In the late 2000s, when artist
Jeff Koons was asked to
design a BMW Art Car, he considered three concepts. “I made Plan A, Plan B, and
Plan C,” Koons said.
اضافة اعلان
Since its establishment in 1975, the Art Car program has
commissioned blue-chip artists — including Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Robert
Rauschenberg, and
Cao Fei — to create one-off iterations of a
BMW vehicle,
museum-quality pieces that are displayed or raced. The race car that Koons
unveiled in 2010 featured a windswept riot of brightly colored streaks. This
design, he said, was Plan B.
Plan C did not maintain Koons’ interest, so he discarded it. But
Plan A remained with him. “I wanted to make a car that, when it drove by, would
go pop-pop-pop,” he said.
Now, a dozen years later, he has brought that vision to life
with the 8 by Jeff Koons, a limited edition of 99 specially designed and
outfitted versions of BMW’s swoopy, four-door, 8-Series Gran Coupe sports
sedan. This car was unveiled, virtually, Wednesday in connection with the
Frieze Los Angeles art fair, for which BMW is an official partner. In the US,
each example will cost $350,000.
BMW has had success with similar limited editions, including an
intended (pandemic-interrupted) run of 500 M2 sports coupes designed by artist
Lenny McGurr, who is known as Futura, and a series of 150 M4 Competition sports
coupes created with Ronnie Fieg of the streetwear brand Kith.
As one of the world’s best-known living artists, Koons lends
cachet to the offering. “It’s good marketing for the company,” said Linda
Yablonsky, an art critic and author of a coming biography of Koons. “But Jeff
himself is really an evangelist for art. He wants to see art in everyone’s
life. It doesn’t have to be his own, but he wants everybody to connect to art
in some way because he believes it will do for them what it does for him:
enhance their lives.”
Discussions between BMW and Koons on the production of a
limited-edition vehicle for sale to the public date back more than a decade.
But it was unclear what form this collaboration might take.
“I thought it was going to be one of these balloon dog-colored
cars — bright yellow, bright red, bright blue,” said Thomas Girst, BMW’s head
of cultural engagement, referring to the artist’s signature high-gloss
sculptures, executed in gleaming polished stainless steel.
Koons had a different idea in mind. “I started by working with
kind of a rectangular design that became this kind of whoosh of air that I’ve
incorporated, this emphasis of power. And I use other visual ways of
communicating energy and velocity and that excitement of movement,” he said.
Yet the bold linear graphics, bright colors, and animated stars
and explosions are not just superficial peacocking. “When I drive by and
somebody says, ‘Hey, look at that,’ it’s not just about feathers being spread,”
Koons said. “They see something that’s very visceral, and it’s visual.”
The design conveys a sense of vibrant emotionality, a
fascination rooted in delight and joy. This sensibility carries over into the
interior, with its harlequin like arrangement of contrasting colors and
textures, all chosen by Koons.
The finishes are labor-intensive. The paint on each car requires
an 11-step process, including hand-painting. According to BMW, it is the most
complex paint job ever rendered on one of its series production road cars,
taking 300 hours to execute for each vehicle.
As a means of introducing the car to collectors around the
world, further premieres are planned this spring and summer (without Koons) in
the
UAE, Switzerland, Belgium, China, France, and England.
“There’s already a lot of demand in the market, so we are
confident of this car selling out, really quick,” Girst said.
Koons will also receive his own 8 by Jeff Koons. He said he
looked forward to driving the car “in
New York and from New York to
Pennsylvania,” where he maintains a weekend house — his grandfather’s farm.
This will be a significant change from his usual ride. Because
Koons has eight children and often travels with them, their friends, his wife,
and a nanny, he typically drives a 13-passenger Mercedes van.
Does this vehicle rise to the level of art? “It’s a car
envisioned by an artist,” Yablonsky said. “But it’s still a car. A functional
object. Most art doesn’t function as anything but art.”
BMW and Koons remain open to future cooperation.
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