{"title":"Driving the American Dream","authors":"Rhoda Eitel-Porter","doi":"10.1086/713574","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"One Sunday in fall 1953, Robert Rauschenberg placed a ream of paper on the road outside his studio in New York. He poured paint in front of a wheel of the Model A Ford belonging to his friend, the composer John Cage, and asked him to drive the car over the paper. The resulting Automobile Tire Print remains a remarkable work of art, which simultaneously questions the agency of the artist and the process of mark-making. It has been variously interpreted in the contexts of performance and conceptual art, printmaking, and semiotics. This article highlights the hitherto overlooked significance of the Model A for Rauschenberg. Parallels are drawn to Profile Airflow of 1969 by Claes Oldenburg, a relief multiple modeled on the Chrysler Airflow. In the course of exploring conditions of artistic collaboration and printmaking, both Rauschenberg and Oldenburg also activate icons of American car design.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":"35 1","pages":"24 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713574","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Art","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713574","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
One Sunday in fall 1953, Robert Rauschenberg placed a ream of paper on the road outside his studio in New York. He poured paint in front of a wheel of the Model A Ford belonging to his friend, the composer John Cage, and asked him to drive the car over the paper. The resulting Automobile Tire Print remains a remarkable work of art, which simultaneously questions the agency of the artist and the process of mark-making. It has been variously interpreted in the contexts of performance and conceptual art, printmaking, and semiotics. This article highlights the hitherto overlooked significance of the Model A for Rauschenberg. Parallels are drawn to Profile Airflow of 1969 by Claes Oldenburg, a relief multiple modeled on the Chrysler Airflow. In the course of exploring conditions of artistic collaboration and printmaking, both Rauschenberg and Oldenburg also activate icons of American car design.
期刊介绍:
American Art is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to exploring all aspects of the nation"s visual heritage from colonial to contemporary times. Through a broad interdisciplinary approach, American Art provides an understanding not only of specific artists and art objects, but also of the cultural factors that have shaped American art over three centuries of national experience. The fine arts are the journal"s primary focus, but its scope encompasses all aspects of the nation"s visual culture, including popular culture, public art, film, electronic multimedia, and decorative arts and crafts. American Art embraces all methods of investigation to explore America·s rich and diverse artistic legacy, from traditional formalism to analyses of social context.