About the Author

John DeWitt is associate professor of English and acting director of the liberal arts program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is also author of several books of poetry and has been published in the New American Review and New Geography of American Poets.

Reviews

One consequence of the twentieth-century project to break down the barriers between popular and fine arts is the aesthetic discussion of objects and media not previously considered artistic, such as comic strips, photographs, quilts, and customized cars, the objects of DeWitt's incisive appreciation in this lavish book. Right off the bat, DeWitt discloses his investment in the subject with an account of his '50s Friday nights, which began by 'attend[ing] to the hygiene' of his 'metallic blue, nosed and decked, lowered 1953 Chevy.' He belongs to the largest cohort of custom-car aficionados, former post-World War II teenagers who injected the new '50s youth culture into the small, mostly West Coast, working-class men's avocation of modifying stock cars into hot rods, capable of much greater speeds, and custom cars, intended to look much better than what rolled off the assembly lines. The marriage of custom cars and '50s youth fashions stuck, but before he ponders the implications of that, DeWitt backtracks. He explains why customizing is an art medium, demonstrating that customizers approach their work the same way fine artists do, and likening the ground rules of customizing to those of cubism and surrealism. He analyzes the various styles of customizing and distinguishes periods in the now 60-plus-year history of the practice. Finally, he weighs the symbiosis of the '50s and customizing and its implications for the future of customizing. Throughout, he refers with pinpoint pertinence to the fifty-six figures and sixty-five color plates that make the book itself quite a dream machine.--Ray Olson "Booklist (starred review)"