The pull of culture - Artifact - Clark Whittington's Artomat - Brief Article

Reason, June, 2003 by Charles Paul Freund

YES, THAT'S A cigarette machine, or at least it was. The goods it currently vends aren't packs of butts; they're works of art. Each is about the size of a Lucky Strike package, and you buy it by inserting your coins and yanking on the machine.

This is an Art*o*mat*. The first one was born, appropriately, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the 1997 creation of artist Clark Whittington. There are now more than 40 scattered across the country (this one's in Massachusetts) dispensing photos, paintings, sculpture, assemblages, and other "artpacks" in various retail setting. Art*o*mat's sponsoring organization, Artists in Cellophane, says the effort "combines the worlds of art and commerce." The group "wants to make art approachable" and asks, "What better way to do this, than with a heavy cold steel machine?"

Good question. The machines manage to combine tobacco nostalgia with retro design (many Art*o*mats come from landfills), and there's nothing like an obsolete machine to reveal how design humanizes technology within a period's values. The effect only increases with outlawed machines, because the old "humanizing" values are forbidden. Art*o*mats make their art approachable by literally commodifying it. Caution: This could become habit forming.