19 exhibits in Art Car History

Celebrating the artistic ways in which car owners express themselves

Joe Duarte
Published: September 27, 2018, 10:30 PM
Updated: October 3, 2018, 2:51 PM

The age of the art car

Widely thought of as developing during the psychedelic “free love” era as a cheaper means of car customization, art cars are shining examples that automotive personalization and expression don’t always take a lot of cash, though some are priceless. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Museo de Arte Popular) ▲

Custom cars

Custom cars were one of the early examples of art cars, as army personnel returned home toward the end of the 1940s and found cheap cars from the ’30s and ’40s they could then “hot rod” to express their individuality. Historians differentiate between art cars and custom cars through the lack of mechanical modification in art cars. ▲

Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile

About a decade and a half before the Hot-Rod era, though, Carl Mayer created the promotional Wienermobile to help promote his uncle’s products, in what is regarded as the first concrete example of an art car — a car, whose body was transformed while the mechanicals remained mostly unchanged. ▲

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile

Over the decades, the Wienermobile became less “artsy” and more custom, and makers decided to make dedicated vehicles that could be adapted to suit various needs (such as including loudspeakers, soundboards and various other gadgets necessary to the modern mobile wiener), to the point that modern versions are almost unrecognizable to their platform creators. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Scottfamily5) ▲

Rise of the art car

As the 60’s rolled in, hot-rodding became more expensive and the cheap throw-away platforms on which to build them became scarcer. Some owners created their own car-culture by decorating their inexpensive used-car purchases (at the time, mostly VW Beetles) with paint or whatever trinkets (readily available and cheaply obtained, such as beads, buttons, sea shells, etc.) could be glued on. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Stephen Drake) ▲

Cars with themes

As with any artist, art car owners (sometimes called cartists) usually adopt a theme for their creations, and generally add to their creations on an ongoing basis, as they come across more items that “fit the theme.” Some choose Barbie dolls or bumper-sticker flags, while others choose more elaborate or even bizarre items, such as dental moulds, mouth-guards and dentures. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Joe Mabel) ▲

Lowriders

The art car and hot-rod cultures grew up separately but converged in the mid-1950s, as owners of customized low-riding cars began to paint them with intricate details often related to Mexican culture, as that’s where lowriders have their roots. The lowrider culture was contained mostly to southern California through the ’60s and ’70s, but started to gain momentum continent-wide, and then overseas, and evolve with the rise of west-coast hip-hop. ▲

Celebrity power art cars

The general consensus is that the art-car culture may not have taken hold had it not been for the mass-media exposure from celebrity sources, with one of the early examples being Janis Joplin, who individualized her Porsche 356 with a psychedelic paint job that inspired her fans and followers. ▲

Car art across the waters

At about the same time Janis was personalizing her Porsche, John Lennon took his Rolls-Royce to the ultimate bespoke level with a paisley paint-job for his Rolls-Royce Phantom, which demonstrated similarities between the music scenes in both countries, but also differences in the way psychedelia was perceived/depicted. ▲

Spreading the culture

As with many movements involving car culture, the Art-Car culture started out on the American west coast and spread out across the country, continent and world. One of the originators was author Ken Kesey, who in the mid-1960s set off with group of hippies, collectively called The Merry Pranksters, on cross-America drug-influenced adventures in a psychedelically-painted school bus called Furthur (and then Further, in subsequent generations) effectively, if accidentally, spreading the thought of decorating vehicles to promote individuality. ▲

The leap to TV culture

The psychedelic school bus proved inspirational not just to young adults turning against the establishment, but also for a TV series about turning music into a family business, and the Partridge Family’s painted school bus undoubtedly inspired future garage musicians to obtain unique transportation to gigs. ▲

This genre of car-art is heavy, man!

Tour busses and coaches since, for both bands and sports clubs, have been uniquely painted but they aren’t the only commercial vehicles to receive the “cartist” treatment. Although commercial vehicles are regularly “reskinned” to match their businesses, and some long-haul truckers do up their cabs with unique and elaborate light arrangements, but they can’t come close to the massive rolling works of art on Japanese freeways — Dekotora (for decorated truck). Some of the more over-the-top ones are strictly display models. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Mj-bird) ▲

Making it big in Hollywood

Art cars have made many cameos, and even some starring roles, in film, including in The Muppet Movie, where Fozzie Bear’s uncle’s ho-hum Studebaker Commander is “disguised” by psychedelic rock band Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem to the tune of Can You Picture That. Art … picture … get it? ▲

Art car gatherings

As more people began to dabble in car art, and specifically the “art and craft” style, cartists began to gather at special festivals and, today, art-car festivals can be found all over the world, with some of the most notable being in San Francisco, Seattle and Houston. There is even a website — artcarworld.com (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Brocken Inaglory) ▲

Art car museum

The art-car culture gained a foothold in Texas and spread through the American south, with Houston still a vibrant car art community, holding annual festivals and parades and even a night-event for illuminated art cars. It also established the Art Car Museum, affectionately called Garage Mahal, in 1998 to display artworks not acknowledged by traditional art and/or cultural institutions. ▲

Burning Man

Art cars aren’t generally well received at art festivals, but one of the ones who understandably takes them to heart is the annual Burning Man (begun at San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986 and established at Nevada’s Black Rock Desert since 1990), though increased restrictions on vehicular traffic has limited inclusion to specifically sculpture vehicles, called “mutant cars,” in latter years. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Christopher Michel) ▲

Mutant vehicles

Inspired by films in the Mad Max franchise and TV shows such as The Walking Dead, some art cars took on more sinister looks and slowly evolved (or, mutated) into what are now termed mutant vehicles. Though there is some natural overlap because of the individual definition of “art,” the general guideline to separate the two seems to be that if you can easily identify the finished model, it’s an art car. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Plymouths) ▲

BMW Art Car Collection

BMW is a maker that has embraced art cars, in the traditional sense of personalizing the livery while leaving everything else untouched. It started in 1975 with racer Hervé Poulain commissioning American artist, and friend, Alexander Calder to create a unique paint job for the BMW 3.0 CSL Poulain would co-pilot with Sam Posey and Jean Guichetat at Le Mans. ▲

Future of the art car?

Since 1975, BMW has commissioned 19 art cars from artists such as Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Esther Mahlangu and Andy Warhol, but it’s the latest from multimedia artist Cao Fei that provides a glimpse into the possible future direction of the art car. Cao’s finished work of art blends an M6 in unpainted black carbon fibre, video and augmented reality of colorful light particles. ▲

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