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Smash 'em up art portends the murder of American muscle
You've got to love modern artists -- it isn't just that the art is difficult to comprehend, it's that the motives are inscrutable. Jonathon Schipper is the latest to create a car-themed piece that makes us wonder, "Uh, why?" Called "The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle," the work places two scale model cars opposite each other and then, via a network of gears, slowly rams in them into one another. The result is a head on car crash. But here's the catch: the crash happens in slow motion, over the course of a month. If you sat there and watched it, you'd have no idea anything was happening. While we're all for art, we cringe a bit at the thought of vintage muscle cars in head on collisions, even if they are just models. (Video games, that's a different story.) The installations (the one in the pic is mounted on a transmission) are studies for a larger, life-sized piece that will probably do the same thing. And we really aren't happy about losing a vintage purple Javelin to art. But, as one commenter already noted, "There's a huge collection of identical 'art installations' at a place called Desert Valley Auto Parts."
[Source: Chromejuwelen via Hemmings]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Flapjacks 2:18PM (6/22/2007)
I think it a '69 Camaro, not a Javelin. The yellow one is a '66/'67 Chevy II Nova.
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Keith 11:14PM (6/22/2007)
As much as I hope this doesn't become a full-size exhibition with real vintage cars (please, don't hurt the Chevys), I think it's tremendously cool. A disaster in slow motion that is undetectable by observers. Perhaps a commentary on American world dominance -- "American muscle" -- that is slipping away so slowly that we the people don't yet realize the disastrous crash that is about to occur. The best thing about art is that there's no "right answer." To me, it's at least analogous to the lamentable decline of the American auto industry.
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