Art class

Rolling art, courtesy BMW

Inline sixes, rear wheel drive, manual transmissions, hofmeister kink, kidney grille — that’s what one associates with BMWs. Ultimate driving machines, in short. Therefore, art shouldn’t find a place in BMW’s long and rich history of motoring. But it does, in the form of BMW Art Cars.

BMW’s rolling art showcase has now been around for three and a half decades, but it didn’t begin one evening at Villa D’Este over wine. Nor was it the whim of an egotistical chairman. In fact, it found its genesis at a place where BMW performed best — the race track. During the 1975 Le Mans race, Herve Poulain, a French art fanatic and racer, wanted to bring a link between art and cars. To do that, he asked his friend, the renowned American artist Alexander Calder, to put forth his best work on Herve’s entry for that year — a BMW 3.0 CSL. Calder took up the challenge of putting his stamp on a sculpture he didn’t create. A couple of brushes and tin cans later, he’d created history.

Thus was born the concept of BMW Art Cars. The idea was to bring colour to one of BMW’s race cars during an event like Le Mans. This not only acted as a marketing tool, but in effect created a platform for artists to exhibit their work to a much larger audience. The most famous among them was Frank Stella’s 1976 Le Mans entry. The black chequered 3.0 CSL that raced that year had a brilliant start, shooting into the lead. It didn’t last for long, with the car retiring due to mechanical failure an hour into the race. But the thousands of photographs and footage made the Stella BMW art car a thing of legends.

Several artists over the years have helped create Art Cars for BMW. While BMW eventually would move its theme away from race cars, the essence generally remained the same. Andy Warhol, for instance, never utilised any of the model cars given to him by BMW to experiment with his art before working on the BMW M1 in 1979. His work of art was termed eccentric by most, and Andy was even accused of tarnishing the fine lines of the M1. But his work, even today, is iconic. Take Esther Mahalangu’s work on the 1991 BMW 525i, where she brought forward Africa’s little-known Ndebele art. BMW did get back to its racing theme when, in 1999, BMW handed over a V12 LMR at Le Mans to Jenny Holzer to bring out his best. The car went on to win the race, while Jenny’s entry became the 15th in BMW’s collection of art cars.

Today, that collection stands at 17, with Olafur Eliasson’s H2R in 2007 and Robin Rhode’s Z4 from earlier this year the latest entrants. Today, BMW’s Art Cars are worked upon by artists selected by a group of international judges who choose artists who would best interpret a BMW in art form. BMW has also given these art cars an international platform as they travel around the world to some of the biggest cultural centres and art houses across cities, giving art lovers and car enthusiasts a view beyond plain canvases and ultimate driving machines.