BMW taps abstract artist Julie Mehretu to paint its latest Art Car
CNN
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Over the past 50 years, artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer and Robert Rauschenberg have been chosen by the luxury car manufacturer to use a BMW as a canvas, each adorning one of the famous BMWs Art Cars in their signature style.
Now, Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu, known for her work in abstract painting, has been chosen to design the company’s next Art Car. Her artwork, painted on a BMW M Hybrid V8, will be featured on the track at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 2024.
The first BMW Art Car was painted by American sculptor Alexander Calder in 1975 after French racing driver Hervé Poulain brought the idea to BMW. Poulain drove the Calder-painted BMW 3.0 CSL at Le Mans that year. In 1977, Roy Lichtenstein wrapped a BMW 320 Group 5 in the graphic stripes and dots he was known for; Warhol painted a 1979 BMW M1 with textured, pastel brushstrokes.
The first woman to take ownership of a BMW Art Car was South African artist Esther Mahlangu, who painted a 525i sedan in 1991. In 1996, Holzer stuck the words “Protect me from what I want” on a BMW Le Mans racing car.
Enes Kucevic/BMW
Esther Mahlangu’s Art Car showcased the bold colors and geometric patterns used in traditional handicrafts by the southern Ndebele people.
Mehretus will be the 20th BMW Art Car. Often inspired by architecture and busy urban environments, her large-scale abstract works feature intricate juxtapositions of lines and shapes—inspired by engineering drawings and blueprints—and sometimes pops of color or deep darkness. Her work also deals with issues such as migration, colonization and globalization.
She is represented by the Marian Goodman Gallery, which describes her work on its website as “a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space”.
“Moretu’s practice of painting, drawing and printing equally underscores the role of art in provoking thought and reflection and in expressing the current state of the individual and society,” the gallery added.
Josefina Santos/BMW
Julie Mehretu, pictured here with one of her works.
Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970 to an Ethiopian father and an American mother. Seven years later, the family moved to the United States to escape a brutal civil war then raging in the country. In 1997 she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design; She currently resides in New York.
She has received wide recognition and prestigious awards for her work, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005 and the 2015 US State Department Medal of Arts Award. She was unanimously selected for this project by a jury of prominent gallery and museum directors.
Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and a member of that jury, described Mehretu in a statement as the “perfect artist” who grappled with the BMW Art Car. “Julie has been painting speed for years and has been very successful at scale for a long time,” said Grynsztejn. “Fusing your work with the shape and form of a speeding vehicle is truly a marriage of perfection.”
Mehretu spent time with the BMW racing team at the 24 Hours of Daytona in Daytona Beach, Florida last January, competing in a racing event for the first time.
Julian Kroehl/BMW
“I’ve loved cars most of my life, as toys, as objects, as opportunities,” Mehretu, here at Daytona International Speedway, said in a statement. “From this point of view, I am particularly looking forward to working on the next BMW Art Car.”
“The frequency with which the cars are going 24 hours a day, that kind of persistence… the sheer number of people involved, the kind of collaboration — all of that was so exciting,” Mehretu said at an event Wednesday night at the New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The BMW M Hybrid V8, a plug-in hybrid, is a pure racing car that was developed for use in international endurance racing. Designed and engineered in collaboration with Italian racing car manufacturer Dalara, it is low and wide with a huge rear wing and large vertical rudder.
Though she hasn’t yet decided what exactly she’ll be painting on the car, Mehretu said she’s amazed by the speed and movement of the cars racing at Daytona and the way they whiz by at incredible speeds. The M Hybrid V8 in particular is likely to reach speeds in excess of 200 mph at Le Mans.
“It’s like the social fabric of our moment. “It’s something that’s imperceptible, it’s unstable, it’s something we can’t quite grasp,” she said, “and that fuzziness and uncertainty is something I really want to explore in this space.”