BMW Introduces Art Car Nr. 20 in Paris, A Stunning M Hybrid V8 Transformed Into a Canvas by Celebrated Artist Julie Mehretu

BMW presented its 20th Art Car this week at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.  The last BMW Art Cars were unveiled in 2017 and
The artist who painted the auto, a BMW M Hybrid V8 race car, was Julie Mehretu, an Ethiopian-American contemporary visual artist. Mehretu is known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale and her works depict the cumulative effects of urban sociopolitical change.
“The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing limits of what can be possible,” said Mehretu. “I don’t think of this car as something you would exhibit. I am thinking of it as something that will race in Le Mans. It’s a performative painting.”
This latest BMW Art Car “is only finished once the race is over,” she added.
South African Artist Robin Rhodes discusses his “Art Car,” entitled “Expression of Joy,” while sitting on it accompanied by several BMW executives at Grand Central Terminal in New York in 2009.
French racecar driver Hervé Poulain first thought of the idea of inviting an artist to use an automobile as a canvas, and commissioned Alexander Calder to paint a BMW 3.0 CSL in 1975. Poulain then raced that auto in the 1975 Le Mans 24 hour endurance race.
Prior to today, 19 BMW Art Cars, based on both standard production models and race cars, have been produced by a roster of artists that includes David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol.
In addition, one car that some might consider to be a BMW Art Car was Robin Rhode’s 2009 Z4. Rhodes, a South African artist based in Berlin, did not paint the Z4; rather, he used the car in the creation of a massive piece of art the size of two football pitches by driving it over the canvas and applying paint with the vehicle’s tires. By doing this, Rhodes became the first artist to use the automobile itself as the paintbrush, rather than the canvas.
As artist John Baldessari said to FBT Editorial Director Jonathan Spira at the announcement of his commission to design Art Car Nr. 19, which was held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2015, “[T]his will definitely be my fastest artwork yet,” a statement that equally applies to latest Art Car Nr. 20 by Julie Mehretu.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)