Car Art

This is the fourth installment in a series of postings to highlight an Automotive Artist. My intent on this piece is to highlight Ptolemy Elrington's hubcap artistry. That's right, hubcaps!

The Ferrari 250 GTO ranks as perhaps the most valuable production car ever made. In just the past two years, units of the ultimate '60s sports car have sold for $32 million, $35 million and Chris Bruce

Those close to Miami, Florida, next week have an opportunity to check out Piston Head: Artists Engage the Automobile. The exhibit of fourteen unique reimagined automobiles "will reflect art's longstanding relationship with the car as a cultural icon and fetish object replete with physical and symbolic possibilities." Attendees will see work by artists such as the late Keith Haring (his enamel-covered 1963 Buick Special is pictured above), Ron Arad, C

A parking attendant in Baku, Azerbaijan has been creating works of art for 10 years, using nothing more than his fingers and a dirty car.

The wheel ranks right up there with the telescope and four-slice toaster in the pantheon of inventions that have moved humankind forward. But what if a circle in three dimensions had never occurred to anyone, and we all had just moved on without it? Perhaps we'd be driving around in Lucas Motors Landspeeders with anti-gravity engines. Or maybe we'd have the same cars we do today, just without wheels.

I hadn't had my '78 Scout Terra painted for more than a week when I found myself plodding along a crooked farm road in the dead of night amidst a howling thunderstorm. Rain threw itself at the flat-pane windshield in violent splashes, threatening to drown out the static cough of the one-speaker AM radio in the dash. Soft green light poured from the gauges as I flicked through the dial, curious to hear what the low

The intersection of automobiles and art is always an interesting locale, and one french sculptor has spiced things up a bit with a Mercedes-Benz covered in flies. The premise sounds a bit shaky to be sure, but artist Natacha Mercier says the concept was inspired by something she witnessed back in 2007. While standing on a side street, she saw a BMW owner drive up, park and get out of the car. Clad all

We've all heard the argument that cars can't be art. As a commodity, vehicles are slaves to parameters of functionality, manufacturing and economics that simply have no bearing on traditional works, but Canadian sculptor Pierre Arpin believes that shouldn't stop car parts from ascending beyond their usual lot in life. While waiting in a repair shop, Arpin spotted a trashed hood and asked to take i

We are nearly at the end of 2011, and that means another 365 days of driving the latest cars and attending automotive events around the world. Of course, we constantly have our cameras at our sides so we can share everything with you, and we take a lot of pride in bringing you beautiful, high-res images of all the cars we come across, whether it's one that just debuted at an auto show or one that just spent a week in our garage.

Like so many of you, we're spending the holidays with family and friends. Regardless, we've got a few posts scheduled for you the rest of today and tomorrow; the normal daily grind resumes on Tuesday. You'll be hard-pressed to find two better links to peruse and read in your downtime today, however, then the ones we're about to show you.

Remember the Sharpie Lamborghini Gallardo from 2007? A Chevrolet Camaro has been given a similar treatment courtesy of Maryland-based professional pinstriper Chris Dunlop. Stepping away from his cans of paint and fine brushes, Dunlop has created two magnificently detailed Sharpie tapestries where the original pinstripes would have been.

It's a good thing we aren't fabulously wealthy, otherwise our domiciles would be clad in all sorts of clever automotive art. We're not just talking cheesy vinyl bench-seat sofas and engine-block coffee tables, either. We like to think our taste elevates above some of the more common automotive décor we've seen. Take Wim Delvoye's intricate tire carvings, for example. Each piece is filled with exquisite detail and is hand carved. Untold hours

Our third and final list of car gifts for Christmas is made up of things we sadly can't afford ourselves. These are top-notch gift ideas for those who happen to fall into the very highest tax brackets, and we are officially envious of anyone who receives anything on this list. Too rich for your blood? No problem, check out some less expensive gift ideas here and Jeremy Korzeniewski

In an attempt to convince drivers of the pitfalls of drunk driving, Russian authorities have commissioned a giant metal vodka bottle filled with the broken remains of crashed vehicles. The 40-foot tall structure will be located just off of a highway outside of Odintsovo in order to scare the living daylights out of educate those who may be interested in throwing a few back wit

Jonathan Schipper started grinding models of muscle cars into each other like tectonic plates as a way to express the "slow, inevitable death of American Muscle," and he's progressed to using two actual cars at an installation at Chicago's NEXT Art fair.

So we've told you about slow motion car crashes, a Warhol painting of pictures of a car crash that sold for $71 million, and of course there's always Lindsay Lohan creating her own life-sized crash-themed art. Now we present John Rooney, a Boston artist who creates set pieces of small,