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]