Koons’s BMW ‘Art Car’ to Run at Le Mans Endurance Race in June
The white BMW M3 GT2 parked in a cavernous New York City showroom looked sleek and muscular, yet a bit bland for a race car.
The automobile will be hard to recognize when it competes June 12-13 in the 24-hour Le Mans race in France.
The preliminary design released today by American artist Jeff Koons, who was tapped by the German automaker to create its 17th “Art Car,” shows an explosion of colors set against black background. The car will be unveiled and signed by Koons at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on June 1.
At first glance, Koons’s concept resembles a spin painting by Damien Hirst, with rays of apple green, powder blue, orange and plum shooting out from the center.
“I came upon an image of a Christmas tree wreath where you pull back and you get these streaks of light,” said Koons, sporting a black suit, white shirt, black tie and ever-present smile. “It captured the type of dynamic energy and the generosity of Christmas lights.”
BMW began Art Car commissions in 1975 with a BMW 3.0 CSL model designed by Alexander Calder. The colorful model, which competed at Le Mans, was parked near Koons’s pristine BMW today. Fluid patches of red, yellow, blue and white form a simple yet striking design. Visitors were reminded to keep their hands off the car because it’s a piece of art.
Warhol Car
Over the years, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg have designed Art Cars.
Stella did a black-and-white grid design of a BMW 3.0 CSL in 1976. Lichtenstein painted a 1977 BMW 320I Group 5 Race Version with dots reminiscent of his comic-strip paintings. Warhol threw some paint around a BMW M1 Group 4 in 1979. Rauschenberg mixed black-and-white images of trees and grass with reproductions of Old Master paintings on the body of a BMW 635 CSi in 1986.
Koons’s car is based on BMW’s M3 model, which retails for $65,000. The Art Car is “a little different,” said Jim O’Donnell, president of BMW North America. “You can’t buy it.”
(Katya Kazakina is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the reporter of this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.
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