Andy
07-13-2009, 08:21 PM
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/07/504x_Sculpture_1.jpg (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_1.jpg)In the name of art, it's cars in the sky at the Festival of Speed every year since 1997. Meet the man who makes them: Gerry Judah (http://jalopnik.com/tag/gerry-judah/), a Baghdadi Jew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdadi_Jews) from Calcutta.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_2.jpg
A classic equestrian statue—albeit with neither Archduke Charles of Austria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Archduke_Charles_Statue.jpg) nor Tamerlane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emir_Timur_statue_-_Tashkent.jpg) riding it—was the first massive automotive installation at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (http://jalopnik.com/tag/goodwood-festival-of-speed/), created in 1997 to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Ferrari. The practice has since become a major visual hallmark of the festival along with the endless bales of hay and the scores of racing drivers in attendance.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/07/504x_Sculpture_3.jpg (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_3.jpg)
I had already heard of this year’s colossal outcrop of Aluminum und Shteel (http://jalopnik.com/tag/aluminum-und-shteel/) before emerging from behind a copse to arrive at the entrance of Goodwood House but that did not diminish at all its power to awe. A 40-ton loop of steel played heavenly tarmac to two pinnacles of Vorsprung durch Technik (http://jalopnik.com/tag/vorsprung-durch-technik/). On one end was parked Audi’s latest and greatest, the V10-powered Audi R8 (http://jalopnik.com/tag/audi-r8-v10/). Opposite the R8 was a seventy-year-old race car with 1.6× the cylinders.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_4.jpg
Quite a car, that. A contemporary of Art Deco marvels like the Chrysler Airflow and the Cadillac Six****, it is a streamlined version of the V16 monster (http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/auto_c.htm) that Bernd Rosemeyer (http://jalopnik.com/tag/bernd-rosemeyer/) drove to win the 1936 European Grand Prix Championship with. During the Rekordwoche—Record Week—of October 1937, Rosemeyer drove this car to 406 km/h (252 MPH) on the public road. That’s within rounding error of the Bugatti Veyron’s top speed (http://jalopnik.com/234208/future-classic-top-gear-captain-slow-goes-4074-kilometers-per-hour) and is officially the second fastest anyone has ever gone on a public highway. The record was set three months later on a cold January morning, when Rosemeyer’s nemesis Rudolf Caracciola (http://jalopnik.com/tag/rudolf-caracciola/) drove his Mercedes-Benz W125 Streamliner at 268 MPH. Rosemeyer followed ninety minutes later in the Auto Union (http://jalopnik.com/tag/auto-union/)’s successor, which accidentally developed ground effects that broke the car apart at a speed very close to Caracciola’s, killing the ethereal German.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/07/504x_Sculpture_5.jpg (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_5.jpg)
The man who makes these leviathans of car geekery is a rather unlikely candidate for the job. Gerry Judah (http://www.gerryjudah.com/) is a Baghdadi Jew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdadi_Jews) from Calcutta living in London since 1961.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_6.jpg
He is a classically trained artist with diplomas from Goldsmith College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Like a fellow Baghdadi Jew—Sir Victor Sassoon, builder of the gorgeous Peace Hotel in Shanghai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Hotel)—Judah is drawn to making large things. He has worked with many institutions and artists in creating oversized sculptures, displayed outside of museums. Like at the Festival of Speed.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/rYYlALAqdRE.jpg
A most interesting aspect of Judah’s work for the Earl of March is its remarkable variety. From Land Rovers climbing a wireframe mountain to a line of Toyota racecars strung up in line, he rarely does the same thing twice. Or, as he was quoted by Wallpaper* magazine (http://www.wallpaper.com/cars/goodwood-festival-of-speed-sculptures/3523) in a grammatically correct play on the classic Apple tagline: “You've got to think differently every year.”
Photo Credit: Wallpaper* (second from top), Bruno Postle/Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/36383814@N00/3692978761/) (second from bottom), Mark Thompson/Getty Images (bottom) and the author
http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/0/di (http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/0/da)
http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/1/di (http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/1/da)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:H0mrP-F8Qgo) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:yIl2AUoC8zA) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?i=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:D7DqB2pKExk (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:D7DqB2pKExk) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?i=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:V_sGLiPBpWU (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:V_sGLiPBpWU)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jalopnik/full/~4/mfGzj9JWX-8
More... (http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/jalopnik/full/~3/mfGzj9JWX-8/gerry-judahs-sculptures-of-speed)
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_2.jpg
A classic equestrian statue—albeit with neither Archduke Charles of Austria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Archduke_Charles_Statue.jpg) nor Tamerlane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emir_Timur_statue_-_Tashkent.jpg) riding it—was the first massive automotive installation at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (http://jalopnik.com/tag/goodwood-festival-of-speed/), created in 1997 to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Ferrari. The practice has since become a major visual hallmark of the festival along with the endless bales of hay and the scores of racing drivers in attendance.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/07/504x_Sculpture_3.jpg (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_3.jpg)
I had already heard of this year’s colossal outcrop of Aluminum und Shteel (http://jalopnik.com/tag/aluminum-und-shteel/) before emerging from behind a copse to arrive at the entrance of Goodwood House but that did not diminish at all its power to awe. A 40-ton loop of steel played heavenly tarmac to two pinnacles of Vorsprung durch Technik (http://jalopnik.com/tag/vorsprung-durch-technik/). On one end was parked Audi’s latest and greatest, the V10-powered Audi R8 (http://jalopnik.com/tag/audi-r8-v10/). Opposite the R8 was a seventy-year-old race car with 1.6× the cylinders.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_4.jpg
Quite a car, that. A contemporary of Art Deco marvels like the Chrysler Airflow and the Cadillac Six****, it is a streamlined version of the V16 monster (http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/auto_c.htm) that Bernd Rosemeyer (http://jalopnik.com/tag/bernd-rosemeyer/) drove to win the 1936 European Grand Prix Championship with. During the Rekordwoche—Record Week—of October 1937, Rosemeyer drove this car to 406 km/h (252 MPH) on the public road. That’s within rounding error of the Bugatti Veyron’s top speed (http://jalopnik.com/234208/future-classic-top-gear-captain-slow-goes-4074-kilometers-per-hour) and is officially the second fastest anyone has ever gone on a public highway. The record was set three months later on a cold January morning, when Rosemeyer’s nemesis Rudolf Caracciola (http://jalopnik.com/tag/rudolf-caracciola/) drove his Mercedes-Benz W125 Streamliner at 268 MPH. Rosemeyer followed ninety minutes later in the Auto Union (http://jalopnik.com/tag/auto-union/)’s successor, which accidentally developed ground effects that broke the car apart at a speed very close to Caracciola’s, killing the ethereal German.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/07/504x_Sculpture_5.jpg (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_5.jpg)
The man who makes these leviathans of car geekery is a rather unlikely candidate for the job. Gerry Judah (http://www.gerryjudah.com/) is a Baghdadi Jew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdadi_Jews) from Calcutta living in London since 1961.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/Sculpture_6.jpg
He is a classically trained artist with diplomas from Goldsmith College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Like a fellow Baghdadi Jew—Sir Victor Sassoon, builder of the gorgeous Peace Hotel in Shanghai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Hotel)—Judah is drawn to making large things. He has worked with many institutions and artists in creating oversized sculptures, displayed outside of museums. Like at the Festival of Speed.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/07/rYYlALAqdRE.jpg
A most interesting aspect of Judah’s work for the Earl of March is its remarkable variety. From Land Rovers climbing a wireframe mountain to a line of Toyota racecars strung up in line, he rarely does the same thing twice. Or, as he was quoted by Wallpaper* magazine (http://www.wallpaper.com/cars/goodwood-festival-of-speed-sculptures/3523) in a grammatically correct play on the classic Apple tagline: “You've got to think differently every year.”
Photo Credit: Wallpaper* (second from top), Bruno Postle/Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/36383814@N00/3692978761/) (second from bottom), Mark Thompson/Getty Images (bottom) and the author
http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/0/di (http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/0/da)
http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/1/di (http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vQP-01Tp0TJdeZ31E3Ts-hgNxNE/1/da)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:H0mrP-F8Qgo) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:yIl2AUoC8zA) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?i=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:D7DqB2pKExk (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:D7DqB2pKExk) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?i=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:V_sGLiPBpWU (http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/jalopnik/full?a=mfGzj9JWX-8:HzZ9Undehj8:V_sGLiPBpWU)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jalopnik/full/~4/mfGzj9JWX-8
More... (http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/jalopnik/full/~3/mfGzj9JWX-8/gerry-judahs-sculptures-of-speed)