PAST IMPERFECT:BMW unwittingly started a lasting trend with a Calder-designed art car at the 1975 Le Mans race, writes BOB MONTGOMERY
HERVÉ POULAIN probably had no idea what he was starting. The man behind one of France’s most prominent specialist auctioneers, he was also well-known on the race tracks of Europe – so in 1975, when he entered a BMW 3.0 CSL for the Le Mans race, he was inspired to combine his two great interests. His BMW race car needed painting and artist Alexander Calder was a friend. What could be more natural than to ask Calder to paint it?
Calder was an inspired choice. An American who had lived in France since 1956, he also worked as a sculptor and had previously painted an airliner for Braniff Airlines. To the outside world he was best known as the inventor of “mobile” art, giving rise to the “mobiles” that decorate every child’s bedroom.
At a time when the racing world was more used to national racing colours and team liveries, Calder’s BMW CSL stunned the racing fraternity when it appeared at Le Mans, with its gaudy colours and graphic boldness. The result was the start of a revolution in how racing cars are painted, one that continues to this day.
The following year, another BMW was painted by an artist for Le Mans. This time the artist was Frank Stella and he – in total contrast to the Calder BMW – eschewed the use of colour altogether in his design.
Instead, he painted the entire car as a grid, explaining: “My design is like a blueprint applied to the car.” Once again, the painted BMW had a huge impact and the term “art car” came into existence.
As well as that, people began to ask BMW if it had similar plans for 1977. It did, and commissioned Roy Lichtenstein, the father of American Pop Art to “paint” a BMW 320i. Lichtenstein’s painting mirrored the racetrack environment. “The design shows the scenery as it passes by. Even the sky and sunlight are to be seen.”
The Lichtenstein car made the leap from race track to art gallery and, after winning its class at Le Mans, was displayed at the Pompidou Centre, the icon of modern art in Paris.
In 1979, BMW introduced a one-make championship for their new mid-engined supercar – the M1. The high priest of Pop Art, Andy Warhol, was asked to paint one of the cars. Warhol took his work literally, working directly on the car itself, the first of the artists to forsake a one-fifth model, from which in the past the design was later transferred to the car itself.
Warhol explained his concept: “I tried to visualise the concept of speed in the car itself – when the car is moving really fast, all lines and colours become one single blur.” Where previous cars had required constant touching up, from the start, Warhol’s car looked as if it had been vandalised.
There then followed a three-year gap before Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs restarted the series by painting a car for a Munich exhibition in 1982.
This car marked a departure as, for the first time, it was intended, from the start, that the car should be shown in an art gallery and not raced.
Since then, a wide selection of artists have lent their art to BMW, and the whole project has continued to push the boundaries of mobile art.
One of the most striking paintings was that of African artist Ester Mahlangu, who drew on the wall-painting traditions of her own Ndebele tribe from the Transvaal of South Africa.
Whoever the artist, whatever their concept, BMW art cars continue to shock and delight.