Cadillac Covered in Concrete

[STS05lg]

How Do You Restore a Cadillac Covered in Concrete? Carefully --- Envisioned as one-time performance art, 16-ton slab undergoes $500,000 restoration

By Will Connors


21 October 2016

The Wall Street Journal

CHICAGO -- Any 1957 Cadillac that has been sitting in a grassy yard on the South Side of Chicago for 40 years will have a few issues -- rust, rotted tires, faded paint, a missing muffler.

Wolf Vostell's vintage DeVille presented a different sort of challenge, however. In 1970, at the behest of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, he encased it in 27,780 pounds of concrete.

Christine Mehring, an art historian at the University of Chicago, which had inherited the concrete Cadillac, stumbled upon it in 2011. Where some may have seen an abandoned, inoperable, cracking, moss-covered mass of foolishness, Ms. Mehring saw greatness.

"People are surprised at how beautiful concrete can look," she said.

Something about the size, shape, and quintessential American-ness of Cadillacs, which have been celebrated in song by everyone from Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen to the Clash, seems to inspire artists.

In 1974, a trio of artists half-buried a row of 10 colorfully painted Cadillacs in Amarillo, Texas, and dubbed it Cadillac Ranch. In 1982, Roger Welch built a to-scale 1958 Cadillac Eldorado out of tree branches and twigs. More recently, New York artist Will Ryman built a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado convertible entirely out of resin and Bounty paper towels.

No artist, however, had ever caked one in concrete until only the wheels were visible. As Ms. Mehring quickly discovered, nobody had the slightest idea how to give it a tune up.

The piece, which is called "Concrete Traffic," was made in 1970 when the contemporary art museum commissioned Mr. Vostell, a German artist, to stage a "happening" near its building -- a work of performance art. According to museum records, Mr. Vostell spent $89 for the Caddy, took it to a mostly empty parking lot and, together with a group of artisans, smoothed cement over the contours of the car until it became a 16-ton slab on wheels.

After the performance, the museum couldn't pay for the parking fees the car accrued so it donated the car to the University of Chicago, where it ended up in a yard, deteriorating and forgotten. Mr. Vostell died in 1998.

Ms. Mehring's quest attracted academics, art restorers, classic-car experts, and even structural engineers who set out to bring it back to life, or at least make it presentable for public display.

Stephen Murphy, the general manager of Chicago Vintage Motor Carriage, was hired to work on the car's undercarriage. "Restoration and conservation is what we do, but I'd never done a project like this," he said.

To raise the car and work on the underside, the team knew that standard lifts and hydraulic jacks wouldn't be sufficient. They used a crane to lay the car on two, six-foot-tall steel stands.

The bottom of the car showed signs of corrosion -- there were pieces of the exhaust pipe missing, and a few pieces of the two mufflers had been lost. Other than that, the Caddy was in remarkably good shape. Although the wheels don't move, it still sports the tires that were on it when the concrete was poured in 1970.

Next came a series of artistic judgments that tied the restorers up for months. Should they keep the dilapidated mufflers or replace them? And what should they do about the rust?

Christian Scheidemann, a restorer of art pieces made out of difficult-to-work-with mediums, such as elephant dung and chocolate, flew from New York to Chicago several times with an eye toward helping the team restore "the identity of the work," and to "make it authentic again," he said.

"There's a whole underlife" to the car, he said. "The muffler, the axle -- we went really deep into the details."

The pieces weren't at risk of falling off and the car didn't actually need to run. So they didn't replace any components.

After discussing whether rust was "an important part of the life of the car," according to Ms. Mehring, the restorers removed "only the flakiest and loosest of the metal corrosion byproducts," Mr. Murphy said.

Repairing the concrete was another matter. First, experts removed the moss and patched spots of the concrete. To make the patched sections look more uniform, they tracked down one of the original concrete pourers, now living in Arizona.

When the sand from the original quarry appeared "too blue and gray," a concrete expert, Amanda Trienens, washed the sand in a bath of acid and threw in some rusty metal chisels to warm the color to match the weathered 46-year-old sculpture.

Then there was the question of where the restored Caddy should be parked. After the team settled on a parking garage on the University of Chicago campus, three structural engineers were hired to make sure the garage floor could bear its weight.

In the end, Ms. Mehring spent so much time on the project that some colleagues started jokingly calling her the Crazy Car Lady. She estimates the total cost of the project, including pro bono labor from experts, was $500,000, which is at least $300,000 more than it would have cost to fully restore a typical abandoned 1957 Cadillac, according to Mr. Murphy.

Late last month, organizers arranged for a procession to take the car, on a flatbed truck, from its original location near the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown through the city. Four actual Cadillacs and a cement mixer truck served as escorts.

Missy Rogers, deputy director of a suburban Chicago Cadillac appreciation group, showed up in her gossamer blue 1985 Brougham Coupe, which isn't covered in concrete, to participate in the procession. The opportunity to see a Cadillac like this "isn't going to come around again anytime soon," she said. "I couldn't say no."

As the car wound its way through downtown Chicago en route to its new home, it drew stares and perplexed looks from passersby, who shot video with their phones. "The car of cars!" exclaimed Hannah Higgins, an art historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago who consulted on the project.

As the procession rolled by, a group presented a work of Fluxus art -- the same performance-art style practiced by Mr. Vostell. The piece was called Danger Music No. 17, the entire score of which was: "Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream!"

[wrench]

This a sign of the End of Days. $ Half a million to restore a concrete block.

[Quentin Hall]

My whole life has been " performance art". I'm just waiting for a wealthy female benefactor come throw money at it and to restore it to the pristine level it deserves. . . Preferably whilst I'm still alive.

[Bobby B]

My whole life has been " performance art". I'm just waiting for a wealthy female benefactor come throw money at it and to restore it to the pristine level it deserves. . . Preferably whilst I'm still alive.

From your Lips to God's ears........
                                              Bobby

[Vince Taliano #13852]

The story with pictures was featured in the September 2016 issue (pages 13-15) of the Caddie Chronicle.  View at http://clcpotomacregion.org/forms/CLCPR.1609Newsletter.pdf

[STS05lg]

Vince, nice to know the Wall Street Journal picks up story ideas from our Cadillac Chronicle... 

[scottymac]

The piece was created on site in a commuter parking lot Downtown by pouring 16 tons of cement over a 1957 Cadillac

[chrisntam]

......no comment.....

[Quentin Hall]

When I was a kid they were doing all the concrete pour for the Lutwyche shopping centre. My dad came home early from the pub and yelled " Come on kids, jump in the car and you won't believe this".
So we get down to the building site and someone had parked their Holden in the no standing bay where the concrete trucks were supposed to line up.
Someone lost their cool and smashed the window and filled it up to the door line in concrete.
I just remember a huge crowd standing around this poor car flat on it's sills, laughing and pointing, obviously hoping the owner might return soon. I remember sticking my hand through the window and tapping on the solid concrete.

[GBrown #8092]

For those of you who missed the Potomac Region article or would like to see a brief local TV story on it.

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/10/06/vintage-sculpture-concrete-traffic-goes-joyride

   
   
Several of us in the West of the Lake Region also had an opportunity to attend an exibition of videos of some of his other performance art presentations. This one, and a similar one he did with an Opel in Germany, are probably the least bizzare.  They had 4  videos on display, including one utilizing a '67 ('68?) Fleetwood. I think I understand what he was trying to do with car involved ones after a lot of explanation, but am still still don't get it on the other two...at all.

And, yes, I can think of about 50 better uses for a '57 SDV


GB

[Steve Passmore]

Its not just me is it? but I can't see any point to this exercise bar for wasting a very good car and a load of concrete.  Its the last monstrosity I would ever consider as 'Art' and to spend that amount of money restoring this piece of junk is beyond me.  If I had to restore it I would use a jack hammer to get at what's left of the car underneath.

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

This is one of the reasons that the funding of "Art" is a waste of money.

That concrete could have been better used for something more worthwhile, like a driveway.

BUT, one question.    What in hell was it really supposed to represent?

Bruce.

[chrisntam]

Its not just me is it? but I can't see any point to this exercise bar for wasting a very good car and a load of concrete.  Its the last monstrosity I would ever consider as 'Art' and to spend that amount of money restoring this piece of junk is beyond me.  If I had to restore it I would use a jack hammer to get at what's left of the car underneath.

Agree.

[Quentin Hall]

Bruce, the solid mass of concrete represents the establishment, the wheels represent the meanderings of the soul. The burden of societie's expectations saddles the individual with the desire to escape but when pinned by this dead weight of the establishment the individual is left incapacitated and helpless.
Didn't you study art at school?

[Bobby B]

Bruce, the solid mass of concrete represents the establishment, the wheels represent the meanderings of the soul. The burden of societie's expectations saddles the individual with the desire to escape but when pinned by this dead weight of the establishment the individual is left incapacitated and helpless.
Didn't you study art at school?

That's Deep, Man........
                            Bobby

[6262]

The guy did the same nonsense here in Berlin.

https://www.berlin.de/ba-charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/ueber-den-bezirk/kultur-und-wissenschaft/skulpturen-und-denkmale/mdb-bacharlottenburg-wilmersdorf-bezirk-skulpturen-beton-cadillacs-070809kudamm_019.jpg

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

Bruce, the solid mass of concrete represents the establishment, the wheels represent the meanderings of the soul. The burden of societie's expectations saddles the individual with the desire to escape but when pinned by this dead weight of the establishment the individual is left incapacitated and helpless.
Didn't you study art at school?

Quentin,

When I went to school, I, like everyone else, studied the three "R's" --- Reading, 'Righting and 'Rithmetic.   Plus a few science bits thrown in.

At least when I left school, I could Spell, write legibly and add and subtract.   But, left as soon as I could.

Bruce.