Customer Reviews

Cool Cars, High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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I really like this book, although I would like to see a lot more photos of cars in a book that focuses on the aesthetic qualities of custom cars. The author successfully argues that kustoms are an art form and then proceeds to analyze various styles of custom cars in relationship to various styles of high art. Good stuff! As for the photos, the most refreshing thing about them is that they are not the same dozen famous kustoms that you've already seen in every other book about custom cars.

An exhaustive (and exhausting) cross between a fan-rave and a dissertation examining the history and pop-ological intricacies of the brief but very influential rod-and-custom period in America.

Although it is chock full of details and insights into the subject one wonders who exactly it was written for. It often seems much too highbrow and academic for the average kid or gear-head, and I'm sure most academes wouldn't be seen reading anything with so many "purdy pichures". You're left with the impression that it in fact began as a scholarly defense (always check who the publisher is) which, once it appeared to have legs, was tricked out with some chrome and kandy kolors to help find it's way onto American coffee tables.

Still it is well worth having to glean ( for practiced speed readers ) ever more minutia about an era that always spawns endless nostalgia for fans, and eventually, a true sociological and anthropological exegesis for 22 century rustmites.

This handsome book is an unusual treatment of its subject for sure. There is a bevy of color photographs to satisfy the aficionado--and to make it an ideal gift for any car-crazy friend. But what I find most striking is the author¹s truly unique take on the car as an art object. Obviously comfortable with the demands of current theoretical discourse, he seems purposefully to prove that the obscurantism that bedevils so much academic prose today is merely self-indulgent. He has helped me grasp much more than just the beauty of the customized car. Readers (and especially teachers in a number of disciplines) will appreciate Prof. DeWitt¹s cunning explications of a Williams poem, a Picasso collage, a Futurist sculpture, and a surprising number of movies and TV shows to support his insights into our car culture.

Just want to let everybody know that Jerry Weesner of Streetrodder (June 2002) picked Cool Cars, High Art as a Hall of Fame selection with only three other books on the art of customizing.