Big E 1962

John Chamberlain made this sculpture, Big E, from crushed car parts. Looking at the folds, twists, and turns, I can just imagine him wrestling with this metal! There's something so physical about it, like a dance between the artist and the material. The colors—white, yellow, and brown—are like remnants of the car's past life, now reborn into something new. I keep thinking about what it must have felt like to bend and shape these pieces, the sounds of metal grinding and crunching. Each dent and crease tells a story, not just of destruction, but of transformation. Chamberlain is in conversation with so many artists, like the Dadaists, who used found objects, and the Abstract Expressionists, who were all about gesture and emotion. His work is a reminder that art can be found in the most unexpected places, and that even something as brutal as a car crash can be turned into something beautiful and thought-provoking.