Automotive Art: From Road to Wall

Tom Wolfe popularized the notion of cars as art decades ago in “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” but not until recently have hulking lead sleds moved out of custom car showrooms and into museum galleries.

“The Car/The Art,” billed as the “largest showing of automotive art ever,” is running through the end of the month in a large gallery space at The Citadel in Commerce. It is fittingly held at the mall, a former Uniroyal tire factory that hovers next to the Santa Ana Freeway like a sprawling fortress decorated with bas-relief Assyrian soldiers.

The show examines America through its obsession with the automobile, taking the viewer all the way from a 19th-Century horseless carriage to a prototype for the 21st Century, a rocket-on-wheels salt-flats racer. About 30 cars are on display, filling several rooms and two levels of the building.

Less interesting is the art on the walls--posters, graphics and paintings, along with real cars or reproductions as sofas, tapestries, sculptures, stained-glass windows, tables, benches and on and on.

Are cars art? The hundreds of visitors--a majority of them men--at the show on a recent Saturday thought so.

“You’d never see this many guys at any other kind of art exhibit,” said one patron as he stared longingly into the engine of a rehabilitated Corvette, his admiring visage reflected in the shiny red fiberglass. “Take a look at this baby! Beautiful, just beautiful.”

“Fiberglass body, 250 horsepower. Don’t see it anymore.” His voice was reduced to a hushed, reverential whisper. “Wow.”

Each era in American history is well represented in the exhibit, starting with a 1901 Locomobile Steamer and a 1897 Tandem, a soapbox on wheels with a crank starter that had left blotchy oil stains on the concrete.

One of the best exhibits is “The Art of Restoration,” featuring two 1954 Buicks nose to nose, one restored to re-create a vision of Ronald Reagan’s American dream, the other resembling a huge cockroach that survived a nuclear explosion.

Cherry red sports cars are so well represented that they stand out as cliches, especially against the late ‘60s muscle cars (’65 Plymouth, ’71 Hemi Cuda Coupe, ’69 Baldwin) with 400-plus horsepower. What are known in the trade as “contemporary exotics”--customized pickup trucks to the rest of us--are awash in bright primary colors, decorated with stripes, scribbles and lightning bolts.

In the halls leading upstairs are huge pieces of butcher paper on which children can draw the family car. Of course, there is also a store at the end of the exhibit to meet all your car-as-art needs, including T-shirts, posters and accessories.

The show remains open until Dec. 1 at The Citadel, 5675 Telegraph Road, in the City of Commerce. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekends. Admission is $7 for adults and $3 for children. For more information call (310) 923-3310.