The age of the automobile is changing fast and will come to a close. Our relationship to this machine has impacted the planet and our species dramatically.
I’m Thomas Aitken, sculptor, designer, former auto industry design executive. Andy Warhol said when they dig up our culture they will find the Campbell’s Soup can. I believe they will find storage enclaves with classic cars, squirreled away by boomer fanatics. We Put so much energy into the use of cars that the roads, the steel and concrete, the piles of tires, and all the debris that comes with a “mobility machine” oriented society will be evident for a long time. Seldom can we view a landscape without a road and a car or two. Seldom can we pause and listen and hear no highway sound or engine. Our cars are incredibly pervasive.
Personal transportation has created freedom from our geographic roots and made us a different creature. Particularly in America where you can pack up and move on a whim and easily start again in a new location. We know freedom like no others. We have become so close to these machines that for my generation, they have come to represent our very persona, as well as indicating our status and orientation.
In America, car guys now congregate all across the country in meets ranging over antiques, drag races, brand clubs, customs, formula, low rides, NASCAR, and donks. The baby boomers grew up anticipating the 16th birthday and the license to drive, catapulting us into manhood with dating, mobility, and the competition for status based on car choice. No where else in the world has car ownership been so pervasive, common, and critical as with the boomer generation. Now young people have computers, internet music and many other diversions and the car is not as all consuming as it was a generation ago. The old ones I saved for my kids to rod up went ignored for the new technologies.
My art work is derived from a life and career inside the car culture. As a design sculptor of show cars I learned from the old timers about line, contour and mass in which to capture emotion. As I have studied the history of cultures and art I see themes repeating in faster and faster cycles. So the car is just a late addition to a long stream of artistic object development, But look at the energy expended to pave the planet with our roads, forge our steel into machines, and continuously grow the market so there is one in every garage. It has changed us. I this blog I will attempt to explain why I create these pieces and what they are all about. I sculpt from passion, and there are two intense drivers for me. The human form and emotional experience, and the developed surfaces in automobiles that are so carefully manipulated into emotional designs to clad the transportation machine and make it something more than engine wheels and cabin. The history of our interaction with this thing called a car, and the history of art all come crashing together as I attempt to make statements in 3D materials about it all. I hope you can enjoy these explorations of sculpture.
My first series “the Nikes” speaks to the found art object from the past. These pedestal mounted designs capture the design essence of our antiques with many components missing. They are trophies recognizable as venerable objects from the conquering culture of the car. The intense focus on form language used in auto design has been condensed into new pieces with the original design bits carefully preserved for viewing. Like the remnants of statues of the Goddess, they are reduced to a simple torso or wing.
They originated from a concept about motion that was put forth by Marcel DuChamps in 1912 just as the modern machines of the car and the camera were allowing us to see the world very differently. At High speed, in slow motion, and many views at once. The “Nude descending a Staircase” created a storm of conversation and was an early cubist masterpiece that had no recognizable figure in it but freeze framed the motion path of an event inn oil paint on canvas. link: http://www.beatmuseum.org/duchamp/nude2.html This paining inspired me to sculpt "57 Descending a Switchback"
the story of these works will continue next time
Thanks,
Tj
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