It may surprise you to learn you live in a house full of designer things. No, I have not been sneaking round to your homes and replacing this mis-matched crap inside with items from my own impeccable collection because really, I don’t want to know how you people live. It’s because every single consumer good in your house has been designed. From the plastic washing up bowl in your sink to your doorbell camera. They may have been designed thoughtlessly or carelessly . They may have been designed quickly or slowly. Everything you buy to fit into your day-to-day life from the cheapest plastic crap to the most extravagant item had a designer involved in its conception somewhere along the line.
Groceries you absent mindedly chuck in your shopping cart every week are not immune either. The milk in your fridge door. The six-pack of your favored beer. That expensive bottle of fragrance you bought your partner. Packaging designers produced the containers and graphic designers did the labelling. For better or worse design in all its forms surrounds us.
None of it is art, and this is an important distinction to make. Art exists purely to be viewed and understood. Its purpose is to stimulate, start discussions, to be decorative and subjective. Art is what we hang on our walls and install in our public spaces. It has no structure or purpose other than what it says and how it makes us feel – done well it should have meaning and complexity. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Wings of Love by Stephen Pearson or Untitled (Black on Gray) by Mark Rothko – as long as it speaks to you. Art is spontaneous and born from emotion. Design is different. Design is a process born of rationale and a brief: a need to solve a problem. Car design is not art, and car designers are not artists. Describing some cars as art undermines the value regular cars bring to millions of normal people and runs the risk of warping our perception of how we view them as enthusiasts.
Why The Difference Matters
This might sound like a contradiction or even hypocrisy coming from someone who studied at an institution that has the word art in its name, and whose qualifications both end in the letter A for art, but this only happens because of how society categorizes our broader white collar vocations, and car design is a creative process in the same way filmmaking or even fine art is. But it is a creative process bound by very real constraints; the need to create, build and sell a safe, functioning passenger vehicle that is commercially successful. There is an artistic part to it – you have to be able to draw cars and make judgements based on aesthetics. You need the ability to know what works and why and be able to translate that into compelling sketches that sell your ideas and give modelers something to work with.
As a designer I should be able to combine a collection of lines, shapes and surfaces into something that makes pleasing visual sense. This goes for any design discipline – if you don’t have the ability to get your thinking down visually your career won’t progress far. Even the most luscious and evocative car design sketches are not art – because they are in service of the design process, and the only message they convey is what your design looks like and what its function is.
As car enthusiasts If the difference between art and design is not clearly delineated and understood, we run the risk of idolizing certain cars and neglecting others. That’s not to say I do not think car design can be discussed in the same manner as art, because it should be. One of the issues when talking about car design is that it defies easy cultural categorization. You can go and buy books or take courses that will help you understand fine or modern art, architecture, films or literature better. Unless you take a car design degree the same level of understanding is not so readily available. But in the wider world of design the people who instigate, curate and record what is worthy and what is not have always taken a snobby and elitist view towards the proletarian and democratic automobile.
At the risk of undermining my own point I’m going to quote a paragraph from The Art of American Car Design by C. Edson Armi, an American Council of Learned Societies publication (originally published by the Pennsylvania State University Press):
“During and shortly after the war, a group of extraordinarily talented and innovative thinkers at MOMA succeeded in carving out a place for industrial design as a legitimate art within the museum world. Indeed, as director of the Department of Industrial Design, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., had a tremendously positive influence across the country by selling his own exquisite taste to the American mass market through the museum’s seal of approval, known as the “Good Design” Award. In a peculiar inconsistency, however, the very men who valiantly fought to have industrial design recognized as a legitimate subject of museum study systematically excluded American mass-produced cars from exhibitions of modern design. In the 1991 automobile exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, they indicted the industry by not showing a single American car designed after 1938 and rubbed salt in the wound by including a Jeep as the only model still in production. The museum rejected the contemporary American car and justified that position philosophically. According to Bauhaus principles, mass-produced American cars could not be good design because their form was superficial-that is, not meaningfully related to structure, function, and materials and because the goal in making these cars was innovation and commercial gain rather than slow change toward a perfect type. The American car also lacked a “voice”: No definite theory underpinned it, nor did institutions or magazines fight for it the way they argued the success of American painting and industrial design at the time.”
The bottom line of the argument here is simply cars do not adhere to a predetermined set of design and cultural ideals that have been specifically selected to exclude them. Other consumer products are worthy of being recognized as being well designed, but the humble automobile is not. This gatekeeping is problematic for a couple of reasons, not least the fact the Bauhaus didn’t have anything to do with cars although some of its principles are relevant. But the Bauhaus set the foundations for Modernism which was a movement dedicated to improving lives through rational design, and in the latter part of the twentieth century in that regard the car did far more for humanity than any Wassily bloody Chair did.
I saw this elitism in action firsthand while I was a student at the Royal College of Art. The organizing committee of the graduation show wanted to prevent the Vehicle Design course displaying their final projects in the main exhibition spaces. We were to banished upstairs out of sight in our studio space, where we would not attract anything like as much footfall. As the student representative for our course I had a lot to say about that in my own forthright and charming manner. After the event I found out the head of the program had been calling me ‘Red Robbo’ behind my back. He meant it as an insult – I took it as a compliment. After I left the Vehicle Design masters was renamed ‘Intelligent Mobility’. Names are important.
Cars Are Worthy Of Debate On Merits Other Than Their Appearance
While cars or any consumer good cannot and should not be considered art, cars are worthy of similar critical discussion in the same manner. Cars are everywhere which means everyone has an opinion; sheer ubiquity pushes them into the discourse, which is why I started writing in the first place. I wasn’t interested in regurgitating press releases about car design like the specialist websites do or spewing out cod-intellectual word spaghetti that makes you go cross eyed when you try to read it. As a car designer and importantly as a car enthusiast I wanted to write for the mainstream audience, because automotive media was woefully under serving enthusiasts knowledgeable, intelligent and accessible discussions about what car designers do, how the whole thing works and what makes good car design and what doesn’t. Call me egotistical but my hope is to nudge those opinions in a more enlightened direction.
Part of the issue is the continuing consensus that no great looking cars are designed anymore. Cars have become soulless appliances with badges being the only way of telling them apart. This isn’t a new argument – thirty five years ago European car magazines were making much the same point about incoming Japanese imports. It is of course a load of utter bollocks – the hyper competitive and industrial nature of car design and production ensures the processes and equipment used have always been innovative, all the way back to the dawn of the discipline.
Nevertheless there’s a pervasive feeling that something has been lost in modern car design; an imagined past of artisans and craftsmen creating wheeled edifices of great artistic beauty, which has evaporated into history and somehow digital tools and unimaginative designers have facilitated this. There’s a romantic notion of someone like Issigonis with a pencil in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other, single handedly knocking out groundbreaking cars like the original Mini. Or the prolific Michelotti, solitary in his carrozzeria furiously sketching masterpieces for Triumph. Or more recently someone like Chris Bangle whose past work at BMW is undergoing something of a rehabilitation thanks to the polarizing nature of Munich’s current output.
Casting superstar designers as artists reinforces the narrative that car design is solely concerned with appearance. This focus on the superficial does not always take into account context, societal impact or engineering, marketing, branding or a million other commercial realities that designers must consider. There are plenty of good looking, well designed cars on the market at the moment if you are not too blinded by the past to see them.
Good Design Is Not Just For Expensive Products
We don’t go to galleries and museums all the time, but we see cars every day. So it’s understandable if misguided why some enthusiasts and auto-journalists are so enamored with the idea of describing pleasing cars from the past as art. But we live in an era where no one wants to be challenged, so this obsession with nostalgia just descends into a simple call and response without pausing to think, consider and evaluate. Discussions that primarily focus on past masters ends up concentrating on iconic cars and fetishizes their appearance without any consideration to whether they are good designs or not. It’s elevation without reservation.
The net result of this misclassification of certain cars as art is that it allows think pieces in automotive media to peel off the characteristics that are desirable to all enthusiasts and place them squarely in the hands of those perceived to be of status. A high end pursuit of an overly romanticized ideal – manual gearboxes, naturally aspirated engines, considered use of materials and thoughtful design invariably described using bullshit adjectives like curated and crafted, that becomes available only to a select few. I recently read an old article in this vein that talks about Koenigsegg designer Sasha Selipanov:
The lone exception was the Genesis Essentia concept, which may be beautiful, but its origin story means it’ll wait for history. The Essentia designer, Sasha Selipanov, is a protégé of Luc Donckerwolke and by extension Walter de Silva, who are two phenomenal contemporary design minds.
Sasha’s an Impressionist to the bone. He is a fascinating, short, bearded man from Eastern Europe who only wears Metallica shirts and counts among his favorites the Ferrari Dino and “Let’s get another drink.” The former Genesis designer swore to me over a few beers that he’d never draw an SUV.
(Emphasis mine on the above).
Get the fuck over yourself. You mean to tell me given the opportunity, you wouldn’t want to come up with the next Range Rover, Defender, Escalade, Wrangler, Suburban or G-Class? All iconic cars that any car designer would kill to be involved with? It’s the sort of pandering crap that comes from someone who has spent too long sniffing his own marker fumes, encouraged by a fawning press and an uncritical online fandom.
Ferrari has recently hinted that it may bring manual gearboxes back to its very limited edition Icona models. In an interview with the Australian car magazine Carsales chief product development officer Gianmaria Fulgenzi said:
“I don’t think all our customers want to have to train every morning just to drive our cars.”
Fulgenzi said Ferrari is now prepared to consider the reintroduction of the manual transmission – but only on cars deemed appropriate.
“In terms of mechanical gearchanges, it’s something that could be in the future, depending on product,” he said.
Manual gear shifting elitism is an essay for another time, but late last year I sat through a presentation by the chief product designer of Leica, which went into detail about the importance of design to Leica as a brand. He said it was crucial for the company to meet customer expectations in terms of usability, functionality, quality and feel across all their products, not just their cameras. Underneath it all is a consistent visual identity that makes a Leica what it is: a high end camera for customers who expect them to be pleasurably tactile to operate in a time honored way.
This commitment to branding, interfaces and consistency of operation is commendable, but what really wound me up was the inference – very much left not-unstated – that wealthy customers deserved this in their products and it was something only a company like Leica could offer. This is the thin end of the wedge in positioning thoughtful design as a quality that only applies to expensive products. A product that is nice to use is not for you, regular person. Superior design for me and not for thee. Let the piggies have their slop.
Creating bespoke cars… it’s what we do at CALLUM https://t.co/yAao8T7sao pic.twitter.com/XsUmBvX1Vj
— Ian Callum CBE (@IanCallum) April 4, 2025
Exclusive Design Not Better Design
High end customers have always desired different goods and service to the rest of us. Those products have long been used to signify wealth, taste and to gain access to the more rarified parts of society. Sure in the past a coach built Talbot or Rolls Royce would have functioned marginally better than a clanking Model T Ford and reflected your place in the social hierarchy. But paying for better mechanicals and therefore fewer breakdowns is a thing of the past. In fact I would bet good money a lot of the cars built especially for the Sultan of Brunei if examined closely would prove quite ropey. Cars have long been safe, clean and reliable to operate but those with enough money have still been commissioning one offs with varying degrees of success. What they signify is exclusive design, not better design, and certainly not art. What you are getting is rarity and something specifically tailored to your desires. It shouldn’t represent better usability and functionality than can be achieved by the mass market.
Having clearly labelled haptic controls that can be operated by feel without taking your eyes off the road and a sensory driving experience shouldn’t be the preserve of the wealthy. I’m not advocating for the universal introduction of manual gearboxes because most consumers don’t care. But they do care about how their cars look, feel and operate. An enjoyable experience in these areas should be available to everyone at all price points because we know it leads to more alert and engaged drivers, hopefully leading to safer roads and happier enthusiasts. Good design is democratic, and as enthusiasts and auto-journalists we should be demanding better for everyone, not just those who sleep on a bed made of money. If you don’t agree, you can piss off to a gallery and stare at a Rothko.
[Editor’s Note: I think this is an interesting take from AC and I generally agree with a lot of what he’s saying, but I do think there are exceptions; cars can be art when their intention of their creation is something other than their actual practical use as a car. Think about all those crazy hot rods and show rods from the ’60s and ’70s, for example. They’re sculpture:
Other than that qualifier, I think Adrian’s points stand, at least about elitism. Though I’m a little less eager to draw hard lines between art and design. – JT]
- I’ve Been Putting My GMT400 Chevy K1500 Pickup To Work; I Think It Might Be The Greatest Truck Of All Time
- Here Are The Cars That Car Designers Drove To Impress Other Car Designers At A Fancy Car Design Event
- Ferrari Won’t Paint Your Car Pink, Might Blacklist You If You Try
- Why Upstart Luxury Automaker Genesis Says It’s Never Thinking About Competitors
I had a 4th Gen Elantra as a rental car in Costa Rica a few years ago and man was that thing a triumph of design as An Car. It was a RENTAL that was OVER A DECADE OLD that still ran well, clutch feel was great, fit a 6’4″ adult in the backseat for an hour road trip. Wasn’t a championship racecar but had enough power to do what I needed on jungle back roads.
Good job Hyundai
The Fiat in the wall reminds me way too much of a Halloween witch and broom crashed into a tree.
That Fiat in the wall is a mini.
What was the artist trying to say?
”you can’t park there, mate”.
It reminds of the decommissioned news vehicle “crashing” out of the CTV building in Toronto.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AyYbCod36UoXt8Zq7
Hopefully, that link works. (It does, but you may have to click around to see a high-res version.
Depends on the local definition of “park.”
To my understanding, that space is occupied! Haha
Well would you look at that!
Obviously I didn’t 🙁
I may not know that much about art/cars/sex, but I know what I like
…and I like what I know, getting better, in your wardrobe!
(Iykyk)
I see where the genesis of your idea came from.
There’s a future for you in the fire escape trade.
I prefer lawn mowers.
Then, keep those mower blades sharp!
For the sake of argument, I will concede your assertion that automobiles are not art, but are they sex?
Does it count if they give you that fizzy feeling?
This is a fantastic and thoughtful article with an interesting argument by Torch about the 60s “show rods” like the Beatnik Bandit pictured. Industrial and automotive designers create objects that are meant to be used. The decision to drive that car 200k miles or park it in an air-conditioned garage and stare at it is down to the owner. As such there are obviously practical considerations at work.
Something like Beatnik Bandit or Outlaw or the AlaKart was never meant to be used. It’s an assemblage of components created by industrial designers into something new and different and completely impractical. These also weren’t designed by a car designer but by an individual, an artist, if you will, to their specific taste. As such would this be considered art any less than a Rauschenberg or Cornell piece that incorporates mass-produced objects into its matrix?
Well said. This speaks to the intent of the creator for it to be art. A corning glass pot ment for daily use in a kitchen by its creator vs a blown glass sculpture from Murano Italy.
The hot rod point is the exception that proves the rule.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1741/
The switch should almost never be on the cord.
As one who works in the auto industry, the amount of time we spend on the most seemingly trivial things would baffle and outsider. I feel so seen in that comic haha
I had multiple meeting over several months about both a wheel lock and a spare wheel cover.
I spent 8 years as an interior integration engineer. Totally tracks
I forgot to add both of those went nowhere and didn’t make the program.
Yup. Sounds about right….
I can almost agree with Adrian’s take, except where he’s wrong.
Sure, a car is ‘just’ design, as a functional piece of equipment; but then if someone were to take it off the streets and set it on display in his living room, then it’s definitely art.
Subjectivity is a thing, especially when it comes to art.
No, that someone is an idiot.
It’s the same as displaying it in a museum (which you also don’t seem to get, btw): as soon as it’s a display, its original purpose as a functional appliance doesn’t apply anymore
No it does, because that primary function still exists. Putting something in a museum celebrates it as an object – it says this thing is interesting/exceptional/terrible and worthy of discussion, because of what it tells us about the form/history/context of this particular product. It doesn’t automatically elevate to art. Can everyday objects be used in a piece of art? Of course, Jeff Koons has done it, but that doesn’t make vacuum cleaners themselves art.
Every painting is just an aesthetically pleasing wall covering. Absurdist arguments are absurd.
Art and design are intertwined.
No amount of mental gymnastics will ever separate the two.
There is artful design. And there is functional art.
An elaborately carved wooden door is functionally nothing more than a method of separation between two spaces. But it is also art when created as something more than just a door.
Is the door nothing more than a canvas for the art? If the function as a door is in any way related to what’s carved on it, then it’s definitely more than just the canvas.
Does a carved door become, in your mind, “art”, when placed on a wall instead of in a door frame? What if the hinges, handle and lock are cut away?
In fact, choice of the canvas for any art is an artful thing in itself. If the artful choice of canvas is too subtle for you to recognize, that doesn’t mean it’s not art.
Just because cars aren’t made of wood with mythical scenes from history and religion carved into their surfaces doesn’t mean they’re not art.
Art and design are intertwined. There is no separating the two, as every piece of art has purpose, and every piece of design has art.
There is no separate category of product called “thought objects”, which seems to be something you’re inventing out of thin air to define “art”. Art is included in every product to varying degrees.
You’ve said it much better than I could, but this article is truly a bizarre form of gatekeeping art that I never considered that I would read on this site.
Then neither of you understand what design is. If you’ve read absolutely anything else I’ve written, you’ll know I’m against all form of gatekeeping. We punch up here, not down.
So telling someone they don’t know what something is, is not gatekeeping, nor punching down? Cool.
I know my area of expertise. Do you seriously think I would be allowed to publish something the editors here consider elitist gatekeeping and punching down?
You apparently know my area of expertise as well.
I don’t and don’t much care. Even if I did I wouldn’t presume to attack you for something you spoke on that is within your area of expertise, because I personally didn’t agree with it or understand the point you were trying to make.
You did both, here and elsewhere, and despite my efforts to clarify in good faith, you continue to be snippy about it and egregiously accuse me of being elitist and gatekeeping, which are two accusations I take seriously and personally, because they are things I vehemently disagree with in all forms.
You’re constantly punching down. It’s simply that we enjoy it, because you’re rather playful and not excessively serious about it when you do. Look upthread.
Well yeah, but you took that in the manner it was intended. I take umbrage at the assertion I’m eltist and this piece is. I only play an elitist on TV.
Yes, you can still derive its original purpose, but it’s completely irrelevant at this point, when it’s reduced to a display.
Sure, it might’ve had terrible gas mileage and legroom as a car, but nobody gives a shit about a display’s estimated ‘gas mileage’.
Look, it’s entirely your right to pretend to not understand this simple point, but it’s just like sticking your fingers in your ears, it’s disingenuous.
I’m not sticking my fingers in my ears as much as people are missing the entire point of what I’m saying.
Wings of Love describes an eternal battle of love vs. hate. The woman represents love and the man is forced to choose between her and the giant evil goose (or swan which is just a fancy goose). Since all geese are inherently evil, he is potentially trapped in the wings and could be taken to a watery grave by the giant evil goose–unless he chooses to fly away with his woman on THE WINGS OF LOVE (instead of the wings of hate. A goose can only hate.)
Geese are bad.
Leda agrees.
So let’s talk about the Hyundai N-Vision 74.
In as much as it is a “concept car”, it’s not “I am a car. I am functional. I am therefore not art”. It’s a design statement and, I would argue, one that’s specifically intended to create an emotional response, which we all saw it do VERY clearly when it was revealed. All of us 80s children got the feels something fierce for that car because it invoked nostalgia in a very powerful way.
In that framework, it would very much seem to be “Art”. Consider it a car-shaped sculpture if you must, but: art.
Now: if you just so happen to have a drivetrain and interior ready to include with the design, does that somehow intrinsically “de-artify” that object?
I feel like the subjective call that an object designed for a functional purpose is non-art is… arbitrary and subjective.
Yes, and it was deliberately designed to do just that, which is cynical but I understand why. I wrote about it a while ago:
https://www.theautopian.com/a-car-designers-opinion-on-the-hyundai-n-vision-74-thats-currently-breaking-the-internet/
Ah, but isn’t any “art” equally deliberate in its intent and execution (unless – and I’m not saying they do, but I’m a long way from saying they don’t – the “artist’s statement” that accompanies the piece is made up post-hoc by a random word generator)?
(Would such a random word generator itself be “art” in the absurdist/Dadaist sense and yet simultaneously “not art” in the “but it was designed for a functional purpose” sense Adrian is using? If I built such a thing, could I cause complete societal collapse or at least get somebody else’s AI-powered random-art-words-generator to lock up with an existential crisis?)
That 8C isn’t art, it’s porn.
But Subway sandwiches are art.
I also disagree with AC but that’s not unusual, and I still thoroughly enjoy reading his takes because of how much thought goes into them. But it’s easier to form an argument in your favor when you get to define what a term means, and to me there is no objective definition of the word ‘art’ anymore.
Counterpoint: art is subjective.
Also, why is the Grande Panda not the Granda Panda?
Could have saved a lot of words by saying Adrian Clarke does not belive in Dadaism
I was thinking this was where Adrian was going– that a car can’t be art even if someone say that it is. I thought “Fountain” by Duchamp set this tone over 100 years ago. If its hanging on the wall in the toilet, it’s a urinal; if the artist removes it from it’s context, and dubs it something else it’s art. As someone in this thread alluded to earlier, if it’s in the garage, it’s not art. If it’s displayed in the living room, it could be art.
Warhol’s soup cans…
But they’re not soup cans. The art represents soup cans.
I should have been more exact. Absolutely.
“Art is what you can get away with.” – attributed to Andy Warhol.
And saying that you can distinguish between art and design is very modernist. Is an 19th century portrait done for a wealthy client not art because it was commissioned as opposed to flowing from the artist’s creative impulse?
See the second half of the RCR review of the PT Cruiser. (First half is great too but NSFW.)
https://youtu.be/hoxqtnI4I4c?si=ADaC2WK38vecfSfM
Ah yes, Warhol whose art was created with the sole purpose of making money. Of course he’d try and shift the definition.
I call bullshit, only because flush electric door handles and cars that lack external door handles entirely are all way to damn common.
I doubt an engineer thought that not having a foolproof way of being able to get into your car was the right idea, so sorry, I’m looking suspiciously at you car designers.
As an engineer with 25+ yrs industrial maintenance experience I cringe at pointless complexity. As a plant engineer my decree was “No Cadillac solutions to Chevy problems.”
Pop out door handles have merit as an aero solution and also ‘surprise and delight’ which is important sometimes. As ever it comes down to what is appropriate for the car in question.
Ok, but I live in Houston which is home to the Art Car Parade which are cars that are art (some of them.)
That Mark Rothko thing above, ehh, I recognize that some people would consider that art but I don’t get it and at this age I’m beginning to believe I never will get it. I remember going to the fine art museum when I was 14 and being bored out of my mind at the canvases that looked like someone swallowed paint until they puked then hung it on the wall. Of course at that point in my life I considered Derek Riggs’ work to be the pinnacle of fine art.
Much later in my 40s on vacation in NYC my wife and I visited MOMA. I still remembered my previous experience in my teens but figured with age maybe I’d appreciate the “art” this time around. Nope, not much at all, less than 1% of the shit on the walls grabbed my attention. It turns out I still consider Derek Riggs’ work to be the pinnacle of fine art.
I drove an art car for 3 years, I let an art class use it for a canvas. The abstract art you mention. I had the same reaction before I took an art appreciation class. This helped. The artist called it art and did it first and people had an emotional reaction to it enough to hang it in a museum. Yes there is elitism in the art world also.
Appropriately, streamed “The Kill Room” last night, a direct to stream movie abbout a Mafia killer who becomes an artist as a way to launder money.
I took art appreciation in college too, I’m afraid it didn’t help me much. I’m convinced all art I don’t understand is just money laundering 😉
I took an art photography class in college, and it convinced me that a lot of artists are merely BS artists. Show off some work with enough confidence and some people will be too embarrassed to admit they don’t understand it and buy it anyway.
Agreed. With bad coffee-house art there is at least a visible attempt at expressing something to an audience. And according to some, Modern Art was a CIA psy-op.
This topic gets messy, for sure. One consideration in the initial definition of art is that something used as “decoration” solves a problem, just like having a switch in the right spot does, which would disqualify it as art. Having designed thousands of things, including commercial spaces developed to create a “branded experience,” it is clear that a painting in a frame is not eating as art in that context. Also, whether it is visual or not doesn’t factor into something as being art or not. Art can hit any one or combination of senses.
I think the idea that art has no function other than itself is the easiest and shortest definition. However, it gets tricky when art is applied in ways that give it a function. A great piece of art hung in a prominent location is still art even if it is functioning as decor. A clearly functional object like a car can have artistic elements applied to it, but it doesn’t make the car itself art.
Another consideration. Many of the pieces we consider great art were created primarily as propaganda. Michelangelo, David, Dix, Rivera, Guthrie, etc., were focused on what we would now consider marketing. We see those pieces more as pure art now than people might have when they were first done, because the context is largely lost.
If you found a particularly beautiful piece of trim from a classic car, turned it on its edge, and put it in a gallery, it could be mistaken for Brâncuși’s Bird in Space. Is it not art because of where the physical object originated? Duchamp would like to have a word and see what you think of: “In Prelude to a Broken Arm” or “Fountain.” Both of which are art despite being mass-produced objects. They are art because the artist changed their context. Warhol did this as well by using other people to mass-produce things in a studio that was literally called a factory.
Art isn’t about the object itself. So really, not even art is art.
I recall reading in multiple places that famed designer Harley Earl, GM’s first VP of Design, couldn’t draw at all. So he must’ve had some other way of coaxing and–failing that–browbeating his subordinates into carrying out his designs.
I think that, in general, people have a romantic, rose-tinted view of older cars without considering whether or not they were good, or the context in which they originated. Compared to yesterday’s cars, today’s cars look exactly the same, are soulless, and are unrepairable…even though those same words were used to describe those cars in there day. It was ever thus.
What definitely is a thing of the past is the shoddy exotic. In the 70s and 80s and 90s, an automaker would put a ton of R&D into the ergonomics and interactive design of, say, a Ford Fiesta, with relatively little concern into how it looked under the hood beyond its ability to be manufactured and reasonably repaired. Fit for purpose, and all that. Meanwhile, your Lamborghini Miura or whatever would have a gorgeous engine bay and body, but the interior ergonomics would be shit. In many cases, those low-volume automakers would straight-up borrow pieces from mainstream cars, especially switchgear, and stick them wherever they would fit. Because those things would be expensive for a small firm to engineer and/or commission on its own.
But now, the expectations are higher. A Lamborghini Revuelto is a perfectly daily-able car, with plenty of consideration given to the interior and the comfort of the thing. Whatever–presumably–Audi components it uses are reskinned and altered enough that they still benefit from a volume-car’s engineering, without feeling foreign to the experience. You won’t get into your $250,000 Italian performance car and find wiper and indicator stalks from a Morris Marina.
You are correct Harley Earl couldn’t draw. He once arrived at a correct shade of brown for a custom car he was building for western star Tom Mix by pouring creamer into a cup of coffee.
Black on Gray by Rothko seems appropriate for an automotive design house. They might just need one option for silver, though. Maybe all the way to white?
Mondrian walks in
Get this guy out of here, we don’t do bright colors!
Bob Ross walks in
We don’t do happy things, either!
I don’t think I’ve ever said anything nice about Piet Mondrian before this, but I would let him choose a color palette for cars.
And that’s where I am an engineer through and through. I find immense beauty in good design. When the standard size containers fit in the door of the refrigerator perfectly. When I know exactly where the light switch is when I enter a room for the first time. The gentle pull of a spring in a well designed gearchange that pulls it into the next cog with confidence. I’m not an art aficionado, I appreciate good design.
I learned in my college art appreciation class a 2 part definition of art that has served me will for a long time (like 35 years) Here goes:
Art is art when
The artist calls the work art and intended it to be artThe work evokes an emotional response. That emotional response can be loathing but it is at least an emotional response.
One could argue that good design would be good but not meet either stipulation above.
Part of the definition I learned was that art is that it’s for its own sake and not to serve a practical purpose. Here, the profit/planned obsolescence angle seems to go against that.
Huh. This was a journey for me. I saw the headline and immediately had a visceral reaction. I was angry and sure that Adrian was wrong and that cars could be art. Over the course of the piece my view softened and eventually I was completely on board.
I think that means the article is art.
Ahem. Art Center in Pasadena, CA. The location where many of the world’s most brilliant car designers (and industrial designers) have gone to school and graduated from. Note the word ‘art’ in there. Graduation requirements include taking a variety of art classes, and passing them. Curriculum requirements can be found online, or speak to a graduate.
My degree required science classes, and I would not call myself a Physicist.
My background is in applied physics, yet my school didn’t have the moniker ‘science something’ in its name either. Yet that’s what I do on a daily basis.
I explained that in the article. I graduated from the Royal College of Art.
Trump graduated from the Wharton College of Business, yet “reciprocal tariffs”.
The point is not insult, it’s only that your credentials apply when you’re speaking in general agreement with the institution that issued the credentials.
The Royal College of Art calls itself the Royal College of Art, yet teaches design and many other things beside fine arts. Nothing about their reputation, online presentation and course descriptions indicate that they believe that art and design are separate in the way you assert.
Your argument may have merit, but your highly impressive credentials are not the source of that merit.
Yet they also have courses in service design, product design and so on. Fashion is essentially clothing design. And I did make the point about it being ironic that as a designer I graduated from art school. Unfortunately for me there isn’t a world renowned institution called the Royal College of Design. This is getting into semantics to discredit my argument.
I think the whole assertion that art and design are so very distinct and separate that it’s wrong to call a designer an artist, (yet not wrong to call an artist a designer) is the real argument over semantics. And it’s gatekeeping the terms “art” and “artist” as something entirely over-precious.
True, fashion is essentially clothing design, but then couture is more artful clothing design.
Making art is the act of creating something; an object, a sound, a flavor, an experience, whatever; to convey the creator’s emotions.
Nothing is created without elements of design. Even supposedly random art involves design choices: what media, what canvas, what colors? How shall I fling this paint at the wall? Art does not exist without design.
No one would argue that Michelangelo wasn’t an artist. He obviously designed David to look like a human male. Michelangelo clearly was an artist, but also a designer.
To refuse the reciprocal just because the item being designed has a more clear purpose than an objet d’art makes no sense at all. Because David had an ecclesiastical purpose well beyond being just an objet d’art.
Art and design are blended disciplines, impossible to separate. To claim a designer cannot create art in their design of everyday objects is to draw a false wall between them.
To many viewers, the look of the Alfa 8C conveys emotion even more expressively than a Rothko painting. The Alfa 8C is a work of art. I’m not sure why you’ve chosen to deny this form of art, but you are incorrect.
Did you read what I wrote? I specifically said enthusiasts and journalists calling certain cars art because they are more aware of them in their everyday lives is part of the problem.
When all that’s available for normal consumers is a load of generic electric pods controlled by touchscreens, and the wealthy are exclusively swanning around in nice looking desirable cars with tactile controls, colorful interiors, and everything else that’s important to enthusiasts, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
You are literally making my point for me.
I don’t agree that “calling certain cars art” is “part of the problem”. Quite the opposite!
It’s actually a way to say “Hey, designers! THIS is what we want!”
The wealthy are going to hoard the most desirable unique objects no matter what. It’s what they do.
The goal is to include art in the design of everyday objects so that the most desirable objects are no longer so unique that the wealthy can actually hoard all of them.
Most people will accept a tool without much art in its design, but it doesn’t mean it’s what they’d rather have.
If you want to democratize art, you have to recognize and acknowledge where it is in everyday life in order to celebrate and further encourage it. If you can’t call a designer an artist or recognize the best designs as art, you prevent this from happening.
Failure to celebrate and encourage art in design leads to the dull experience you fear.
I’m not not democratising art – hence the inclusion of ‘Wings of Love’. I think the point is. If we get to the point where enthusiasts are being led to believe that only an ‘artist’ like Selipanov can create the cars they want, they are going to dismiss everything else as not being worthy. Next it will be “I only want to drive cars designed by insert named designer here“ which is akin to saying “I only wear made to measure, darling”.
Well, now I get the point of your article.
I don’t think the average consumer is ever going to be posh enough to reject a car because it’s not designer label. I find hard to imagine that any significant number of enthusiasts would ever feel that way either. They like what they like, and they will buy it.
Maybe you’re so deeply in the know that you don’t realize how few people even know the names of the designers behind things they like.
No matter how much you and I may consider them celebrities, they really aren’t except in certain small groups.
How many other people, for example, know who designed their writing desk? Their silverware? Or any other mundane object? Even almost all IKEA customers, who are exposed to the names of their designers every time they purchase something, don’t remember who did that work.
The object is the priority, and an artful object is rightly celebrated.
I’ve known dozens, perhaps hundreds of Triumph fans who have no idea who Giovanni Michelotti was, yet they loved and invested in his art.
Pot, Kettle
They’re both black, right?
Why it gotta be black? 😛
So it matches my soul.
I’m happy to scroll down my favorite car site and see a picture of my favorite camera also. Leica cameras aren’t art, they’re pure red-hot sex. Art can exist anywhere, as long as you put some of yourself into it. A car isn’t art, but it certain can contain artistic elements, and most probably do.
I’ve got no issue with Leica. But the assertion that their good design and tactility is only for people who can afford a Leica is where I start to have a problem.
I’ll take a Canon R5 over the M6 any day. Call me a Phillistine, but when it comes capabilities, there’s no contest.
The Leica reviews on some sites (ahem Ken Rockwell) are so incredibly snobby and condescending.
I understand your feelings, and I can see why people think they’re overpriced. Definitely a lot of snobs love them, for the status. The one I got doesn’t even have a red dot on it. I don’t care if other people know my camera is good.
I’ve been in love with the Leica M-series for decades, but I never thought I could justify one. That’s a lot of money for a hobbyist. I finally bought myself one, as a 50th birthday present to myself (I got a Q2 though, rather than an M, for reasons I won’t go into), and I can say that it’s worth every penny I paid.
I’ve been into photography since the late-80s, and I’ve owned more than 100 cameras over the years. I could probably pull 25 out of my closet right now. But ever since my Leica joined the fray, my Canons have been relegated to time-lapse duty, and my Nikons sit in the closet and don’t get shot. I have everything in my closet from a 110 SLR to a 4×5 field camera, and the Leica is the only thing that gives me the Fizz anymore. Not overpriced at all. Worth every cent, for me.
No that’s fine and I get it. It’s a timeless, aspirational product like a Rolex or a made-to-measure suit. And the prices are kept high to maintain their exclusivity – I understand that. If everyone can afford one by stretching they lose that, as LV has found out to its cost. It was the chief designer’s inference they only a company that Leica can provide that level of thoughtful design for discerning customers started rubbing me up the wrong way.