think a beautiful car can be considered a work of art.

  2. wayne

    Art has no function other than art, if the car is used as a car then you have your answer.

  3. Personally I think the Lamborghini Countach is the best looking thing man has ever created. And I’ve wanted one since I was 8. Still do. Badly.

  4. John Woodward

    Of course a car is a work of art. I agree with the article to say that it has a function beyond its form, but so do buildings, as suggested. But the Sagrada Familiar in Barcelona is a work in progress and is widely considered a living work of art. The Sistine Chapel in Italy….a work of art. St Paul’s Cathedral…a work of art. The list could go on. And as with a building, a car can be drawn, represented in paintings, photographs and so on and people will happily put them on their walls. The actual car itself, in the metal, is the physical embodiment of that expression of art.

    A car is definitely a work of art. A designer/stylist has to sit and DRAW the car, whether it by pen or by computer. The very action of what you do to create the object (be it a car or a high end hi-fi, Phillipe Stark lemon juicer and so on) is an extension of artistic skill. How much more justification does the styling and design of a car need? And people ENJOY looking at a beautiful car. There is no logic to it. There is no rhyme or reason….it just stirs up something primeval in anyone who sees it. It evokes passion, it provides differences of opinion. The rules are the same…….and lets face it, art HAS no rules.

    Cars as art? Its not a question we should even be asking…….

  5. Rob Whitton

    Oh yes, very much so the car is an art form, it can be done exquisitely well think Jaguar e-type or it can be done monumentally badly think Jaguar s-type (cue debate).
    Aesthetics gives us an emotive link with the vehicle, we feel something for the car, we can forgive weaknesses because the car stirs our sole, something rarely achieved by an ugly car!
    For me it’s the same with bikes, I own a 60’s Triumph Bonneville, a Kawasaki Z1, a Mk1 Yamaha R1 and a Ducati 916, (among several others!). All have a link, yes they were in their day the best at their job, but they are all stunningly beautiful machines, a form of art? I think so, this as much as anything informed my purchases.
    My garage is an art gallery!

  6. Leigh

    I often hear the word Art used in conjunction to a description, but I find myself endlessley disagreeing through confusion; may be it is because I don’t appreciate art, at least not what many of you refer to as art. To me it is not art, no more than a flower created by nature is art, simple design in cars follows rules that are derived from calculations, thus you would have to agree on that assumption, that everything in life is art, whether liked or not. After all, you don’t have to like it to call it art, as long someone does, it seems that is enough. But no, I disagree, like an artist that copies is no artist; too imagine a figment in the mind, to turn that idea to something meaningful and glorious, for the pleasure of only entertainment is what I believe art to be. I am no artist, no critic but I have my view and it differs with the majority of the world. You accept a car as art, you must accept the whole world as art be it functional or not. I disagree though, art is much more beautiful than that, it isn’t derived from calculation or evolution but from a mind that can interpret something that may well exist, but be interpreted not with purpose, but with meaningfulness.

    Sincerely

    L K Reeve

  7. Richard Reynolds

    Obviously not all cars are works of art but then I am not sure why a pile of bricks or an unmade bed or a cow in preserver liquid should be called works of art. I only know what I like and what I drool over. In 1970 I went to the motor show at Earls Court and fell in love with a dream car, the Maserati Ghibli along with the Mistral and the Ferrari Daytona, these cars were works of metalic, they looked like doing the tun just sitting there. I was lucky enough to purchase my dream car, the dry sump Ghibli SS in 1978 during the petrol crisis when all the supercars were cheaper than buying a new Rover. I enjoyed the car for ten years while working at home and in Europe but was forced to sell when made redundant for the first time. I am certain that some cars are works of automotive art, not just those of the Italian design studios but also something like the Jaguar C and D types that were built for racing not style but are definitely works of art. Some modern cars can also turn heads and surely the ability to do that defines a work of art. I now own a JDM Civic type “R” and people stop to look when I go for a drive in it.

  8. I cannot see how a car cannot be art, in the same way a building or a piece of clothing can be. It emotes feelings, often describes or symbolises a specific time frame and think about those paintings of concept cars, is the painting art, if so why not the finished article? the e-type jag is my Mona Lisa and even the artwork and simplicity of a bedford flatbed should not be ignored, lastly concider the cistine chapel of a combine harvister!

  9. I agree with John Woodward… “Cars as art? Its not a question we should even be asking……”

    Definitely a yes.

  10. rspete

    Some years ago there was an arts program on Radio 4 with Brian Sewell and the late great LJK Setright as guests discussing art and the motorcar. Presumably they had been invited on with the view that they would argue from strongly opposing views their relative positions thus providing entertainment for listeners.
    Setright, one of the most highbrow of motoring journalists, and Sewell, the controversial art critic, appeared to get on famously agreeing with each other about the artistic merits of various cars and their componentry.
    Cars, motorcycles and engineering of all sorts are most definitely art!

  11. Dr.Deneys.Schreiner

    “Those ungainly, upright things with bicycle mudguards and their guts on public display soon gave way to styled, streamlined sheet metal.” There is a true beauty in some of the better “guts” of machinery in motion. If in doubt try visiting the Steam Museum at Kew Bridge when they are running some of the beam engines. A well designed machine has a beauty derived from its function and the elegance of the engineer’s creativity. A modern engine should be covered as its functionality is completely obscured. An open engine such as a beam steam engine or an open crankshaft 1903 Oldsmobile single cylinder engine should be visible to the world as works of art, particularly when in motion.

  12. stuart

    Cars are kinetic and acoustic art. They are art in the same way that films, plays and music are art. The form of the car is art. Look at the Ferrari 250 GT Lusso and Lamborghini Miura above. Look at a Delahaye by Figoni and Falaschi. For bike fans the beauty of an MV Augusta engine is some thing to behold. They are all pure sculpture which has the benefit of being mobile. Of coarse not all cars are art. Remember Morris Marinas and Volvo 144s, I’ve seen better looking washing machines than those two.
    The engine sound can also be art, listen to an Alfa V6, a Ferrari V12, a BRM V16, or for you bike fans, a 1960’s Grand Prix Honda. The sound those make makes your hair stand on end. They have a tonal quality which is akin to a well played musical instrument.
    Yes cars can be art, especially if an old tent of a dissected shark can be.

  13. A car can not be art if a car is used as a form of transport. If a car is an image in a picture it is not a car so it can be art as well as that if a car is in an art gallery with all its mechanical parts taken out it is art.

    This is as art is an outside spiritual authority glorified for obedience against individuals one that feedings off the need for celebration and is used to counter any need to develop and improve life.

  14. Jon Doble

    I think art is whatever you want it to be, and is open to your own interpretation. A car is a 3D impression of something which was drawn anyway.

  15. Chips

    I have found that a model of a particular car,bought solely for its aesthetic lines,useful as a paperweight,has always led to the purchase of the full sized example,ultimately. I have the Mk1 MX5, and the smart Brabus Roadster cossetted in the sheds right now,to prove it. I will admit to spending time just admiring the form of these beauties. So what, if hairdressers are reputed to favour them,they are classicly styled curvaceous cuties to me, and such fun to drive.

  16. Richard Hocking

    Some cars and bikes will be art the day they are created.
    Take the Ducati 916 for instance they were pure art from the moment the pen first touched the paper to startthe design process, others like any old master painting will become art as they become rarer, lets not forget that art and beuty is in the eye of the beholder, personally i think the Veyron is ugly but would i have one, of course i would but i would rather have a
    De Tomaso Pantera

  17. QUOTE: wayne

    “Art has no function other than art, if the car is used as a car then you have your answer.”

    RUBBISH!

  18. PeteW

    A car isn’t art. However, the styling of it is. Final form is where art meets engineering.

  19. The Mermaid

    Is the stormy sky or a crashing wave moving art when captured on canvas? Is inspiration a flat thing? and what of beauty and what of art? Who is the beholder? is it the designer, the observer, or the purchaser?

    Art can be beautiful and awesome whilst functional.

    So too can be that special car; be it as art in a poster or moving art on the road.

  20. The Mermaid

    Are the stormy sky or a crashing wave moving art when captured on canvas? Is inspiration a flat thing? what of beauty and art? Who is the beholder? the designer, the observer, or the purchaser?

    Art can be beautiful and awesome whilst functional.

    So too can be that special car; be it as art in a poster or moving art on the road.

  21. Garry

    Cars are not art, but there is art in their design.

    Those who advocate otherwise are misrepresenting art, indeed, they are devaluing it.

    A car is a functional object; art exists for no other reason other than being art.

    A car is designed to move, art is, for the most part, inanimate. If anything, the discipline of sculpture is in car production, but that does not make it a sculpture. In the end, by attention to good proportion and volume, some designs might turn out to be beautiful, but that still does not render them “art.”

  22. Steve Salmon

    Does the purpose mean that a picture, once framed and hung, is no longer art as it is used for decoration?
    Making the art practical and usable doesn’t mean it’s not art.
    As for the constraints put on the vehicles by safety and legislation, I’m sure the artistic designers just look at these as a fresh challenge.

  23. Anonymous

    i have a 156 which is nice enough but god i wish i had a 8C

  24. Garry

    Steve at 8.49

    A painting is still art even when framed and on the wall.

    Mind you …

    There is good art, bad art, mediocre art, and non-art. No art is practical. If an object is practical it is “design.” You need some aesthetic ability to design things, but not necessarily to be an artist.

    With cars, there are engineers who have something of the artist in them, but in the main, there exist car designers and car stylists.

    The former, those with some aesthetic sensibility and training, have a good chance of designing a classic, something that will appear timeless. On the other hand the stylist’s work is transient, replaced next year with a new fashion, the latest trend.

    That last category probably represents ninety percent of what we see on our street.

  25. Roy Biddle

    I had an Alfa Romeo 156 for 6 years and I never tired looking at it. The lines and proportions ar absolutely beautiful. I admired it the same way I would a painting or sculpture. Some cars are definitely art.

  26. Cars are not art per-se, but the ideas behind them, they are art. The design and manufacture of a car from start to finish is no less a challenge than Leonardo da Vinci had painting the Mona Lisa, which brings me to suggest that if a car is designed so that it is pleasant to look at and touch and every part of it has been inspired by one thing or another, just as any artist would have been inspired whilst painting or sculpting, then a car too should be art, because after all, is an aesthetically pleasing car such as the Alfa Romeo 8c not just a magnificent sculpture? It just happens to have an engine, and for this is not considered art? This would be a travesty, therefore a car is art as long as the people who make them keep the people who buy them, wanting to see the next masterpiece, just as da Vinci did.

  27. many years ago, the original range rover was displayed in the louvre art gallery. it was the first to be displayed as automotive art in a mainline gallery. machines and vehicles in particular, can stir up emotions, hence they can be classed as art. from the plug ugly to the stunningly beautiful, most will create a reaction to the way they look.

  28. I was watching a film recently art was said to be something beautiful created out of nothing. In that case a car is art if it is deemed to be beautiful as in the film a doodle was pointed out to be particularly beautiful it is not saying much. Has any one noticed how funny old cars look when you have not seen one in a long time. For instance I say a Hillman Imp some time ago it was not beautiful but looked wierd and funny.

  29. Garry

    Dane at 10.53

    Displaying a car in a modern art gallery is usually to indicate its good or innovative design, often to represent the apogee of car design emblematic of its time, not as a work of art, per se.

    As for some car owners admiring their cars: there’s no harm in that, although I have reservations about those who identify with them so much they keep them in their living room, and their wife, if they have one, in a shed at the bottom of the garden.

    Those who “feel” a fine car should be art probably confuse the way it tingles all the senses; it moves them metaphorically and literally. They assume it must be art.

    It “ain’t.”

    Good art stimulates the intellect, it causes us to question the status quo, great art stimulates the intellect, perception, and the soul too. It forces us to see things in new ways. It has some universal meaning, some significance.

    It was great artists, such as Mark Rothko, who made us see better how different colours affect our moods and senses, many years outcome of intense experiment picked up and used by informed car stylists, not the other way around.

    A good sports car is … a good sports car, in the same way as a good piano is a good piano. It is not a a great piano concerto even if it is used to play one.

  30. Paul Broughton

    A beautiful car moving is like art in motion, a statement of design flair. From it’s conception to the drawing board, then on to a model making shop. The symetry and flowing lines being honed at each stage until the model becomes a statement of art and beauty. Then on to the manufacturing line where the first prototype is born like one of god’s beautiful creations at birth. The first time the car fires up it is like a new-born child taking it’s first breath of life. Just like a masterpiece or a fine wine improving with age. To be cherished by all that behold it, and for those fortunate enough to own one of these masterpieces, a real treasure with a personality all it’s own. The greatest cars reflect the frontiers of design and engineering at the time they are conceived. Often only becoming a classic after many years of reflection. Yet every now and then a car is born that is an instant classic like a Bugatti type 35b, an Aston Martin DB5, a Ferrari 250 GTO, a Lamborghini Muira or an Alfa Romeo 8c.

  31. Scoutmann

    If anyone wants an art form, take a look at an IH Scout. Its a masterpiece of art! Its ruggedness, its curves. But for a car to be a masterpiece, it must also be judged on the way it handles, sounds and runs. The Scout also takes the cake in that! It’ll go anywhere you want it to go, any place, any time, and when you arrive, it’ll scoff and say “Is this all you got?!” Its engine is music, that sounds like a lullaby, until you hit the gas, which then it sounds like concert. It handles like a dream. Its an art form all right, even though its from the 70’s.
    In Reference to a 1975 International harvester Scout 2

  32. Heidi

    I REGARD OLDER CARS AS MOVING SCULPTURES, BUT I WILL SAY THAT THE MAJORITY OF MODERN CARS ARE JUST PLAIN UGLY, AN EXAMPLE OF BUREAUCRATS AND THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OBSESSIVES HAVING TOO MUCH INPUT PERHAPS, A TRULY BEAUTIFULL CAR IS AN EXCEPTION NOWDAYS ONLY THE ITALIANS SEEM TO HAVE A CLUE,APART FROM THAT MOST ORDINARY CARS LOOK BLAND AND SIMLAR, I LIKE TO DRIVE A GOOD LOOKING CAR MYSELF AS IT BRINGS ME PLEASURE TO LOOK AT AS WELL AS DRIVE.

  33. Bernard May

    Art is an expression of the artist be it an alfa Romeo 8C or a Carravagio.

    Modern art is very much the figment of the artist’s imagination so why can’t a car be considered an art form.

    I believe a lot of so called art such as Damian Hurst’s “stuff” is not art in a pure sense but it is still seen to be art by the wise and wonderful.

    In my book, cars like the DS,Muira and 8C are stunning works of art because they are form over function whilst still maintaining the ability to perform as a mode of travel. Many modern vehicles are simply modes of transport with little style.

  34. Paul Faulkner

    Hi Dane, whilst I agree with the car being a form of art I am inclined towards the term ‘Designed Art’ compared to pure hands free creativity. The restrictive requirements forced on a modern vehicle design due to marketing strategy and global legal factors force practicality to reign supreme. Sadly our boring practical box with wheels, albeit functional, would not excite anyone so the aesthetic masters have a far more challenging task on hand than being handed cart blanche and a fresh sheet of paper. I believe every designers artistic vein has to work hard and deserve recognition for their efforts. When young I wanted to become a car stylist (old coinage!) and believed all Italian designers to have art in their blood (Inc Senor Bugatti) Who could blame me for being passionate about the type 35b Bugatti, 1750 monoposto Alpha and 8C and my all time favourite the short w/base scaglietti bodied Ferrari 250 GT. But now and better informed I cannot think of a more frustrating role. I raise my hat to current designers for struggling to overcome huge odds to produce vehicles that are to please a mass market.
    For me the decade between late 1920 to late 1930 was
    the pinnacle for vehicle design when many of the worlds most glorious and innovative cars were born.

  35. paul faulkner

    I agree Ms Mermaid, a creative environment is vital for the production of a vehicle which makes it accumulative art. Inspiration, imagination and practicality all come to play just as they do with the more traditionally accepted forms of art like sculptures, paintings etc.