Fine Art and Flathead Fords

I just got back from a fantastic weekend in Detroit with some great work buddies. On top of the agenda I was already aware of, we also ventured through Henry Ford’s 1915 Fair Lane estate under restoration, the SRT Viper plant in it’s last year of production, Motown Records, and on our last day in town, the Detroit Institute of Arts. The D.I.A. is one of the top art museums in the US, housing 65,000 noteworthy paintings, sculptures and antiquities all housed in a beautiful structure built 1927, with a substantial donation from Edsel Ford, among others.

In fact, it was Edsel who helped commission Diego Rivera to paint the 5 sets of enormous courtyard murals for the DIA in 1932 that now serve as one of the most famous elements of the museum. I immediately thought how forward-thinking was Edsel to encourage a controversial Mexican Marxist muralist to fresco up the central walls of an otherwise austere building. It must have ticked off the conservative father Henry to no end. It goes without saying how important that year of ’32 was with the birth of the Ford’s Flathead V-8, and their beautiful new body designs as well. We get a perfect moment in the Ford timeline that Rivera captures in industrial images of engine production, assembly line, foundry, metal stamping and more. It’s great to see a fine artist like Diego with no real personal interest in automobiles, portraying their detailed parts as living things among the working factory people; I could spend another 20 hours just studying all of figures weaved throughout his images. Among my favorite mechanical elements are the grumpy transmission cases, the dog-bodied Flathead motor, and the giant monkey metal press. If your visiting Detroit, this is one ‘car factory’ tour I highly recommend.