Just imagine a place where you can see the newest Corvette, but at the same time Rolls Royces from the 1930s, the legendary Duesenberg, a car that looks like a carriage and a lot o people. People that have one thing in common. They just love cars. Old, new, it doesn't matter. What impressed me the most was being so close to such old cars. Some of them are not even made today, some of them are the only survivors of their species. It's interesting to see what car design meant back then and what it means now. Back then the racing cars had the form of a bullet, narrow and long, while nowadays they are wide and very very low. So low that if you would try to fit a tennis ball between the car and the ground, you couldn't.
But let's get back to the design of the cars and let's see how the perception of art changed in the last centuries.
Let's just consider these 2 cars. It may only be my imagination, but I feel that the design of the old cars is supposed to resemble the human face. Ok, we don't have popping eyes, but still the headlights are the eyes, the grid is the nose and the mudguards are the cheeks, you just have to be a bit more imaginative to see that. The old cars are curvy and big, some of them are quite huge, measuring up to 18 feet, although they only have 2 seats.
And here come the new cars:
slick and small, taking advantage of all the aerodynamics principles. They are no longer big and curvy, but lean and small.
Could this have anything to do with the way the human figure has evolved. Back in the 30s or 40s, big, Rubensian figures where considered beautiful, so the designers took the Rubensian beauty into the shape of the cars. But know all that has changes. We look up to skinny models, tall and lean. And maybe the new design of the car is made accordingly to our idea of beauty. Nowadays, for many people Rubens is just a painter who painted fat women, certainly not an inspiration to us. Today we get inspired by the skinny girl in the jeans campaign.
But let's get back to the design of the cars and let's see how the perception of art changed in the last centuries.
Let's just consider these 2 cars. It may only be my imagination, but I feel that the design of the old cars is supposed to resemble the human face. Ok, we don't have popping eyes, but still the headlights are the eyes, the grid is the nose and the mudguards are the cheeks, you just have to be a bit more imaginative to see that. The old cars are curvy and big, some of them are quite huge, measuring up to 18 feet, although they only have 2 seats.
And here come the new cars:
slick and small, taking advantage of all the aerodynamics principles. They are no longer big and curvy, but lean and small.
Could this have anything to do with the way the human figure has evolved. Back in the 30s or 40s, big, Rubensian figures where considered beautiful, so the designers took the Rubensian beauty into the shape of the cars. But know all that has changes. We look up to skinny models, tall and lean. And maybe the new design of the car is made accordingly to our idea of beauty. Nowadays, for many people Rubens is just a painter who painted fat women, certainly not an inspiration to us. Today we get inspired by the skinny girl in the jeans campaign.
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