Conceptual artist renders latest BMW Art Car
IT’S THE 19th in the collection, and it’s destined for both racetrack and museum, too.
BMW at the recent Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida, unveiled its new Art Car, a BMW M6 GTLM that was designed by American conceptual artist John Baldessari. Following the 40-year tradition of the brand’s Art Car collection, the latest rendition is a race car, and one that’s scheduled to compete in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona on Jan. 28-29, 2017.
According to BMW, Mr. Baldessari drew on his known artistic trademarks in designing his Art Car. The 85-year-old artist had produced groundbreaking work in the 1960s through the 1970s, juxtaposing text with photographs, and applying his signature primary-colored “dots” over the key elements of the images — people’s faces, for instance. He is also known for burning paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966 during a 1970 performance called The Cremation Project.
Considered a minimalist, Mr. Baldessari marked the M6 GTLM with red, blue, yellow and green dots ( or painted panels with the same colors), and applied the text “FAST” on the left door. Striving for asymmetry, he installed a photo of the same car — but minus his color scheme and sponsor decals — on the right door.
In a statement, the artist said; “I have done only one work in my life involving a car before, and that was an image of a car. So for the BMW Art Car project, I entered uncharted territory not just in terms of the subject, but also moving from two- to threedimensional art.”
He added that the ideas “all came at once,” and that the car is “the fastest artwork” he had created.
“I like the ambiguity, having two- dimension and threedimension at the same time. Considering the car as an icon of contemporary life, my concept turned out playfully satirical, but it also highlights some of the trademark ideas that I use,” said Mr. Baldessari, who in early November executed the artwork with the help of a team of BMW engineers at BMW’s body and paint center in California.
BMW’s Art Car project began in 1975 when the brand commissioned Alexander Calder to design a 3.0 CSL, which raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year. Since then, 17 international artists that include Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Ernst Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer and Jeff Koons have produced their own versions. —