“The BMW Art Car Project was originally conceived by the French racecar driver Hervé Poulain, who had the idea of inviting an artist to use an automobile as a canvas. In 1975, Poulain commissioned American artist Alexander Calder to paint his BMW racing car. Since then, prominent artists throughout the world have joined the elite cast of Calder, Stella, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg, and have designed sixteen BMW Art Cars, based on both racing and regular production vehicles. The most recent contributors to the BMW Art Car program are David Hockney (1995), Jenny Holzer (1999), and Olafur Eliasson (2007). New artists are chosen by a prestigious panel of international judges, and BMW is currently in discussions for the development of the seventeenth art car.”

…they can of course talk to either Tom Cramer (painter of my 1977 320i BMW Art Car, or myself if they want to see the interesting/creative ideas I have for a new photography-art car).

My art car as Urban camo in front of Tom Cramer’s mural:

Art car and mural, both by Tom Cramer

I still think my art car is the only one to be seen on Google Earth…

Art Car seen from Outer Space

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036. For more information about LACMA and its programming, call 323 857-6000 or visit lacma.org.

Museum Hours and Admission: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon–8 pm; Friday, noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesday.

Chronological list of all official BMW Art Cars:

Production cars:

• 1975 – Alexander Calder (USA) BMW 3.0 CSL
• 1976 – Frank Stella (USA) BMW 3.0 CSL
• 1977 – Roy Lichtenstein (USA) – BMW 320i Group 5 Race Version
• 1979 – Andy Warhol (USA) – BMW M1 Group 4 Race Version
• 1982 – Ernst Fuchs (A) – BMW 635 CSi
• 1986 – Robert Rauschenberg (USA) – BMW 635 CSi
• 1989 – Michael Jagamara Nelson (AUS) – BMW M3 Group A

Racing Cars:

• 1989 – Ken Done (AUS) – BMW M3 Group A Race Version
• 1990 – Matazo Kayama (J) – BMW 535i
• 1990 – César Manrique (E) – BMW 730i
• 1991 – A.R. Penck (D) – BMW Z1
• 1991 – Esther Mahlangu (ZA) – BMW 525i
• 1992 – Sandro Chia (I) – BMW Racing Touring Car

Prototypes:

• 1995 – David Hockney (GB) – BMW 850 Csi
• 1999 – Jenny Holzer (USA) – BMW V12 LMR
• 2006 – Olafur Eliasson (ISL) – BMW H2R

Art car and mural, both by Tom Cramer

If you missed it, the car is under the star in the center.

The Mural was painted by Tom Cramer in 1989 and is on NE Shaver near the intersection with N Williams.  The art car was painted in 2007.  Yesterday, I finally got a chance to visit the mural with the art car and take these snapshots.

Art Car and Mural in Portland

At some point, I will have to return with my real camera and do a serious shoot.

As you may know BMW has a long tradition of Art Cars.  In fact in 1977, BMW commissioned Roy Lichtenstein to paint a BMW 320i. That car was driven by Poulain & Mignot at Le Mans 24-hour race and finished first in class and 9th in overall finishes. Youtube on Lichtenstein car (auf Deutsch).

Art Car with gift of 3d Glasses

Yes, 3D glasses with a wonderful note written on them that said:

“Look at your car through these”

They had a great effect, so we took this combined portrait: 3D glasses, car, and me.

After trying the 3d glasses for the 1st time

Many many thanks to whoever left them!!!

In the next couple of days I’ll post images from the various gallery shows for this months 1st Thursday openings in Portland.

Art Car seen from Outer Space

I was showing a friend my new GPS-enabled phone and zooming in to a parking lot where I sometimes park, low and behold there was the art car from over a year ago captured by satellite imagery on google maps!

Art Car in Parking Lot

OK, honestly I know that these maps are a mix of satellite & plane images, but I’d like to think that this one was shot from outer space.

This was not a case of life imitating art or art imitating life. it was a case of art taking me to life in the mountains. Yes!

It was a sunny nice day to drive up and back. Though given the tiny patch of ice and how the car responded, I’m not sure that I’ll be taking it up on days when it is snowing. Three days of non-stop sunshine certainly made the roads pretty clear on the way up and down.

I noticed several taking photos of the car either on the drive or in the lot. Next time I’ll have my camera ready so I can take photos of those taking photos.

I had several interesting conversations throughout the day riding the lifts. Some of the topics were of course the weather and skiing but also conversations about Kashmir, K2, walk-abouts, Ghana, and many other things. I find Oregonians do a lot of interesting things. You can hear all about it once you get them talking.

The skiing was lots of fun throughout the day. The morning started a bit firm (icy) in the morning. So I stayed on the cord and ripped. After the Sun and warmth worked its magic the off-piste softened up. What followed were lots of shots down 4-bowl, powder keg, 1.5 bowl and many others.

They never managed to open up Heather Canyon due to A-Zone being just boilerplate ice all day. I had really hoped they would open it up so I could repeat some runs down the steepest part of pea-gravel ridge. Saturday, my buddy Dave and I hit it and the sun-bake on it was fantastic! Dave even said it was his best run of the year. Several weeks ago he went heli skiing at Kicking Horse so you know how sweet it was!

Eliasson started with the BMW H2R, an environmentally-friendly liquid-hydrogen-powered vehicle, striped it shell and transformed it. But it needs a special chilled environment maintain its 2-ton ice covering.

At SFMOMA can see Olafur Eliasson’s art car in a installation called “Your Tempo” (exhibit details) as well as his first American mid-career retrospective with works from the last 15 years called “Take Your Time” (exhibit details). At SFMOMA see “Your Tempo” until 13-Jan and “Take Your Time” until 24-Feb-08.

There is also a PORT review of the works.

Olafur Eliasson was selected by an international board of curators which met in April 2005 to discuss the future of the BMW Art Car Collection. The board consisted of: Bruce W. Ferguson, Dean of the Columbia University in New York, Pi Li from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Peking, Suzanne Pagé, Director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Larry Rinder, Dean of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Donna de Salvo, Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Prof. Dr. Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, Director of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Art Car corner

Some of you may have seen the Karmann Ghia in the photograph on the left around town (I haven’t seen it yet, but two of my friends have, including the photo on the left that is courtesy of LaValle Linn (copyright 2007). This is Tom’s brand new paint for his ‘65 Karmann Ghia.
If you’ve seen a BMW painted in a similar manner that was also the work of Tom Cramer, but I own the keys to that 320i art car. If you’ve been following this blog you know that I won it as part of the Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts opening their new place.

Last month, I exchanged emails with Tom Cramer about how to take care of my art car. He told me what kind of paint he used and that was all I needed to figure things out. I told him what a joy it was to drive around in the car and he said mentioned he missed driving art cars, I guess he got busy. Fantastic!

There is also a image of Tom in the process of painting my BMW 320i art car in the September ‘07 issue of the Portland Monthly (Vol 5, issue 9, page 48).

And if you want to see an even slicker madison-avenue-BMW ad on BMW art cars you can see it below:

It gives glimpses of these works:
Alexander Calder
Frank Stella
Roy Lichtenstein
Andy Warhol
Ernest Fuchs
Robert Rauschenberg
Ken Done
Michael Jagamara Nelson
Matazo Kayama
Cesar Manrique
Esther Mahlangu
A.R. Penck
Sandro Chia
David Hockney
Jenny Holzer

More at: http://www.bmwworld.com/artcars

Andrea’s work is going to be in a solo show as part of the International FotoFest show Houston next year. This curated festival is a big deal in International photography circles. I ran into Chris Rauschenburg a couple at last 1st Thursday and mentioned this to him he was pleased to hear about her acceptance. He mentioned that every important fine art photography curator is exposed to this work over this month-long festival. Andrea’s current work isn’t online yet, but I’ll let everyone know when it is.

Second, while driving the art car up the Hwy 26 off-ramp at the Sylvan exit an SUV was in front us. We were both turning and part way through the turn they slowed down, I decided just to pass.

As we passed a woman rolled down her window to say “…that’s my car”.

What? …then we realized who it could be.

Then when we were side by side she said “I donated that car, I’m so happy that you are out and using it.”

We waved and said thanks and headed off on our different ways.

so in a very short time I’ve been able connect with Tom Cramer (artist who painted the car), Anna Fidler (artist who almost bought the car years ago), and the woman who donated the car. This is soooo cool!

It seems beyond, of course, Portland artist Tom Cramer painting the car, the car may have crossed the path of another Portland artist. One of the service documents was a 2004 “consumer pre-purchase inspection” with the name “Anna Fidler” on it, could it be the same Anna Fidler who has had several shows at Pulliam Deffenbaugh? This would have been one year before she received her MFA from Portland State.

I wrote about Anna’s recent opening in my June 1st thur posting:

(excerpt)
Anna Fidler’s show rocked. They didn’t want me taking images so I’ll just point to “Theory of Levitation” which I really enjoyed and suggest you just go and stand in front of for a while.

It looks like the she didn’t buy the car as the owners at that time latter did the repairs that were indicated on the pre-purchase inspection form.

I’m still not sure if it is the same Anna, but it would be a fun little twist of art car history.