BMW Makes Art of Racing With 20th Art Car by Julie Mehretu
For the 20th model in the legendary BMW Art Car series — a series that has seen Warhol, Calder, Hockney, and so many other artists use BMW as their canvas — the Germany company did not commission a precious object to sit in some museum. No, this Art Car was designed for competition and built to get beat up and dirty.
Unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the BMW M Hybrid V8 racecar designed by renowned Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu will soon be competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. So get a good look now, because the car will never be this clean again.
“It’s a performative painting,” Julie Mehretu says. “My BMW Art Car was created in close collaboration with motorsport and engineering teams. The BMW Art Car is only completed once the race is over.”
After 24 hours of racing, if it even survives that long in the famously gruelling race, Mehretu’s Art Car won’t look like this. Expect it to be covered in a splattering of burnt rubber and road grime. It may also have some dents and dings, perhaps some smashed carbon-fibre bodywork patched up hastily by a pit-mechanic with duct tape.
“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.”
Julie Mehretu
For the 20th Art Car, we were expecting something delicate. After all, the 20th anniversary is traditionally a time for gifting fine china. Honestly though, we’re glad to see BMW went in the opposite direction, commissioning a work that will evolve over time.
“The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing limits of what can be possible,” Mehretu says. “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.”
The inspiration came from the artist’s monumental painting “Everywhen” (2021 – 2023) that’s currently on display at the Pinault Collection in Venice, but will soon join the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. You should really see it for yourself, but as BMW explains: “its abstract visual form results from digitally altered photographs, which are superimposed in several layers of dot grids, neon-coloured veils and the black markings characteristic of Mehretu’s work.” In the studio, as the artists explain, Mehretu kept looking at this giant three-metre-by-three-metre painting and wondering what it would look like if the racecar tore through it.
“The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting,” Mehretu explains.
The image was mapped onto the car using 3D imaging, and then carefully applied using a foil wrap.
Come June 15, the artwork will be in the hands (literally) of BMW Motorsport drivers Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns, and René Rast when it hits the Circuit de la Sarthe.
The car is BMW’s first prototype to compete at Le Mans since the company’s stunning V12 LMR won the race in 1999. The new machine is a very different beast, however. It features a 4.0-litre V8 that cranks out 640 horsepower, aided by a hybrid system and electric motor. On the right track it’ll get up to 345 km/h.
If you’re not going to Le Mans this year, you can see the newest Art Car at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este in Lake Como. It’ll be featured on the grounds of the Villa Erba together with the BMW Art Cars by Alexander Calder (1975), Frank Stella (1976), Roy Lichtenstein (1977), Andy Warhol (1979), Jenny Holzer (1999) and Jeff Koons (2010).
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