The founder of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, once said, “A roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace,” the marble Hellenistic masterpiece. His movement coincided with the automobile’s popularization via Ford Motor Company’s 1908 the Model T, so the Italian Futurists were perhaps the artists who loved the car first and best. Since then, the car has come to be a symbol of America, notably celebrated by Pop Artists that photographed the American landscape such as, Ed Ruscha and Lee Friedlander, and by John Chamberlain who brought Abstract Expressionism into three …
The founder of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, once said, “A roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace,” the marble Hellenistic masterpiece. His movement coincided with the automobile’s popularization via Ford Motor Company’s 1908 the Model T, so the Italian Futurists were perhaps the artists who loved the car first and best. Since then, the car has come to be a symbol of America, notably celebrated by Pop Artists that photographed the American landscape such as, Ed Ruscha and Lee Friedlander, and by John Chamberlain who brought Abstract Expressionism into three dimensions using crushed scrap metals from cars. In contemporary art, the car has been a site of both celebration—as in the souped up, fetishized vehicle interiors of Luis Gispert—and destruction—epitomized by Pipoli Rist’s video Ever Is Over All where the artist gleefully smashes in the windows of parked cars.
