One of the most simple, profound, and totally BS-free statements on the totality of the creative experience came from a San Pedro, California, bassist by the name of Mike Watt when discussing his former band, the Minutemen. Watt succinctly said, “We turned our lives into art.” The Bayrische Motoren Werke are a world away from three Pedro spuds in a questionable Econoline and we’d be a little surprised if anyone in the Quandt family owned a copy of Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat, but they’ve certainly laid out some cash over the years in the name of turning their cars into art.
From the first example, a 3.0 CSL painted by Alexander Calder, through Warhol’s famed M1, Jenny Holzer’s V12 LMR, and on to the seventeenth and most-recent creation, last year’s M3 GT2 by Jeff Koons, BMW’s Art Cars have appeared as a mix of road and race machines born of a weird mélange of patronage and promotion. Now BMW’s put together an online museum featuring blurbs and videos that provide a brief history of each car. Color us engrossed. And oh, BMW—might we suggest Raymond Pettibon as a candidate for car number 18?