Jonathan Schipper is an artist with a web page. The liner notes to his work take the form of an essay entitled "The Shortcomings of the Living World's Experiences vs. The Infinite Potentialities of The Universe: A DEATH CATHARSIS PARADIGM." Right, well, the above ALL CAPS TITLE refers to one of Schipper's most recent works. Mr. Schipper explains why he crashed two 1:18th scale muscle cars, but the mechanics behind the madness is much more interesting. It takes about a month to unconvincingly compress two cars together without bending the hood, damaging the bumpers or molesting the paint. And, thankfully, crashing two $30 diecast vehicles for the sake of bad art is better than throwing away $150k on the real things. Oh wait. "These are models for a full sized piece yet to be constructed." Oh dear.
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I hope our tax dollars didn’t pay for that.
So…I don’t get it?
What is slow and inevitable about a head on crash?
I think I saw this on Letterman…Top 10 things you can do with $30.00 and a lot of time on your hands.
I did that sort of thing when I was six.
You all obviously don’t understand the vision of an artist of this caliber. :)
In the art world when some comments that “you art is ahead of it’s time” or “the public just isn’t ready for your vision” it usually means your work is self indulgent, unsaleable junk.
Someone needs to break it to Mr.Schipper that his vision is so ahead of its time that there seems to be little chance that any of us will ever be quite ready for it.
There are certain counties in Georgia where you can actually be lynched for selling something like that.
Tell that Schipper kid that if he don’t knock it out, we’re callin’ da boys!
I find the slow-crashing mechanism very interesting. I also appreciate all the work that goes into making toys look like crashed cars. Used to try to do it with plastic model airplanes… it’s hard to be convincing.
Any art that evokes a reponse, be it emotional or intellectual has done it job. Art is an expression of the creator’s view and interpretation of the world as it applies to the work at hand. It can only be subjective. It is a mirror of the creator’s psyche and soul while being expressly humanistic at the same time. Art is all things to all people; it can be good or bad or despised or loved. Just like cars. When musical artists are quiried about the meaning of their lyrics, the most common response is that the lyrics could mean something personal to its listener and that the artist could never devulge what it meant to them personally as the creator. I’m pleased that Jonathon created this. My thoughts and response is that it is thematic, dynamic and eludes to the fact that perhaps the automoble as a way of life, medium of mobility and grease of the economy is slowly but surely ending in a crumpled heap; perhaps like society.
I would call it BS, but that would elevate it too much and be an exaggeration.
The fellow is “a legend in his own mind” as Dirty Harry would say. Then again his character also said, “a man’s got to know his limitations”.
I’m fine with it. I just hope he doesn’t find aninvestor that’ll buy him a real Trans Am and Charger to duplicate his work.
He can make the same statement with SUVs, and they are rather cheap/plentiful: enough for the lovers and haters. Not so with Muscle Cars.
i think it be more interesting to put a squashed prius between them and see what the critics say.
My four-year-old daughter and I were waiting at the dealership to have a repair done on our ’07 Focus last week so I gave her a “tour” of the place. I showed her the Quick Lube bays, walked the WHOLE new car lot (she said the hood-scooped Roush ‘Stangs looked better than the regular ones) and then showed her the body shop, like where they may have painted “Lightning McQueen” and she loved it. She found a “boo-boo’ed” late-model F150 like mine and then proceeded to tell me what parts were missing after it crashed. She pointed out the hood, headlights and that see-through metal thingy (radiator/condensor) would have to be fixed. Glad she inherited my only redeeming quality. A car girl she is to be, indeed.
I don’t really see why people have a problem with this. Ok the premise is somewhat pretentious, but it is nonetheless quite clever.
Some of his other works are actually pretty cool too, particularly the automotron driven by a V8.