BMW Art Cars coming to London

They should be careful with that exclamation mark.  To a cycnic it may look like Art Drivel.

I would be more worried about all those cars being in Shoreditch........ they might find them on bricks the following morning!

Terrific. Let's see now, return rail ticket off-peak £120, subway, meals ...

I always take time to look at the those cars but am never convinced. For a start most were created by the artist on a computer, or board, the result handed to BMW to paint, while the artist waited for the cheque in the post. And the signature techiques of a few don't suit a three dimensional object. But I applaud the idea behind them...

No different from the way many of the most acclaimed (not by me) artists operate these days.

By "acclaimed" you mean populist. True.

Yes. And I should have put artists in inverted commas.

I went along to visit the Art Car exhibition last night, and it was fantastic to see all 16 Art Cars (the 17th wasn't actually a car and wasn't brought out from Munich) in one setting. Absolutely well worth a visit.

The exhibition is free, and there don't seem to be too many people who know about it as it was near empty.  The stark grey setting of a multi-storey car park really makes the cars look amazing, and it was a delight to wander around without pushing through crowds like you get at Goodwood or Chelsea AutoLegends.

I have started posting pictures on my Facebook page, and will upload the rest tonight.  May even go back with a better camera over the next couple of weeks and take some better shots.  The racing cars seem to suit the Art Car philosophy much better, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm used to seeing brightly coloured racing cars, and when you see multi-coloured road cars it's either because of replacement, non-matching panels or home-made art on some old heap...

Err..that really is an uninformed crock of shite LA. All, perhaps apart from the latest by Jeff Koons, were hand-painted direct on to the cars. Warhol flew to Munich and painted the M1 in an afternoon. David Hockney was given the 6-series he hand-painted to use as a private car after he'd dragged his brushes across it. Whehter you like them or not is a different matter.

I went on Sunday and most were stunning - the Koons GT car was incredible..well worth a trip.

The artist is first given a maquette (basically a 1/5 model of their designated car) upon which they work their magic.  The result is sent back to BMW for board approval (Andy Warhol's first two submissions were rejected, for example).  In 7 of the 16 cases, the actual painting of the car was not done by the artist but by Walter Maurer, a specialist painter who translated the artists' visions onto the full-size car bodies (and in the case of the racing cars, onto spare panels in case of damage).  The other cars were done by the artists themselves or in conjunction with Maurer.  Warhol famously completed his in 28 minutes, whereas others have taken many weeks.  Like most modern racing cars, the Koons car is a vinyl wrap rather than paint, although it is clear-coated. However it is the artist's vision which is what makes the car special; the method of transferring it to the bodyshell is essentially irrelevant.

Hockney would not have done very much driving in his 850 after it was painted; maybe for a promo but not for long.  Rauschenberg drove his creation from his studio to the airport to be flown to Germany.  Hockney was given another 850 CSi as payment; it was modified with an integrated water bowl for his dachshunds.  The artists generally get a BMW as payment for their work, although Warhol only requested that BMW fly him to Munich to paint his car.  They don't get a 'cheque in the post'.

If you are a petrolhead and are currently in London, it really is an exhibition worth seeing.

Nic has posted a blog about this in the blog section. Nobody knows this. It just shows how absolutely, incontravertably and undeniably appalling this website is. It is totally shit in every way. Why can we STILL not post on the road tests? Arggggh...