Dodge 880 Convertible Original Advertisement Art - Mid Century Automobilia, 1964

Automobile advertising art, as a category, is overlooked and undervalued, yet punches above its weight. It has a multifaceted appeal. For automobile enthusiasts, it's a time tunnel back to a simpler time, with fond memories of youthful innocence and a comparison to today's and yesterday's technology. For Fine Art lovers, it's an opportunity to discover a new genre of art that has been overshadowed by a narrow selection of art assigned by museum curators and critics to the fine art canon. During the late 1950's and early 1960's, the fine art world was obsessed with geometric hard-edge abstraction and a newly emerging field of Pop Art. Yet somehow they left out commercial art. Why did they overlook it? Perhaps that commercial artists were technically and compositionally superior to so-called fine artists. Or perhaps, how can you put something art in a museum when it is simultaneously on a billboard or in a magazine? We will let the scholars figure it out if they ever have the interest. The present work, "Dodge 880 Convertible," is a dual effort by Michael Mikos (American, b. 1932) & Larry Cory (American, 20th Century). One painted the car, and the other painted the figures and background. The fact that two artists collaborated on a single work is, in itself, a highly creative and conceptual idea and rivals some of the ideas of the emerging Conceptual Art movement of the time. Visually, Dodge 880 Convertible is a beautiful thing to look at and is masterfully rendered and composed. The car's mechanical-like rendering, with its sleek, cool lines and absence of brushstrokes, is in counterpoint to the painterly, fluid post-impressionist style of the surrounding figures. Unsigned. Matted but not framed. Art Studio label on verso. Matt size 15.5 x 28.25