Art Car - History

History

There is some disagreement as to what precisely led to the growth of the art car world. It can be seen as a twining together of several influences - the hippie-themed VWs of the late 1960s, the lowrider, as well as a Merry Pranksters' creation, the decorated schoolbus known as Further.

During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelically-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon, a paisley Rolls Royce. Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured many painted VW Buses and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood seen in the film Escape from New York).

Artist Larry Fuente was among the first to take motorized appliqué to the limit with his "Mad Cad." Later, artists Jackie Harris and David Best contributed their works to the art car world.

An art car community began to cohere in the 1990s, inspired by movies and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative art display venues such as Burning Man. One of the main forces behind this is filmmaker and art car artist Harrod Blank, who created the art car documentaries Wild Wheels (1992), Driving The Dream (1998) and Automorphosis (2008). Blank also founded the U.S.'s second largest art car festival in the San Francisco Bay Area: ArtCar Fest. Today many cars are covered by local newspapers and media. The only real way to get an idea of what is out there is to simply hit the road or attend an art car event. A New Year's Eve event in Houston, TX held on 31 December 2010 had over 100 Illuminated entrants, it is titled Gloworama, produced by Art Cars of Houston LLC - their events are limited to illuminated vehicles only. The illuminated parade also drew the attention of the Galveston, Texas-based business empire Yaga's Entertainment, Inc. (the current contract holder of Mardi Gras! Galveston) as part of the five-year contract signed on 18 November 2010.

A well known early art car used for commercial advertisement was the Oscar Meyer Wienie Wagon—Later versions were known as the Wienermobile. These are bus-sized vehicles styled to appear as a hot dog on a bun. Commercial use of the art car has become popular in the 20th and continues into the 21st century. At the same time visionary applications including cars transformed into religious shrines continues to place visionary self-taught artists, student artists and corporate artists side by side on the road and at art car events.

The art car culture was once strongest throughout Texas and the Southeast but now it extends throughout the United States and art car events can be found in many major cities as well as in small country towns. Art cars now very evident in the East, with a large event often held in Baltimore. In Canada, art cars are popular in British Columbia and also in the western Canadian plains with shows in Nanaimo, B.C. and Regina, SK. Other cars can be found throughout the world, most recently in Europe with the European arm of car-hire firm, Avis, supporting the movement.