Cars
When Art Replaces Sponsors 3: Dynamic Street Art
Dynamic street art meets automotive design in BMW’s iconic Art Car collection and more, featuring artists like Rauschenberg, Hockney, and Sharbatli who turned cars into drivable masterpieces.
Would you walk down crowded streets or take the subway carrying a painting by a famous artist without protection or packaging? The answer, of course, is no. This explains why cars painted or decorated by artists cannot have a market: it’s like asking a mechanic, after an accident, to step into the shoes of Warhol, Rauschenberg, or Hockney to fix the damage.
Yet artist cars have been made for everyday use, notably by BMW through its Art Collection and others. Let’s explore them for the pleasure of the eye.
For the 1982 exhibition Art as Illustration — Illustration as Art, Viennese artist Ernst Fuchs masterfully decorated this BMW 635 CSi, intending for its appearance to inspire imaginations and dreams—a phenomenon tied to all illusions. This was the first BMW Art Car created for purposes other than racing.
