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Art of racing
2 years ago
The first BMW art car was created for the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans
The first Art Car was specially painted for the 24-hour race, so Le Mans and these luridly painted BMWs have history. Back in 1975, auctioneer and gentleman racer Hervé Poulain asked his friend, the sculptor Alexander Calder, to design a paint scheme for the 3.0 CSL he was racing. Calder’s modernist take on mostly boring and overtly commercial racing car liveries caused a sensation. BMW saw the potential and the Art Car was born.
Since then, many of the world’s great artists – from Hockney to Warhol – have turned their colourful imaginations to some of BMW’s finest cars. An international jury of art world luminaries selects the artist.
Here, we try to separate the good from the boring and the plain bonkers. Judging is totally subjective and, because I’m a car journalist not an art critic, artistically suspect. The integrity of the car underneath the paintwork matters. I’m on safer ground with that.
Extra marks are awarded for cars that raced. A track heritage always helps to elevate a car’s worth.
"Entrant Hervé Poulain and brilliant American racer and motoring journalist Sam Posey retired after nine hours from transmission failure. Never mind. It remains easily the most memorable Le Mans car that year. A new art movement was born"
The Good
Alexander Calder’s BMW 3.0 CSL, 1975
I remember reading about this car as a kid in Australia. It did nothing special in the race but still caught the eye of the Le Mans reporter (it was in either Autosport or Motoring News, I forget which). And how could it not stand out! Nothing like it had been seen before, a mobile technicolour artwork – strong reds, vivid yellow, blue and white – racing against oil- and fag-company advertising billboards.
Entrant Hervé Poulain and brilliant American racer and motoring journalist Sam Posey retired after nine hours from transmission failure. Never mind. It remains easily the most memorable Le Mans car that year. A new art movement was born. Plus, the 3.0 CSL is a drop-dead gorgeous machine, maybe the most beautiful BMW ever.
Frank Stella’s BMW 3.0 CSL, 1976
A year after the Calder car, BMW was back at Le Mans but this time with a full factory entry Art Car. BMW knew it was on to a good thing. For the 1976 race, another American artist Frank Stella – an avid motor racing fan – let his imagination run wild. Unlike the technicolour Calder car, this one was resolutely black-and-white, its graph paper effect reflecting the car’s engineering precision. Driven by Brit Brian Redman and American Peter Gregg, it retired after five hours.
Roy Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i Turbo, 1977
This was my first Le Mans – it was a long trip from Sydney – and the first time I’d seen an Art Car race. The paint job, by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, was designed ‘to increase the car’s speed by 5mph and disorient the contestants’. It probably didn’t make it go any faster but it certainly turned heads.
Its use of colour and ‘speed lines’ set a template for most successive Art Cars. The handsome 320i Turbo racer won its class and finished ninth overall. My main memory of Le Mans 1977 was Jacky Ickx’s masterly drive through the field in his Porsche 936, from a troubled 41st place and 15 laps behind the leader, to first. It was surely the Belgian’s finest Le Mans triumph. The 936’s Martini livery was also special. But the Art Car looked better.
Andy Warhol’s BMW M1, 1979
This is possibly the world’s most valuable car. It’s both an Andy Warhol original and a BMW M1 racer, the most coveted of all M cars. (A Warhol painting sold for $195 million at Christie’s in 2023.) Unlike previous Art Cars, Warhol hand painted this car himself. (Previous cars were painted by BMW to the artist’s design.) Look closely and you can see the brushstrokes, fingerprints and even the scratches from the brush handle.
He applied six kilograms of paint in just 28 minutes. ‘I attempted to show speed as a visual image. When an automobile is travelling really fast, all the lines and colors are transformed into a blur.’ To make this most iconic of Art Cars even more special, it finished sixth outright at Le Mans – an Art Car’s best-ever finish.
Michael Jagamara Nelson’s BMW M3, 1989
A bold departure from previous Art Car artists, BMW commissioned Australian Aboriginal painter Michael Jagamara Nelson to decorate a Group A racing M3. The abstract shapes – a kangaroo, a possum, a snake, a flying ant – are typical of Aboriginal mythology, first witnessed in cave paintings. They reflect Aboriginal ‘dreamtime’, and Nelson refers to his work as a literal ‘dream car’. He took a month to hand paint the car with his wife Marjorie mixing the paints and colours.
The M3 was from BMW’s Motorsport division in Australia, run by ex-F1 man and former Lola chief test driver Frank Gardner. The actual car was used by Aussie touring car star Peter Brock in 1988 before Nelson got to work.
Matazo Kayama’s BMW 535i, 1990
Japanese artist Kayama used airbrushing and special foil printing to create a stylised landscape of snow and cherry blossom, the moon and a river. I’ve seen this car in the metal and the artwork is incredibly detailed and quite beautiful. The downside is that it’s so delicate it can’t be driven.
Esther Mahlangu’s BMW 525i, 1991
The first Art Car done by a woman (the new car, the 20th, is only the fourth). South African artist Esther Mahlangu took her tribal culture and transferred it to a car. Apparently, Esther’s Ndebele people paint and repaint the exterior walls of their home when there’s an important event, like a wedding. The 525i is a 3D Ndebele wall on the move, a colourful melange of rectangles, diamonds and chevrons, all painted – as is the custom – with brushes made from chicken feathers.
Sandro Chia’s M3 GTR, 1992
Crazy and eye-catching – not least because so many eyes are looking back at you. One of my favourite Art Cars. Said Florence-born Chia: ‘All eyes are upon an automobile.’ I couldn’t stop staring at this when I first saw it. The canvas is an M3 GTR touring car.
David Hockney’s BMW 850 CSi, 1995
I love David Hockney: his unpretentious Yorkshire-ness, his vivid colours (including his clothes) and his versatility – from paint to iPad. And he loves dogs. Apparently, it took a while to persuade him that graffitiing a BMW was a good idea. Rather than the speed and whoosh that most Art Car artists try to represent, Hockney tried to demonstrate the car’s inner tech, ‘to show the car as if one could see inside’. Pleasingly, you also see his dog (left rear wing).
Jenny Holzer’s BMW V12 LMR, 1999
Holzer is famous for delivering stimulating and polarising words and ideas in public spaces. Her white Art Car has six texts in foil lettering and phosphorescent paint, stuff like ‘Protect Me From What I Want’ and ‘The Unattainable Is Invariably Attractive’. The sort of on-message flannel that HR Managers now spout – although it was probably more edgy and provocative back in 1999. New Art Car artist Julie Mehretu says this is one of her favourite Art Cars and so does a friend who Knows About Art. So, I guess it must be good. It was also the first Art Car to use a proper racing prototype as its canvas.
Holzer says: ‘I like my car because it says difficult things and it glows in the dark, reflects the sky, and it is white and shiny and it goes fast and makes a lot of noise.’ I like that. It was entered for Le Mans in 1999 with Tom Kristensen and Jo Winkelhock as drivers but never started. Its non-Art Car teammate won.
Jeff Koons’ BMW M3 GT2, 2010
A psychedelic mind-bender of colour, this is many people’s favourite Art Car. It was a return to the pop art roots of the early Art Cars and had a touch of Star Wars hyperdrive about the technicolour streaks. The M3 GT2 was the most recent Art Car to race at Le Mans, finishing 19th overall and sixth in class.
Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8, 2024
I went to the unveiling of the latest Art Car at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a month before Le Mans. Like many previous Art Car artists, New York-based Mehretu wanted to convey speed, ‘as though the car has gone very fast through the portal of the painting, remixed and reimagined’. She says the artwork won’t be complete until the Le Mans 24-hour race is over. ‘The art will include the scratches, scrapes, dents, debris on the road and dead insects, even the scuffs of the drivers’ boots getting in and out.’
The Boring
Ernst Fuchs’ BMW 635 CSi, 1982
I first saw this at the BMW Art Car display at an NCP car park (yes, really) in Shoreditch, London in 2012 – just before the London Olympics. It looked like one of those airbrushed flame paint jobs you see on hotrods and muscle cars. Plus there’s no racing history and, let’s face it, a 635 CSi is not quite a 3.0 CSL.
Robert Rauschenberg’s BMW 635 CSi, 1986
Again, I first saw this in that NCP in Shoreditch in 2012. It was the only Art Car to be used as a daily driver – although it was easy to distinguish from the many non-Art Cars also parked in the NCP that day. American Robert Rauschenberg used classical art – an Ingres’ nude on one side and a Bronzino portrait on the other – applied by photo printing. Some people love this car but, sorry, it doesn’t work for me. And just look at those fat rubber ‘safety’ bumpers.
Ken Done’s BMW M3, 1989
It was an Aussie Art Car double in 1989: Michael Jagamara Nelson and Ken Done. Both used ex-racing Australian-based Group A M3s. Done’s was the car that won the 1987 Australian Touring Car Championship for JPS Team BMW, run by ex-F1 man Frank Gardner. (I attended his racing driver’s school in 1976.)
Done is famous in Australia for his fun brightly coloured artwork, representing nature, sun and beaches. There are loads of tourist shops around Sydney Harbour selling his stuff – pens, postcards, posters, you name it. His Art Car is certainly bright and cheerful. My trouble is I have a lot of Ken Done mugs and T-shirts and the M3 looks a bit like the cup in which I have my Earl Grey every morning.
César Manrique’s BMW 730i, 1990
Spanish avant-garde artist Manrique hints at Picasso and Matisse in his Art Car and was apparently inspired by his native Lanzarote. The black is for the lava rock, the green for rainforest and the red is for life. It’s certainly striking. Trouble is the 730i underneath isn’t.
A R Penck’s Z1, 1991
The first and only Art Car to date done by a German. Neo-expressionist Penck – real name Ralf Winkler – was inspired by cave paintings. He never explained why and it’s hard to see the relevance. The Z1 is one of my favourite BMWs and a work of art, or at least it was before it got the caveman treatment. This Art Car was the 8000th – and very last – Z1 ever made.
John Baldessari’s BMW M6 GTLM, 2016
Art Car fans had to wait six years from Jeff Koons’ classic M3 for another Art Car. It was hardly worth it. LA-based artist Baldessari – at 85, the oldest person ever to design an Art Car – produced a minimalist design. It was essentially a white M6 GTLM with a few colourful dots, a sticker of itself on the passenger side and the word FAST on the driver’s door. It competed in the Daytona 24-hour race, finishing eighth in the GTLM class. Surely the least imaginative Art Car.
The Bonkers
Olafur Eliasson’s BMW H2R, 2007
And now for something completely different: an Art Car that is in fact a giant ice cocoon. Underneath there’s the chassis of a BMW H2R hydrogen racing prototype. Danish-Icelandic sculptor Olafur Eliasson is famed for working with structures representing water, sun and ice. On this, the 16th Art Car, he constructed a framework of small metal plates and mesh attached to the car. He then sprayed it with 530 gallons of water in a huge (and very cold) studio, thus producing a cage of ice. The water/hydrogen link is apparent and was intended to show BMW’s move to sustainability. Shame you can’t see a car, though. Funnily enough, it also doesn’t travel very well.
Cao Fei’s BMW M6 GT3, 2017
Proof how digital can ruin an Art Car. A perfectly handsome bare carbon M6 gets the Art Car treatment from Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei. This consists of fireworks of digital squiggles dancing around the M6, as Fei mixes the digital and physical worlds. Trouble is you need an app to see it. Surely, the worst Art Car of all. Mind you, the M6 did race – minus the squiggles – in the 2017 FIA GT World Cup in Macau. It crashed, before pitting for repairs and finishing fourth.
