BMW Art Car Collection: the bodywork of a luxury car instead of a canvas
**byt/8373**The BMW Art Car Collection is an exhibition of technology and art all rolled into one. Hervé Poulain, the former French racing driver born in 1940, is better known nowadays as the initiator of the BMW Art Car project. His idea was to invite international artists to use the bodywork of a BMW car as the canvas for their art.
BMW Art Car Collection with the signatures of famous artists
The first artist to make a contribution to the collection was the world-famous artist Alexander Calder. This first work was the BMW 3.0 CSL "Batmobile" model which Poulain himself raced in 1975. This was unfortunately the last work by Calder as he died a year later. The American minimalist painter and sculptor Frank Stella was invited to create paintwork in 1976 and he spread a grid over the whole of the bodywork similar to graph paper.
A year later, Roy Lichtenstein was the one to create a new work of art on the bodywork of a BMW, depicting a path in paint presenting the whole life of the car. The legendary BMW M1, the design of which was created by the famous designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, served as the canvas for the great Andy Warhol himself. Warhol fell in love with the car while working on it.
Cars as works of art
Since 1982, cars transformed into works of art have no longer been used for racing, but have been used purely for exhibition purposes as objets d’art.
Among others, Ernst Fuchs played around with these, adding flames to a type 635 Csi. This car was not however ever driven on the streets again. The same as all of the subsequent “car-based works of art”. Two of the artists who embellished the bodywork with an animal motif were Michael Jagamara Nelson and Ken Done. Animals express the beauty and incredible speed of the cars on which they are depicted.
To date, 17 artists from all over the world have participated in the project, the last of whom to do so was Jeff Koons in 2010, having longed to contribute towards this unique collection since as far back as 2003. His car was even present on the starting line of the Le Mans race in Florida on 10 June 2010.
The whole collection, which comprises a total of 17 cars, can be seen in the BMW Museum in Munich.
BMW brand also collaborates with fashion designers, as you can see on carbon collection of dresses of the design duo Felder Felder.
