The Road in Art and Song
Consider the art and music selections below: what aspects of being on the road do they reflect? Do they over-idealize the experience of traveling by car—or critique it unfairly?
- Nat Cole | “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” (1946)
- Edward Hopper | Western Motel (1957)
- Edward Ruscha | Standard Station (1966)
- Willie Nelson | “On the Road Again Song” (1980)
- David Hockney | Pearblossom Highway (1985)
- Tom Cochrane | “Life is a Highway” (1991)
- Bic Runga | “Drive” (1996)
- Norah Jones | “Come Away with Me” (2002)
Ed Ruscha once published a book of twenty-six photographs of gas stations, deliberately identical and deliberately boring. That is the argument half these works are making about the road.
Key concepts
- Elevating the Banal
- Making ordinary, overlooked things the subject of serious art. A forecourt and a cheap motel room get the treatment usually reserved for cathedrals, and the claim underneath is that this is what travel actually looks like.
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Every work — at a glance
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Get Your Kicks on Route 66 — Bobby Troup / Nat King Cole (song)
A 1946 hit that is essentially a list of towns — Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff, Winona — turning a highway into an itinerary you could sing without ever leaving home.
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What to know
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01
Medium tracks message here. The songs are built to move and they sell freedom; the still, silent pictures — Western Motel and Standard Station — hold a loneliness a three-minute anthem has no room for. The format an artist chooses is already half the argument being made.
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Across subjects
Theme connection
"Are We There Yet?"
Practice — a sample
ARTKahlo's bus bench and Hopper's Western Motel both hold people who have stopped. The key difference is that only Kahlo's viewer can —
- A Rank the figures
- B Sense the waiting
- C Count the suitcases
- D Read the light
- E See the vehicle
Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.
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