BMW’S COSTLIEST ART CAR COMES TO INDIA
The BMW M1 is on display in Delhi at the India Art Fair
Every year when Thomas Girst, BMW’S global head of cultural engagement, looks at the list of requests for exhibits amongst the group’s collection of ‘art cars’, it’s almost always the Andy Warhol or the Jeff Koons art cars that are requested the most.
This year, Warhol’s 1979 art car, the BMW M1, has been brought to India, and is on display at the India Art Fair — on till 2 February in New Delhi.
The BMW Art Car Project was born in 1975 when Le Mans racing driver Hervé Poulain decided to change the appearance of his BMW, Girst said, adding that the initiative was given a thumbs up by the then BMW Motorsport director Jochen Neerpasch, and artist Alexander Calder was assigned the task.
The project was so well received that over the years BMW roped in artists, such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Warhol, to convert an assortment of
BMWS into art cars. “The truly great thing is that these cars were not a public relations exercise but emerged from real racing passion,” Girst said.
The art cars have in time been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as other venues.
The M1 is often referred to as the most expensive car given the pedigree of the creator. Warhol paintings have sold for as much as $105 million and have averaged between $30 million and $80 million over the years, according to reports by international auction houses.
When asked about the worth of the car in Delhi, Girst declined to answer, saying “it would easily be in the tens of millions of dollars”. What Girst did share was that Warhol was fascinated with the process of painting machines, and when he painted the car in 1979, he did it in 28 minutes using bright colours and streaks that looked like scratches.