Long Term Parking, Contemporary sculpture at Château de Montcel in Jouy-en-Josas, France.
Long Term Parking is a vertical concrete column at the Château de Montcel in Jouy-en-Josas, embedded with 59 real car bodies stacked in twelve visible layers. The structure is 19.50 meters high and 6 meters wide, and the whole weighs 2,050 tons, of which 1,600 tons are concrete. License plates such as "643 JPV 75" and "XASTIA" are set into the rough concrete surface.
The work was created in 1982 by French-American artist Arman with support from patron Jean Hamon. Its funding exceeded one million French francs, underscoring its importance as a monumental art project.
The work displays vehicles from different manufacturers like Citroën, Renault, and Fiat that reflect the car landscape of twentieth-century France. Visitors can see in it a portrait of the mobility culture of a specific period.
The sculpture stands on the grounds of the Château de Montcel in Jouy-en-Josas, now a hotel. It is a vertical column 19.5 metres high and 6 metres wide, so it can be viewed from ground level. Look for the embedded licence plates, including a yellow one reading "643 JPV 75" and a small black plate marked "R.16" and "1972".
Some of the embedded cars were painted in fluorescent colors to make them stand out from the concrete. These vehicles were deliberately chosen based on proportions that matched cars circulating on roads during the 1980s.
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