History of the art car

And of course there has been a long historical tradition of ‘processing’ in the streets for the public good with the adorning and dressing up of carts, horses and carriages in ‘religious’ and ‘stately’ processions that of course still goes on today. This powerful ritual of display and shared celebration and entertainment has indeed shaped many of our public holidays.

I for one remember being absolutely captivated by the enormous richly adorned wooden and stone wheeled Temple carts carrying shrines in religious festivities, drawn by tens of men through the streets in India in 1993. And it was India that ultimately inspired and awakened my love of colour and ritual display. Where else in the world would you discover a brand new taxi cab covered from roof to wheel with bright orange and white chrysanthemums to honour the gods/goddesses?

However it was the flamboyant time of the Roaring Twenties that saw people who wished to express their free spirit decorate old cars ("flivvers") with sexy or bizarre cartoons. A time when these outlandish vehicles would be parked up and their occupants listen and dance wildly to uninhibited jazz in a club to be completed with a ‘session’ in the backseat.

And here in London who hasn’t stumbled upon and revelled in the sound systems and party atmosphere created for the lorry floats at Notttinghill Carnival or the Pink Parade? However carnival floats are not technically 'art cars'.

There is no cohesive agreement as to what precisely precipitated the growth of the art car world but the hippie-themed VWs of the late 1960s together with the lowrider and the fame of the Merry Pranksters' creation, the day-glo schoolbus known as 'Furthur' all contributed to the growing energy of self-expression on the highways.

During the late 1960s, the fabulous singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelically-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon famously, a paisley Rolls Royce. Artist Larry Fuente was among the first to take motorized appliqué to the limit with his "Mad Cad” which had thousands of found objects including dolls heads and toys stuck all over it.

Memphis Art Car Parade 2006 - photo courtesy of L. Marie at www.flicr.com/photos/lenore-m	Harrod Blank's Famous Camera Van that he finished in 1995 - photographed by W.Marsh at www.flickr.com/photos/ 40943981@NOO www.harrodblank.com
It's a Fruit Thang........ at the Houston Art car parade, 2008. Photographed by Reggie Bibbs - www.flickr.com/photos/reggiebibbs	Who's for tennis? Fantastic art car at the Houston Art car parade, 2008. Photographed by Reggie Bibbs - www.flickr.com/photos/reggiebibbs

Art cars and their creators became more of a community in the 1990s, spurred on greatly by the efforts of Harrod Blank who deftly recorded and c0-created artcar events such as the US’s second largest art car festival in San Francisco. He also founded the ‘art car camp’ at the highly innovative arts festival, the Burning Man in Black Rock City. He’s also widely publicised the whole art car arena through his 3 full-length documentary films on art cars, his fabulous books and is currently creating the first ever art car museum completely dedicated to this art form.

In her insightful article, Art Car, Icon of Our Time, Donna Tennant documents the history of the art car and the upsurge of 'low riders' in the 70's, which were normally old 'classic cars' that were converted and brought close to the ground, hence the name. They were a product of Mexican - American or Chicano culture that was thriving and unique to Los Angeles County but the craze soon spread to south-western America as a whole.

The general idea was that you cruised as low and as slow as possible. Since then the 'lowrider' movement has diversified with many cultures, vehicle styles and makes of car being incorporated and it has particularly taken off around the hip hop scene on the West Coast. Some of the more outrageous exteriors typically feature custom paintjobs of several thin layers of different colours, metal leaf and airbrushed murals, pin stripes, flames or any other type of hand-painted graphics. They also traditionally feature small gold or chrome spoke wheels to get that lowride feel and nowadays are kitted out with all sorts of 'boy technology' such as game consols, video and big bassy ' sub woofers."

There has obviously been a whole history of 'hotting cars up' leading to 'hot rods' that were testosterone emblazened and battled it out with one another in the dry lakes region of California where it all started. Hot rods grew in popularity in the 1940's and despite their emphasis on power and performance, the ethos of this racing car movement was of freedom, self reliance and ingenuity where talent and passion could 'outdo' money. The hot rods themselves were designed to raise the rear end with large tyres at the back and smaller ones at the front to decrease wind resistance while everything possible was stripped away to make them as light and as fast as possible. (see A Short History of Hot Rods by John Warde).

Meanwhile the craze for 'customising' your car, meaning improving the car's performance by altering or changing the engine and transmission came into fashion after the 2nd world war in the 50's - again in that car compelled culture of the USA. The term 'custom car' came into popular language at that time and there are many cross overs with 'hot rods'. I'm sure you've all seen some examples of these outrageously embellished vehicles with their splendid paintjobs done by professionals.

A well known early art car used for commercial advertisement was the Oscar Meyer Wienie Wagon which he created back in the 1930's to promote his company. Having created a character called 'little Oscar', he sent out real life impersonators in this eye-catching vehicle. Later versions were known as the Wienermobile. These are bus-sized vehicles styled to appear as a hot dog on a bun. They peaked in popularity in the 1950's and 60's where they toured the States visiting everything from shopping mals to hospitals and handed out over 5 million 'weiner whistles'.

Commercial use of the art car has become popular in the 20th and continues into the 21st century expecially in America. At the same time visionary applications including cars being transformed wholly or partly 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.