{"id":618,"date":"2009-05-31T15:04:15","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T22:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/05\/_from_testpatternapproximately\/"},"modified":"2009-05-31T15:04:15","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T22:04:15","slug":"_from_testpatternapproximately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/05\/_from_testpatternapproximately.html","title":{"rendered":"J. G. Ballard (20th century unfolds in 21st) art of the car (crash)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Car consciousness took deepest root on the West Coast, where most of the artists who address it as subject matter have lived. In my version of this art history, everything began with Ed Kienholtz – Back Seat Dodge ’38<\/i><\/a>, 1964, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

Before I was 18, this piece was a news story, thanks to its chicken-wire figures having no-rent oral sex. Get a room? Cars are cheaper. To see it, you had to be 18 or an art history student. Being neither, I didn’t qualify but remember thinking, any art the police don’t want you to see has to be worth seeing. It was the point that I began a switch from a primary interest in literature to a primary one in art.<\/p>\n

(Click to enlarge images.)<\/p>\n

\"edkienholtzcar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>By the early 1970s, J. G. Ballard had begun to think cars as a kind of death-in-life, the equivalent of the cursed ship in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner<\/a>. <\/p>\n

(From Testpattern<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Approximately 2 years before the publication of J.G. Ballard’s novel
\nCRASH! in 1973, filmmaker Harely Cokliss created his short film
\n“Towards Crash!” for the BBC which featured two parts: one based on
\nBallard’s short story “The Atrocity Exhibition”; the other based on
\nBallard’s then short story “Crash!”. He cast Ballard himself as both
\nnarrator and lead alongside B-movie actress Gabrielle Drake. The short
\ncaptures a more empirical tone as it studies the binary systems of
\nstructure and force, form and desire, the collisions of bodies as the
\ntools of a modern empire. The visual style seems almost stark compared
\nto David Cronenberg’s visual imagining of the material in his 1996
\nfull-length feature CRASH, which dwelled more on the mutative synthesis
\nof man and machine\/technology\/society at the end of the (previous) century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/object>
\nJ.G. Ballard, 1971<\/object><\/p>\n

I’m
\ninterested in the automobile as a narrative structure, as a scenario
\nthat describes our real lives and our real fantasies. If every member
\nof the human race were to vanish overnight, I think it would be
\npossible to reconstitute almost every element of human psychology from
\nthe design of a vehicle like this. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Photo, New York Times. Dirk Skreber at <\/span>Friedrich Petzel Gallery<\/span> through June 27<\/span>. Review, Ken Johnson: consumerist desire on a collision course with death<\/i> (To read review, click through from here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"carnewyorktimes.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>J. G. Ballard, 1971: <\/p>\n

As
\na writer I feel I must try to understand the real meaning of a lot of
\ncommonplace but tremendously complicated events. I’ve always been
\nfascinated by the complexity of movement when a woman gets out of a
\ncar. Take a structure like a multi-story car park, one of the most
\nmysterious buildings ever built. Is it a model for some strange
\npsychological state, some kind of vision glimpsed within its bizarre
\ngeometry? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jonathan Schipper at Boiler<\/a> through June 28.<\/p>\n

\"SchipperCrash.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Stephen Andrews, car crash, <\/i>2006, crayon rubbing on mylar, from Platform<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

\"StephenAndrewscar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>J. G. Ballard, 1971<\/p>\n

What
\neffect does using these (multi-story car parks) have on us? Are the
\nreal myths of this century being written in terms of these huge
\nunnoticed structures? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whiting Tennis, untitled model<\/i><\/a> at Greg Kucera<\/p>\n

\"tennisuntitled-model.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>J. G. Ballard, 1971<\/p>\n

More
\nexactly, I think that new emotions and new feelings are being created,
\nthat modern technology is beginning to reach into our dreams and change
\nour whole way of looking at things, and perceiving reality, that more
\nand more it is drawing us away from contemplating ourselves to
\ncontemplating its world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Justin Colt Beckman<\/a> – road hard and hung up muddy.<\/p>\n

\"JustinColtBeckman.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Alice Wheeler<\/a>, What Women See At Night<\/p>\n

<\/i>\"alicewheelercar.jpg\"<\/span>Aaron Hobson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"aaronhobbescar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Matthew Day Jackson<\/a> from The Violet Hour<\/i> at the Henry<\/a>, title after Beuys:  I Like America and America Likes Me<\/i>. His muscle car rides on skulls, an allusion to fossil fuel but lit with neon powered by solar panels on the roof. Jackson’s in New York but raised in the Northwest and Northwest in his bones.<\/p>\n

\"matthewdayjackson.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Detail:<\/p>\n

\"matthewdayjacksondetail.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
Hugo Lude\u00f1a<\/a>
\"hugoludenacar2.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Evah Fan, Hiccup<\/i><\/a>\"EvahFanHiccups.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Buddy Bunting<\/a>
\"buddybuntingcar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
Valay Shende<\/a> – Buddha Right, Marx Wrong<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Valay<\/a><\/span>Detail:<\/p>\n

\"shendebuddharight.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
Lee Bul, karaoke machine from Live Forever<\/i> at the Henry Gallery<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"LEEBULcar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Kathleen Henderson, Pickpocket<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"hendersoncar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Gonzalo Lebrija, Entre la vida y la muerte (blanco y negro), <\/i>from <\/i>Culture Monster<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/i>\"cardrop.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
Kenneth Baker, SF Chronicle, What is American art, a car perhaps?<\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n

Charles
\nLinder<\/a> appears to think continually about the zero degree of art and
\nhow to meander just this side of it. But a second question preoccupies
\nLinder: What makes American art American?<\/p>\n

At the center of his Gallery 16 show, facing “Take Me to the
\nDrive-In,” sits “Ghostang” (2006), a bullet-riddled 1965 Ford Mustang
\nbody that Linder retrieved from the desert and powder-coated to
\npreserve it and revive it as an ambivalent object of nostalgia for auto
\nand gun fetishists. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a monument, it
\noffers us symbolically the vanity of the gunslinger nation, in tatters.
\n“Ghostang” will remind some viewers of the radiant ’64 Chevy Malibu
\nthat levitates at the end of “Repo Man.”
\nBut it makes me think also of “The Master Chassis” (1969), the
\nlegendary dragonfly-sleek car-as-sculpture built by former Berkeley
\nartist Don Potts. Both Potts’ vehicle and Linder’s might serve as
\nmarkers on a distinctly American cultural timeline.
\n(Shown here as he found it.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"CharlesLindercar.jpg\"<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Car consciousness took deepest root on the West Coast, where most of the artists who address it as subject matter have lived. In my version of this art history, everything began with Ed Kienholtz – Back Seat Dodge ’38, 1964, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before I was 18, this piece was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}