2019-09-01 Vanity Fair UK

think that cars today are almost the

exact equivalent of the great Gothic

cathedrals: the supreme creation of

an era, conceived with passion by

unknown artists, and consumed

in image if not in usage by a whole

population which appropriates them

as a purely magical object.” Today, the

juxtaposition of high and low culture is

an accepted cultural trope; so in order

to understand the power of Roland

Barthes’ famous, sweeping observation

about automotive design it is necessary

to understand the France of the 1950s in which he made it: still

(just) an imperial power (it had recently lost control of its colonies

in Indochina and was fighting to retain Algeria); still a country in

which the Catholic Church wielded immense influence; and then,

as now, a country possessed of inordinate cultural self-belief and

capable of intellectual snobbery.

Barthes was taking one of the most cherished high culture

totems of northern Europe and yoking it to the industrially

manufactured object that,arguably, defined the 20th century

more than any other.

The stimulus for this extravagant comparison was the 1955

As Bentley and Citroën

celebrate their centenaries,

Vanity Fair En Route’s e d itor

looks back at their respective

triumphs in the 1950s, and the

post-war Britain and France

that inspired them

By NICHOLAS FOULKES

ÒI

YEAR

L

andmarque

SEPTEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR EN ROUTE 43

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