What is it about wildly influential California artists and their romance with the automobile? Heck, if cars had never come to Cali (perish the thought), Cal Arts would barely have any faculty! Our last installment of Performance Art and the Automobile brought us Chris Burden's hyper-mile'n car-bike. This time around, we've got "Fast" Eddie Ruscha (Roo-Shay) and the violence he did do to a Royal Typewriter. His accomplice? A 1963 Buick LeSabre.

It was 1966, somewhere on Highway 91, east of L.A. Ruscha, a friend, and a photographer, along with the aforementioned pre-digital mechanical letter-making contraption, boarded the '63 Buick and...well, hooned. Ruscha assembled the results into an art book, Royal Road Test, that's now highly collectible, selling for more than a grand. Here's an excellent account of the event, courtesy of rare-books blog Bookride:

Getting up to 90 miles per hour on a deserted road with Ed Ruscha driving, Mason Williams (designated thrower) ejected a Royal Typewriter from the window and Patrick Blackwell photographed the incident including shots of the scattered parts and the keys. As I recall there is one shot off a letter draped from a cactus in the desert scrub. The core of the book is a photographic examination of the wreckage of the typewriter strewn over many square yards; it is done in an ironic, deadpan Consumer Report, forensic documentary style with times and wind speed etc., There is a vague suspicion that one or two shots may have been set up or 'improved'. One cataloguer notes that it 'is all done with a species of quasi-scientific gravitas...' A great and influential 'artist's book' - one day another trio may retrace their steps and throw another Royal, or possibly a Dell, into the Californian desert. Or the now grizzled threesome will do it again like a Crosby, Stills and Nash reunion concert.

Oh, we certainly hope so. And if it ever happens, we'll be there to live-blog it and post the video.

1:15 PM on Fri Mar 21 2008
By Matthew DeBord
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12 comments

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Starlton Heston,... at 01:22 PM on 03/21/08
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that's how the typewriter crumbles??

oh "art"... I made some this morning.. in the toilet, let me rub it on a Renault.
boosted-lego-wagon at 01:33 PM on 03/21/08
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I vote this time we use a typist, not a typewriter.

Specifically, Lawrence Ulrich.
FreeMan at 01:52 PM on 03/21/08
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When done with the proper air of snobbery, aloofness and a Gitanes in one hand, anything can be called 'art'.
bzr the paranoid android at 02:20 PM on 03/21/08
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Throwing a typewriter out of a moving car is art nowadays? Well I suppose if you're into collecting massive coffee-table books. Otherwise I call it "Sunday night with a case of Keystone and half a bag of weed in my mom's Sentra".
graverobber- Same... at 02:26 PM on 03/21/08
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Wow, it's amazing, that in 1968, that act of performance art made a statement ( probably something about the automobile causing the death of traditional forms of communication) while today half the population likely haven't ever even seen a typewriter.

The National Endowment for the Arts; spending your tax dollars on shit so esoteric, you can never hope to understand it.
Ben Simons at 02:32 PM on 03/21/08
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i thought the book was called "Royal Road Test"
charles_barrett at 02:55 PM on 03/21/08
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Ahhh... 1966, back when you could actually speed on Highway 91. Today, that multilane concrete ribbon is in perpetual gridlock, and the monotony is only interrupted by the occassional horrific multi-vehicle collision...

Those were the days...
lascauxcaveman at 03:25 PM on 03/21/08
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@graverobber: @ƂƵЯ: @I'm so Malaise I can't taste it!!!!!!!!!11:

*haughty sniff*

Philistines. You wouldn't know art if it bounced of the hood of your Camry at 90mph.
Matthew DeBord at 05:06 PM on 03/21/08
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@2slo4u:

It was! The Auto Show has cooked my synapses.
Brian B at 07:00 PM on 03/21/08
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When I first read the headline I thought this was about Hunter S. Thompson.
Novaload at 11:25 PM on 03/21/08
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@Brian B: Me too.
Was this Dylan's inspiration for "From a Buick 6"?

Could you get a ticket for commiting an act of Dada at 90 mph?
supersoul at 01:45 PM on 03/22/08
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That "friend" who did the throwing was comedy writer/musician Mason Williams who had a big guitar instumental hit in the '60's called "Classical Gas". He, at least was fairly talented, and along with Steve Martin provided much of the edge to the political humor that was central to the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV show (also in the late '60's). However, I doubt he will be remembered as much for his part in the production of Rausch's so-called "performance art".
Nevertheless, he had a little bit more than his 15 minutes of fame.