Notes Towards a Manifesto on Automotive Gigantism

Much more to add on this subject of automotive gigantism. No time now, but I should return to a Deconstructionist critique of 1960's automotive aesthetics in re liberating the car from referents, from the formal vocabulary of house, coach, bird, fish, spacecraft, and sugar plum fairy. Car in its own terms, automobile sui generis. Car qua car. Pure and simple, a slab. We reference the 1963 Continental. The self-referent car -- and yet, with mass. Considerable mass. Pure mass. Without biomorphic or architectonic abstraction. An essentially unembellished industrial extrusion. Reference also the hard-edged sculptures of Tony Smith and Ellsworth Kelly. Can we tie Derrida into this? The French post-structuralists?

10/12/05 - A Reader Responds:

I think your desire to convince the reader of your intellectual prowess throws the piece off balance. We need to feel the mass of the car, the sheer momentum of 3K lbs. of Detroit's finest steel pushed by 8 cylinders and 460 cubic inches of ozone-depleting, gas-guzzling, heavy metal thrust rather than be reminded or reassured that you know who Derrida was.