A look at BMW's Art Car Collection

It's not often that you can make a connection between the automotive industry and the art world but unknown to many people, BMW has done just that.

It seems natural when you think about it. Cars play a major role in our day to day lives and so does art, therefore putting the two together makes perfect sense. Well, BMW seemed to think so and in 1975 the first edition of their Art Car Collection was created by Alexandra Calder.

But how did it come about? The idea of having an artist's design on an automobile was first introduced by a racing driver from France called Hervé Poulain. The passionate driver asked his friend, the American artist Alexander Calder, to make-over his BMW 3.0 CSL racing car.

BMW took great enthusiasm in watching the newly decorated car shoot around Le Mans race track and from that moment on started work on getting the Art Car Collection up and running. With such hype created around the first Art Car, some of the best known artists of the time wanted to take part in creating a visual design that would be combined with such a popular sport and they achieved exactly that.

Just some of artists to make their mark on the collection during the 1970s included Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. They saw the cars as blank canvases for moving art and depicted symbolism an expression of that era to all those that watched the vehicles around the track.

Moving on into the 1980s and still years before people could buy cheap car insurance off the internet, the collection was taking off with an almightily bang of enthusiasm from the motoring world. No longer was the collection only limited to motor sport vehicles but all BMW models could be used by the artists. Some of those who made a tribute to BMW's collection during this period included Ken Done, Robert Rauschenberg and Ernst Fuchs.

Up until last year, there were a total of 15 BMW Art Cars. David Hockney and Jenny Holzer also joined the catalogue of famous artists and used their creativity to reflect cultural development on BMW models. In 2006, Olafur Elaissson made the 16th Art Car to be added to the collection.

With such a unique form of art that unites the ever-changing society that we live in with the development of technology, the Art Car Collection has taken off with exhibitions being staged all over the world. Just some of the museums to display the vehicles include the Louvre in Paris, the Royal Academy in London, the Whitney Museum in Sydney and the Guggenheim in New York.

More recently, the collection of BMW cars went on a tour in 2006 to mark the project's 31st anniversary and its first leg of the tour started in Kuala Lumpur. Speaking on why the exhibition would start in this part of the world, BMW Group's corporate communications director Richard Gaul said: "We choose to start the tour with Kuala Lumpur as in Europe we see the capital as a modern city with high appreciation for pop art culture combined with the availability of a world-class gallery."

Fortunately, we now live in an era where we don't have to travel miles to look at the collection, Just as easy as it is to buy woman car insurance online, you can also check out the various pieces or artwork that have been made for the BMW project. If you would like more information about the Art Car Collection and would like to view the different models, visit http://www.bmwinfo.com.

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