Gallery: 11 BMWs That Famous Artists Have Turned Into Masterpieces
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1975 BMW 3.0CSL: The first car in BMW's series, and one of the last things artist Alexander Calder did before his death. This 3.2-liter, 480-hp, 180-mph CSL was entered in the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it was driven by American legend Sam Posey and Frenchmen Jean Guichet and Hervé Poulain. After seven hours on track, it retired due to a damaged driveshaft and never raced again. Calder's "AC" signature is hand-painted on the left rear flank. Your author is fortunate enough to have touched this exact car—I helped push it around a museum once, for a photo shoot, after being told to do so by a high-ranking BMW employee. Sounds weird, right? You wouldn't go groping the Mona Lisa, but how else would you move something like this? That's the great thing about art, on a car. Sometimes, you just have to treat it like a car. Which makes you get close to it, smell it, love it even more. Lovely curves, wonderful proportions, delicate in all the right places. Calder was wonderful. [The CSL in general](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_E9#3.0CSL) is wonderful. *This* CSL is wonderful.
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1976 BMW 3.0CSL: BMW's second Art Car, another CSL, was decorated by celebrated American artist Frank Stella. Like the firm's first Art Car, it ran at Le Mans, this time in 1976. Stella was a passionate race fan, and the car's gridwork references graph paper and technical glory. The curves on top of that recall drafting tools. According to one of BMW's in-house books on the Art Cars, Stella was against "over-interpretation" of his work. "The resulting ... pattern," he said, with what we assume is great understatement, "should be regarded as agreeable decoration." Let's just call that a mic drop.
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1977 BMW 320i Group 5: Roy Lichtenstein is generally regarded as the father of American pop art. "I wanted to use painted lines as a road, pointing the way for the car," he said. "The design also shows the scenery as it passes by. Even the sky and the sunlight are to be seen ... you could list all the things a car experiences—the only difference is that this car mirrors all these things even before it takes to the road." And so there is a stylized sunrise—or possibly sunset—on the BMW's flanks. There is Lichtenstein's signature style, with [Ben-Day dots](http://www.awdsgn.com/classes/fall09/webI/student/trad_mw/burgan/final_project/pages/technique.html) and simple shapes. Also, a sixteen-valve, 2.0-liter, 300-hp turbo four called [M12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5J919nBu9M) that sounds like a horny weed whacker with the sniffles. This car premiered as a work of art at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1977, then ran at Le Mans the same year. It finished 9th overall and first in class.
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1979 BMW M1 Group 4: Andy Warhol's Group 4 M1 ran at Le Mans in 1979, finishing second in its class. The famed pop artist developed the car's look on a scale model, then had assistants transfer it to the real thing with broad-bristle brushes. After that, he dragged a tool over the car's surface, scrawling down to the primer in a seemingly random fashion. In person, the strokes and scrawls have visible texture, as if the car was carved from giant lumps of Play-Doh. The 3.5-liter, twin-cam straight six produces 470 hp and will take the car to 190 mph. I drove a full-race Group 4 M1 once; that engine is by far the car's best part. It rips and snorts and screams in this hard-edged animal yowl—almost Italian, but deeply German. "I tried to portray speed pictorially," Warhol said. "If the car is moving really quickly, all the lines and colors are blurred."
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1986 BMW 635 CSI: Robert Rauschenberg is another American pop-art pioneer. His 1986 635 CSI was the first BMW Art Car to not be based on a regular production car instead of one made for competition. Rauschenberg took designs from actual paintings, some quite well-known, and recreated them on the car. The hub caps are photographs of antique plates; the left side of the car features a painting by Italian Mannerist painter Bronzino. The hood and flanks recreate photographs of trees and swamp grass, supposedly to reference the environmental problems associated with cars.
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1989 BMW M3 Group A: Australian artist Michael Jagmara Nelson grew up in the country's Aborigine lifestyle. He left school at 13 and worked as a cattle rearer, buffalo hunter, and truck driver. One of his murals currently occupies the northern foyer of the Sydney Opera House. Nelson's car is a 2.3-liter, four-cylinder, twin-cam, 300-hp Group A M3 race car, an example of the company's first M3 model, and a representative of the single most successful touring car in motorsport history. The artwork on its boxy panels took seven days of work to install, and it features stylized shapes from Australian mythology: kangaroos, possums, ants, and emus. Nelson's name is on one of the car's rocker panels.
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1989 BMW M3 Group A: For some reason, Australian artist Ken Done saw parallels between a Group A BMW M3, a parrotfish, and a parrot. So he painted his Art Car to look like both—and it inarguably works. Done spent 20 years as an advertising graphic designer before quitting to focus on painting. His first exhibition was in 1980, and in 1988 he was commissioned to do the exterior design of the Australian and United Nations pavilions at the World's Fair in Brisbane. Fish. Bird. The car's [bare shape](https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+e30+m3&espv=2&biw=1251&bih=1244&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=eR5lVen5GoWEsAX8xIKIBw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ) kind of looks like a fish-bird now. Maybe the guy was on to something. Or maybe he's just really good at what he does. (Either way, cool.)
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1990 BMW 535i: Matazo Kayama's 1990 535i, another production car, is physically delicate. The base blue tones were airbrushed onto the car's factory silver paint. On top of that, Kayama overlaid silver, gold, and aluminum foil in a blend of two classic Japanese techniques: Kirigane (foil cutting) and Arare (foil impression). The resulting blend, BMW says, expressed his "fascination with BMW technology," and "vivid associations with modern Japan." It's also too fragile to be used on the road, which is why Kayama's car rarely leaves its factory caretakers. Visually, the car ties in to Kayama's "Snow, Moon and Flowers," a piece that won first place in the 1978 Japanese Fine Arts Grand Prix. According to BMW, Kayama said that the difficulty of the work was the car's three-dimensional nature—he couldn't visualize his work as a whole because he couldn't see every side of the car at once.
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1992 BMW 3 Series: As a child, Italian artist Sandro Chia drew graffiti on parked cars. "The automobile is a sought-after possession in society," he said, "All eyes are upon it. People look closely at cars. The one I have painted here reflects their gaze. Like a mirror, it confronts the people who look at it." And so we have Chia's 1992 BMW 3-series touring-car (racing) prototype. There's a roll cage, slick racing tires, multi-piece wheels, and most everything else you'd need to go saloon-car racing in Europe. Also a bunch of slightly creepy faces and paint that looks like graffiti. If it weren't so gorgeous, you'd want to drive the hell out of it. Wait, no. I still want that.
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1999 BMW V12 LMR: American Jenny Holzer has had her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Tate Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim, and the Reichstag, among other places. Since the 1970s, her art has been based in words without pictures, and her V12 LMR Art Car is no exception. The LMR, a Le Mans prototype powered by a 6.0-liter, 580-hp V-12, is dominated by its central message, in chrome across the car's top: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT. Holzer's car raced in period, including the pre-qualifying race at Le Mans in May of 1999. (Another LMR won the race overall that same year.) Its carbon-fiber chassis was built by the Williams Formula 1 team, with which BMW had a partnership. Holzer wanted BMW's blue and white colors to be visible throughout the course of an endurance race. In a nice touch, the chrome lettering reflects the sky and white clouds during the day. At night, the white paint, which is light-absorbing, glows blue in the dark.
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2010 BMW M3 GT2: Jeff Koons is known for a lot of things. Giant ["inflatable" dogs](https://www.google.com/search?q=koons+inflatable+dog&espv=2&biw=1251&bih=1244&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=1iRlVaHFNYmvsAXvsoDICA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg). [Breasts in a bathtub](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/WebLarge/WebImg_000164/44022_1778940.jpg). [Vacuum cleaners, Michael Jackson's chimp, and the Toyota Camry.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2666702/Jeff-Koons-whimsy-takes-NYC-museum.html) The man who's been called the "most expensive living artist" was oddly restrained with his 2010 M3 GT2, the 17th and most recent BMW Art Car. The colors and layout reflect speed (new theme, that) and the car itself raced at Le Mans. “These race cars are lifelike, they are powerful and there is a lot of energy,” Koons said. “You can participate with it, add to it and let yourself transcend with its energy. There is a lot of power under that hood and I want to let my ideas transcend with the car — it’s really to connect with that power.”
