Concrete-Covered 1957 Cadillac Makes Art Historians Lose Their Marbles

Created in 1970 as a piece of performance art, the 16-ton slab undergoes $500,000 restoration in Chicago; ‘The car of cars!’

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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 who oversees the public art catalog 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.

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