Rat Finks and Hot Rod Artists
Making a bridge between highbrow and lowbrow might be the biggest challenge in contemporary culture. It’s one of those impossible feats, and something many gallery owners still attempt, because the failures can be more spectacular than the near successes. Trying to find the place where intellectuals merge with populists is tricky, and usually it’s made trickier when that place is subject to change at any given moment. Pop culture does depend on the tastes of a radically volatile audience, one that is even more temperamental than the critics who write about it.
When there is a serious connect, however, like in the case of Rat Fink, it becomes a matter of curiosity to find some possible connections so that the experiment can be repeated. Of course, like anything that is popular and critically relevant, repetition is impossible. Ed Roth’s work can speak to those who are in the market for Rothko prints as well as those looking for rims and tires, and the intersections are fascinating even though they are impossible to replicate. Here, the art does not come as a response to a growing hot rod culture, but is an absolutely organic product of it, growing out of it in the same way that racing and speed work together. That is to say, it’s not a representation or a reflection, but an expression. Here, in the realm of direct, empirical experience, a trend begins when the desire to express and be part of the expression meet with a critical mass (and interestingly, this happens with or without the permission of the critics). The artists of the hot rod world have to be messianic figures, then, as well as children of the streets, being both in and above and also of the worlds that they doodle and paint.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons for the art world, then, has to do with trends. While “Big Daddy” Roth also spawned another generation of artists, like Jeff DeGrandis, and helped his contemporaries, like Pete Millar, any inorganic attempts to piggyback onto a trend fall flat fairly quickly. These artists were part of the same culture as Roth, or at least the share the same roots in concrete and steel. Any serious consumer of mickey thompson tires would know the difference between a poseur and an authentic enthusiast in a heartbeat. These street instincts are based on immediate impressions, and experience is what proves their viability. The art world would certainly benefit with a taste of the same combination of intelligence and instinct.
(This image was originally posted to Flickr by noego at http://www.flickr.com/photos/noego/165266701/. It was reviewed on 9 December 2006 by the FlickreviewR robot and confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.)
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