We've Lost The Art Of It
Our world used to be filled with bold and artistic design in our everyday lives. The look of our modern America is sleek, colorless, and devoid of character.
When Chevrolet debuted the Bel-Air in 1950, it marked a new era in American automobile manufacturing. With the introduction of an affordable hard-top sedan, Chevrolet was making a bold statement to the new American middle class; You too can afford quality
The Bel-Air was noted for its striking design, including elegant trim work and a more refined interior than previous models that were considered budget options. Throughout its first decade on the roads, the Bel-Air evolved in styling and design, with minor tweaks made annually. Chevrolet reached one of the zeniths of American automotive design with the 1957 model of the Bel-Air.
While the design of the car speaks for itself, it’s crucial to remember that this was a car designed to be purchased and driven by the average working family. It’s easy to marvel at the beauty and design of a Rolls Royce or a Deusenberg one cost is no concern. It is another to marvel at a gorgeous work art made to be accessible to everyday folks.
When the 1957 BelAir hit the market at a list price of $2,399 - roughly $27,300 in 2025 dollars - it was an affordable option that came with a sense of style and pride. Its beautiful design, finer appointments, and accessible price point made it virtually ubiquitous on American roads. It’s estimated that Chevy sold nearly 75,000 Bel-Airs in the first year alone.
While designs and features evolved and changed over time, the Bel-Air was a staple of the GM portfolio for decades until it was eventually phased out in 1981. The 1950s editions remain some of the finest examples of everyday design in modern history. Chevrolet was able to meld affordability, style, design, and practicality into one vehicle. As a result it was wildly successful. Now, we’re lucky to find something that even approaches affordable, let alone artful or truly bold in its design. Almost nothing in our everyday lives has any art remaining inside of it.
When compared to the 1957 Bel-Air, the Tesla Cybertruck looks very much like the result of a weekend long middle school robotics project. Whatever ingenuity and state of the art computing might be in use in the Cybertruck, someone forgot to tell Elon and company that a car is allowed to be attractive to the eye. In creating something vaguely futuristic and sleek, Musk and his designers have typified everything that is wrong with design in the new millennium.
While a middle-class worker and his family could gain access to a Bel-Air for the equivalent of $$27,300 in 2025 dollars, it takes nearly three times that amount to purchase an entry level Cybertruck, but the Tesla will come with none of the beauty or the art that Bel-Air offered at a vastly reduced rate.
A few weekends ago I drove down to Chicago to retrieve a friend with car trouble. For my time and trouble, Tim offered to buy me lunch at one of the restaurants that his firm manages. I gladly accepted and we made our way to a spot near the river for a cocktail and a lunch on a Sunday afternoon.
We plopped down at the lengthy marble bar and ordered a drink. Within a few minutes we each ordered a sandwich and chatted while we waited for food to arrive. My club was tasty, and the fries that came with it surprisingly good and especially salty. After a bit less than hour of hanging out and enjoying lunch, Tim and I hit the road for home.
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On the drive home I began to try to picture the room where we had eaten just an hour before. I remembered an interesting light fixture behind the bar. I also recalled feeling rather cold in the room while we ate. there than those minor dribs and drabs, the pricey real estate that comprised the spot where we had just spent an hour had left no impression on me whatsoever.
As I pondered the thought further over subsequent days, I began to realize that the room in which he had dined was forgettable because it was almost exactly like all of the other restaurants in that price range and demo. Restaurants, like hotel rooms these days are largely designed to be sleek, dark, and almost shapeless.
Once we had an era of neon signs, custom signage, bold interior design, and architecture with purpose. Now we have entered an era where every room in a home must be painted some version of light grey or tan for fear that the house will lose all of its resale value. Restaurants are Lego set like constructions formed of glass, tile, concrete, and steel. Our cultural eye has settled on middle of the road and our lives have become duller in the process.
In 1964, Andy Warhol churned out a series of exact replicas of Brillo boxes for an art piece. While controversial in both the art world and the greater culture-at-large, the piece reinforced Warhol’s point that art was around us almost all the time. To prove it, he made more than one hundred Brillo box replicas out of plywood rather than cardboard as used in the original boxes, and then staged them as if on display in a supermarket.
Warhol believed that even ordinary household objects held artistic value. In addition to the Brillo boxes, Warhol also famously recreated Campbell’s soup cans and repurposed photos of famous people in his screen printings to attempt to re-contextualize everyday images as objects of art and not just commodities clogging up our daily lives.
Jumping forward 60 years from Warhol’s Brillo boxes, it’s harder to believe that an artists could make a statement like Warhol’s today, and still have the sentiment ring as true. The design of our automobiles, signage, packaging, advertisements, beverages, medicines, and foods have been steadily dwindling in artistic value as the years have rolled on. While our everyday lives are not totally bereft of good design, it is a much rarer occurrence these days than it once was.
It’s impossible to know the exact root causes of this conundrum, but there are a few likely candidates that have contributed to our new and less attractive way of life in America. Art costs money and in an era where the bottom line rules all, art departments have been shriveled and even eliminated at companies across the spectrum.
With the advent of home computing and technology like Adobe Photoshop, a new generation of computer users have come to believe that they are graphic designers simply because they are adept at using a program used for design. Having access to a brush and knowing how to dip it in paint does not make you a painter. Many firms and businesses are allowing their graphic work to be done by an in-house employee whose primary role is something outside of design. Design is a unique art form that requires trainmen, practice and patience. If you want it done well, it’s not a side hustle.
Good art often requires bold choices. Sadly, most investors, builders, and architects are much more interested in creating something sellable than they are something striking or artful. And as more and more chain restaurants and stores infiltrate our suburban hellscapes, the more uniform our world begins to look. Our housing developments all look and feel the same.
Everywhere we turn there is a soulless Cybertruck parked at a Starbuck’s next to a Panera. It resembles a shitty video game more than a life of art and creativity.Our culture is crying out for a design revolution. Let us once again fully embrace the art of the everyday object. Let us once again find a way to live life like we’re riding in a brand new 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air.
Cheers,
Matty C
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Well said, Matty. This trend entered our homes as well. So many middle-class folks I know have similar furnishings and decorations from Restoration Hardware, Ikea, or similar stores. Ours, as you know, is filled with local art, music posters, and beat-up furniture, and it's way cooler than any of our friends who do the "proper" thing. ;-)