PART ONE Here >>
PART TWO Here >>
PART THREE Here >>
here’s Part four of our refreshed re-run of a 2012 series of pieces by the DSC Editor prompted by the display of almost the then entire run of official BMW Art Cars as part of the Cultural programme supporting the Summer Olympic Games in London.
It includes the two cars that have bee added to the series since 2012!
The final pair of cars in the 2012 collection were both endurance racers, both attracted more attention for their art than their racing success and both are now part of Le Mans legend for very different reasons. And we’ve updated the piece with details of the two cars that have been added to the BMW Art Cars collection since then, again both in DSC’s usual orbit of endurance and/ or GT cars.
#15: BMW V12 LMR, Jenny Holzer
1999 saw one of the more controversial Art Cars with the Jenny Holzer decorated BMW V12 LMR.
The car was one of a three-car team to run in testing for the 24 Hours proper, driven by Tom Kristensen and Jo Winkelhock but the car was withdrawn from the race proper.
In fact, it only raced once, and that more than a year later as an additional factory entry in the 2000 Petit Le Mans where, in a race that saw Bill Auberlen flip in one of the sister cars, it came home as the only finisher from a three-car team, fifth overall with Jorg Muller and JJ Lehto at the wheel, the car dropping back after an off for Muller.
That’s the history lesson, and now the art critique, ‘Protect me from what I want’. This and other provocative messages glare at the beholder from the otherwise white bodywork of the 15th Art Car.
Instead of chrome, light and shiny foil was used for the lettering to avoid increasing the weight of the BMW V12 LMR.
Known for being critical of western society, Holzer nevertheless grew up ‘surrounded by cars since I went to kindergarten’ as the daughter of a car dealer.
It clearly didn’t prevent the artist from attempting to preach to the Le Mans crowd – It’s unlikely to have made much of an impact on that front!
#16: The Weird Hydrogen Fuel Thingy, Olafur Eliasson
Wasn’t part of the exhibition! And if it had been, with temperatures touching 30 degrees on the day of the DSC Ed’s visit, it would have melted!
#17: BMW M3 GT2, Jeff Koons
The most recent addition to the collection raced famously, or rather infamously, at the 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours. The car was reportedly delivered late to the race team after the spectacular paint job was applied, and it showed, the #79 car was never really on the pace and played a key part in the effective elimination from the race of the Audi of Tom Kristensen after Andy Priaulx uncharacteristically wandered off line to force the Audi off and into the gravel at the entry to the Porsche Curves.
The car never raced again after Le Mans.
It was aesthetically reworked by the US artist Jeff Koons, unveiled to the world at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in June 2010, to great acclaim!
The media and art magazines from all over the world carried reports on the 17th model in the Art Car series. The car bears the racing number 79, a tribute to the BMW M1 body work-over presented by Andy Warhol in 1979.
The striking colours of Koons’ Art Car exude a boisterous sense of power, motion and energy (it says here!).
As with Warhol’s M1, Koons’ BMW also participated in the legendary Le Mans 24-hour race. Koons’ desire to paint up an Art Car was expressed in an interview way back in 2003; an honour for BMW as Koons is one of the most successful concept artists in the world. Even during the recent economic crisis, his works demanded immense sums.
Postscript
Since the 2012 exhibition, two more cars have been added to the BMW Art Car collection.
#18: BMW M6 GT3, Cao Fei
Car #18 is very different from anything that has gone before, Chinese digital artist Cao Fei was commissioned in 2016 to create the first digital BMW Art Car.
Based on the BMW M6 GT3 that Augusto Farfus took to fourth place in the FIA GT World Cup around the streets of Macao, the car looks like a simple matt black finished racer to the naked eye, viewed digitally through a specially designed app though the car is surrounded by luminous lights and flashes through augmented reality.
It’s clever, but the question should be asked, with the rapid march forward of technology how will the medium be preserved?
#19: BMW M6 GTLM, John Baldessari
One of the most controversial cars in the series, Californian artist Baldessari, who died in January this year at the age of 88 produced a design that raced, in BMW Team RLL hands, at the 2017 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
Baldessari himself described the work thus: “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. So you can say, the BMW Art Car is definitely a typical Baldessari and the fastest artwork I ever created!”
Known for a humorous outlook on his art there are many that regard the Art Car as a joke in itself, with somewhat lazy and basic execution, rather crudely applied blocks and blobs of primary colours, the word FAST applied on one door, a picture of the car on the other!
It might have been the great artist’s last nose snub to the art world, it has though produced a very forgettable #19th in the Series!
