Automobiles In Art And Literature

Cars have frequently played a major role in literature. They are even used at times to comment on the state of humanity. Carl Sandburg wrote "Portrait of A Motorcar" in 1918 and almost twenty years later, made the automobile the center of his long prose poem, "The People, Yes." Joyce Carol Oates, in 1979, wrote a provocative poem entitled "F---"; for Ford, of course.In 1919, Sinclair Lewis wrote whimsically of his adventures in a Model T. Six years later, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his masterpiece, "The Great Gatsby," portraying the cynicism of post-World War I by the use of Gatsby's cream-colored Rolls-Royce. In 1962, William Faulkner wrote humorously about human frailties against the backdrop of an early Winton Flyer automobile in his literary classic, "The Reivers." Some poets and novelists were drawn to the car culture, but others were depressed by it. Either way, the automobile was the hub of human commentary for a long list of writers.Even more than writers, composers of popular music are attracted to cars. They jumped in almost as soon as the first car drove past and have never gotten off. Many of the songs are sexually oriented. Titles include "In My Merry Oldsmobile," "On The Back Seat of A Henry Ford," "Tumble in A Rumble Seat," "Keep Away from The Fellow Who Owns an Automobile," up to the contemporary songs such as "Maybelline," "Mustang Sally," "Little Deuce Coupe," "Pull up to The Bumper," and "Little Red Corvette." Trucking songs, such as "King of The Road," "On the Road Again," and others too numerous to mention are immensely popular. The Los Angeles Music Center and Museum of Contemporary Art commissioned several playwrights to create original ten-minute scripts to be acted out in automobiles. The film industry has relied heavily on the automobile, ranging from the humorous "The Long, Long Trailer" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to "Bonnie and Clyde" and hundreds of chase scenes. Television made the automobile the very star of the show in "My Mother, The Car" and "The Knight Rider," in which "Kit" is smarter than any of the rest of the cast.Artists followed Toulouse-Lautrec's lead from his 1896 lithograph, "The Motorist," to take up brushes and portray the essence of the automobile. Some used their brushes in cartoon fashion to show it as a toy of the idle rich. Some saw it as a symbol of mankind's dynamism and vitality. Andy Warhol, who saw art in a Campbell soup can, painted a series devoted to gruesome car wrecks. Other artists see the automobile as a graceful, flowing form of man-made beauty, an art in itself.