Car Fetish:An Automobile Exhibition at Museum Tinguely, Basel

International Fri 03-06-2011

Car Fetish:An Automobile Exhibition at Museum Tinguely, Basel
By a Correspondent

The automobile is the foremost cultural touchstone of the 20th century, reflecting the social and cultural development of the western world and beyond. Both technical device and instrument of locomotion, it offers the most highly developed and widespread interface for human-machine interaction – while also functioning as a carrier of meaning, an individualized living room, a medium for escapes great and small, and a means of distancing oneself from others and of creating a personal profile.

Giacomo Balla - The Car Has Passed, 1913

The attraction of speed and the new feeling of time and space ushered in by the advent of the automobile had a formative influence on (urban) perception and the rhythm of modern life in the early years of the 20th century.

The view through the windshield still drives our outlook on life today, as well as coloring the cinematic perspective on reality. The exhibition "Car Fetish" demonstrates the wide range of art influenced by the automobile. Around 160 artworks are featured by more than 80 artists, among them Giacomo Balla, Robert Frank, Jean Tinguely, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Chris Burden, Damián Ortega, Richard Prince or Superflex.

Automobility, or “self-propulsion” was a power the messengers to the gods already had at their disposal. And it so happens that in the year 2011 the car is celebrating its 125th birthday (in 1886 Carl Benz designed the famous Benz patented motorcar, the world’s first automobile).

Car Fetish - Museum Tinguely

The exhibition at Museum Tinguely, conceived architecturally as a wheel with axis and radial segments, commences with the radical new concepts of art and society put forth by the Futurists, who linked human and machine symbiotically in a new aesthetic of constant acceleration.

In the “Futurist Manifesto” of 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti propagated automotive speed and the racecar as new ideal of beauty to replace the old model of the Nike of Samothrace. The Futurists worshipped the machine realm, dedicated poems to the racecar and struck up a “Hymn to Death.”

In the visual arts Giacomo Balla and Luigi Russolo were the main figures to depict impressions of automotive movement as synaesthesia of light, sound and speed in the urban environment. These two artists form the historical prelude to the exhibition, with their own room in which visitors can experience the intoxication of the senses triggered by a panorama of works.

Museum Tinguely has several works in its collection that were directly inspired by cars or that use car parts as material. Jean Tinguely was a great devotee of the “most beautiful artwork” in the world. He for example converted two racecar chassis into a winged altar, warned of the transience of western consumer culture by means of a drivable sculpture crafted from a Renault Safari, and arranged Eva Aeppli’s “Five Widows” with a Lotus racecar he had purchased (once driven by world champion Jim Clark) into a memorial assemblage for the often-fatal driving circus that is the Formula 1.

Jean Tinguely & Eva Aeppli’s “Five Widows”, 1972

For Tinguely as a Nouveau Réaliste, a great passion for speed and for the machine (he was notorious early on for his many car accidents) flowed into his work, and he hardly ever missed a Formula 1 race. Jo Siffert was a friend, as was the Swede Joakim Bonnier and racer Niki Lauda.

Tinguely fanatically collected cars, preferably Ferraris, liked to drive Mercedes and decoratively painted a sidecar tandem that he sponsored in races. Restless Jean was – like the Futurists – besotted by the myth of speed. His relationship with the automobile was shaped both by euphoria and pessimism.

Click here for more information on the exhibition, or contact:

Paul Sacher-Anlage 2,
P.O. Box 3255, CH-4002,
Basel - Switzerland.
Telephone: +41 61 681 93 20

Posted By: Allan Kapten

skip to top

Your Comments

skip to top

African Artists Portfolios

Attukwei 'Serge' Clottey is a Fine Artist

Geraldine Robarts is a Mixed Media Artist

Stephen Garan'anga is a Mixed Media Artist

Click To View All African Artist Portfolios

Kaafiri Kariuki at the Creativity Gallery

Shades of Time: An exhibition by Kaafiri Kariuki at the Creativity Gallery National Museum of Kenya

News By Regions

Featured Artist Portfolio

Title: Making Ways
Name: Tabitha Wa Thuku
Country: Kenya
Medium: Mixed media on heavy canvas
Size: 149 X 140 cms
Click here to view