Benvenuti amici!
From time-to-time, I receive an email link to a vintage FIAT for sale or a story someone believes will be of interest to me. Often these emails come from Brandon Drew. Knowing my obsession with the brand and its coaches, he sends them my way with a short 'catch-up' message. I received one of them last week. The link is to a Jalopnik special interest piece about the 500X and includes several shots of a FIAT 500 forming buck. FIAT has the, now, work of industrial art with them on their auto show tour.
The forming buck is literally a large block of wood, sculpted in the shape of the 1957 iteration of the 500. Before computers & robots, these forming bucks were used… with mallets & sheets of metal… to form the body of the world famous Cinquino. This particular buck was made infamous when used by renowned artist, Ron Arad, in an art exhibition of sculptures & paintings called IN REVERSE. But this exhibition is not the first brush don Arad's had with the FIAT 500… in his life or his art.
A few years ago, FIAT executives approached him. He was asked whether he would be interested in building a sculptural monument to the Cinquecento. He built a large crate and stuffed it with packing material… poking one FIAT out either end of the oversized box. The plates on each read 'AMOR' and 'ROMA', apparently dedicated to the moment in his youth he decided to purchase his own.
From time-to-time, I receive an email link to a vintage FIAT for sale or a story someone believes will be of interest to me. Often these emails come from Brandon Drew. Knowing my obsession with the brand and its coaches, he sends them my way with a short 'catch-up' message. I received one of them last week. The link is to a Jalopnik special interest piece about the 500X and includes several shots of a FIAT 500 forming buck. FIAT has the, now, work of industrial art with them on their auto show tour.
The forming buck is literally a large block of wood, sculpted in the shape of the 1957 iteration of the 500. Before computers & robots, these forming bucks were used… with mallets & sheets of metal… to form the body of the world famous Cinquino. This particular buck was made infamous when used by renowned artist, Ron Arad, in an art exhibition of sculptures & paintings called IN REVERSE. But this exhibition is not the first brush don Arad's had with the FIAT 500… in his life or his art.
A few years ago, FIAT executives approached him. He was asked whether he would be interested in building a sculptural monument to the Cinquecento. He built a large crate and stuffed it with packing material… poking one FIAT out either end of the oversized box. The plates on each read 'AMOR' and 'ROMA', apparently dedicated to the moment in his youth he decided to purchase his own.
FIAT 5000000 Sculpture by Ron Arad
Ron Arad w/Friends: Cinquino & Yasmin Le Bon
I'm unaware whether the automaker knew it, prior to approaching him, but don Arad has a lifelong history with the 500. He reports he was in a near fatal accident in his father's 1936 500 'Topolino' and the runabout has continued to pop up at several other points in his life since. The artist also wrote an essay called 500 Words On The 500 for FIAT 500: The autobiography. In the essay, don Arad writes, "the 500 proved that refusing to make compromises pays off." Ron Arad, himself, is a study in no compromise… as evidenced in the IN REVERSE exhibition.
The exhibition is defined, by don Arad, as an anti-retrospective. This is because it is attached to a reluctant retrospective. As an artist, myself, I understand his aversion to looking back on past works. It is typically more rewarding to dream about what will be than it is to wallow in what has been done. But, and I'm 100% certain don Arad knows this very well, looking back from time-to-time helps us appreciate 'the now'. And, so, we have the retrospective-anti-retrospective of the FIAT life experience.
Art Imitates Life Imitates Art
1957 FIAT 500 Forming Buck
Beautiful… Fully Formed or Crushed
Heavy Metal: Sculpted from the Forming Buck
Face to Face: Art Begets Art
And Chainmail Makes Three
The FIAT 500 is an enduring symbol of liberation. Introduced in 1957, the Cinquecento was proposed as a smaller and more economical alternative… as well as eventual replacement… to the FIAT 600. The Seicento, itself, was a larger replacement to the original 1936 "People's Car". Ron Arad has speculated the reason the 500 survived & thrived where the 600 did not is because the Cinquino is a no compromise runabout. Its diminutive size made it that much more usable in an urban environment.
As Italian families moved from the countryside to nearby industrial cities, they found the tiny 500 to be an affordable (and more comfortable) alternative to a Bianchi bicycle or even a Vespa scooter. This is precisely what FIAT intended when they insisted their greatest engineer-designer produce a coach to mobilize every Italian from every walk of life.
But the story does not end with a technical drawing and small bottom line. Due, in large part, to the brilliant mind of don Dante Giacosa, the Nuova FIAT 500 (like the 600 and 'Topo' before it) looked/looks good. Every line and curve seems to have a purpose for being. With so much design and life meaning, it is very easy to understand why this particular car drove don Arad to create this multiple series of works.
From Wood to Metal to Canvas
From Every Angle: Perfect
The FIAT-Arad relationship continues to blossom and a FIAT commission follow-up to the FIAT 5000000, consisting of don Arad painting a '57 iteration of the 500 on the sides of a new 500, has been given the green light for full street production. As a testament to art imitating life imitating art, FIAT will produce three different Ron Arad Special Editions. Arad has chosen digital camouflage, comic books and the aforementioned second commission for the series.
So it is, now more than ever before, the runabout of runabouts lives up to what I quite often characterize as MODern Art on Wheels.
Growth Spurt as Cities Grow
Vivere.Amare.Guidare.
Ciao!
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