Rendering artwork of this sleek Mercury Carnival is just part of the Norton Museum of Art’s newest exhibit, “Going Places.” (Handout photo)
There are no rules for concept cars.
Think about them for a moment: those early, idealistic versions of production vehicles that steal the car shows.
Engineers give way to designers who unleashed their creativity to invent something visceral, interesting, engaging. It’s fins on a Cadillac. Curves on a Ferrari. Angles on a Lamborghini.
It’s art first, before technology, before practicality.
The artwork used in renderings exhibited in “Going Places,” the new Norton Museum of Art exhibit, is as much pop culture as selfies. (Handout photo)
And too often, that brand of art is overlooked — but not this summer at the Norton Museum of Art.
In its new exhibit, “Going Places,” which runs through Jan. 10, the Norton highlights work froM designers who created the look of the vehicles that changed the way we travel.
This collection focuses on the time before computer-generated renderings. These original industrial designers — a new term that emerged in the late 1950s — hand-painted sketches of vehicles that existed only in their imaginations with the precision of a photograph.
Through the exhibit, you will lean in — close — and still not believe your eyes at the level of detail of this artwork. A hand-painted cutaway of a concept car, showing details down to electrical cables. Metal sculptures of iconic airplanes such as the DC-7. Plastic models of a Boeing 747.
All of the art in “Going Places” were purpose-built tools. They were models used to sell airplanes to carriers like Pan-Am. A cutaway of an automobile showed engineers how to structure the cars. A portrait of a Buick painted in a driveway with a wishful family helped buyers envision themselves in a new car.
One painting from the 1960s, of a helicopter landing on a skyscraper, with several families waiting for a ride, was one artist’s concept of what commuting might be like after the turn of the century.
The art was designed to instruct and inspire.
“They pushed the industry forward by making them dream beyond what they were capable of doing at the time,” said the Norton’s deputy director James Hall.
But the art was also ephemeral.
Because of trade secrets, many of these luxuriously hand-painted renderings were destroyed to keep information away from the competition. They were used to show in-house executives, for instance, what the new Corvette would look like. But the picture was never allowed to leave the building.
Credit collectors such as Fred and Jean Sharf, who loaned the Norton their treasured items, for helping to curate this sometimes unappreciated art.
Why, you can just imagine someone seeing that incredible painting of a Studebaker front end by iconic car designer Raymond Loewy, sitting by a Dumpster and fishing it out, deciding it was too beautiful to destroy.
If not for small decisions like that one by innumerable people along the way, items like these might be lost to history.
“A lot of this stuff was never meant to survive,” Hall said.
Fortunate for car design and art lovers alike, they escaped the gallows to tell their story this summer.
