Concrete-covered Cadillac carries many meanings at University of Chicago

A 1957 Cadillac Series 62 Sedan de Ville sits prominently at the entrance of a University of Chicago parking garage, but it often goes unnoticed.

Encased in concrete, the coupe fittingly blends in with its surroundings at the university’s north campus garage at 5525 S. Ellis Ave.

“I didn’t realize it was a car,” one passerby said, laughing, on a recent afternoon.

Tuba Balta walked past the garage several times before she noticed the object.

“I didn’t think it was purely a functional thing. I did think that maybe it was like something art-related,” said Balta, 21, a University of Chicago student.

“I don’t know, I think it’s kind of funky. … I like it,” she said.

Deepak Deo, 54, initially thought the structure was used to block drivers from improperly entering the garage.

“They could’ve made a gate, but they just made a much nicer" barrier, said Deo, of Evanston. “But knowing there’s an actual car under there — that’s even cooler.”

The structure is more than just a car enrobed in concrete, said Christine Mehring, a University of Chicago art history professor. It’s an art installation titled Concrete Traffic, created in 1970 by German artist Wolf Vostell. The artwork takes on various representations — urban expansion in the U.S. and renewal in postwar Germany, while its time at the University of Chicago also has spurred discussions on art conservation.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago commissioned Vostell to create the piece after discovering his other sculpture, Motionless Traffic (1969), which sits on a street in Cologne, Germany.

Using Vostell’s vision and his detailed instructions, artisans on Jan. 16, 1970, covered the Cadillac in concrete, creating the 16-ton sculpture in a commuter parking lot at Ontario and St. Clair streets in Streeterville. Vostell first wrapped the car in rebar and steel mesh, then surrounded it in a plywood mold.

Concrete Traffic spent several months in that parking lot. Vostell and the MCA then gifted the piece to the University of Chicago, and it was moved to another lot at 60th Street and Ingleside Avenue, where it sat for four decades.

The car was then moved to storage until Mehring joined the university faculty advisory committee in 2011.

She learned about the sculpture while inquiring about campus artwork. Mehring’s heart “sank and jumped and everything,” she said, having known about Vostell’s “twin sculpture” in Germany.

“I did not know he had a Chicago sculpture,” Mehring said, adding, “I knew this person’s work very well, and I recognized immediately what it was. ... I was excited and exhilarated, but also devastated at the state that the sculpture was in.”

Mehring headed a four-year conservation effort in 2012, culminating in the sculpture’s return to public view in 2016 when it was placed at its current spot in the campus north parking garage, an ideal setting.

“With this sculpture, the whole point is you want to encounter it in an urban context,” Mehring said. “And I always said it needs to be where a real car can be. That’s where it was made — it was made in a parking lot — and was always meant by the artist to be where an actual car can be.”

Vostell was a pioneer in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and ’70s, with artists experimenting with varied materials and objects, pushing boundaries of what was considered art.

“Art used to be made from oil on canvas, bronze sculptures, plaster, watercolor, drawing pencil on paper,” Mehring said. “Suddenly, as we hit [the] early 1900s, and then especially accelerating in the post-World War II period, suddenly anything goes to make an artwork.”

Even a Caddy in concrete.

Vostell aimed to spark deep contemplation about cars, technology and the future. Choosing an iconic American car like a Cadillac, which represented the freedom to drive on open roads, fascinating to Vostell and other Germans of the time, was not random.

The concrete serves as a way for the artist to preserve the Cadillac, but it also stands for a lack of change. Vostell at the time was “really concerned” about urban development, especially cars and concrete “taking over cities and kind of calcifying and stopping and impeding a human experience,” Mehring said.

In 1974, an artists collective called Ant Farm placed 10 Cadillacs in a Texas wheat field as a tribute to America's relationship with one of its favorite automobiles.

While serving similar purposes, Vostell’s twin sculptures in Chicago and Germany represent contrasting times. The concrete car in Chicago mirrors a time of expansion and urban renewal, while in Germany it reflects postwar reconstruction and the Berlin Wall.

“That, to me, is always fascinating when an artist, really, in very clear ways with his different artistic practices, pushes you to really think about what a material means in different contexts,” Mehring said.

Mehring teaches about Concrete Traffic, with students spending nearly an hour with the sculpture, discussing and debating it.

Jessica Musselwhite, executive director of UChicago Arts, said the sculpture’s conservation is a great example to show students “what real advocacy for artwork looks like.”

“What responsibilities do we take on when we buy a piece of art?” Musselwhite asked. “It’s not just owning it. Obviously, it’s caring for it. It’s making sure that you're making the right choices for it. It’s making sure you have archived information about it.”

Mehring and the others who worked on conserving the artwork, including conservator Christian Scheidemann, are working on a book of essays about the sculpture, its conservation effort and Vostell’s work with concrete.