BMW Art Car -- Andy Warhol

BMW art car by Andy Warhol, 1979

BMW M1 group 4 racing version specifications:

6 cylinder in-line engine
Twin overhead camshafts
Displacement: 3500 cc
Power output: 470 bhp
Top speed: 307 km/h

About Andy Warhol:

Another pioneer of the American Pop Art Movement, Andy Warhol: artist, avant-garde filmmaker and social icon, embraced consumerism and mass production as the sign of our times and reflected it in his art-making process. His famous high-colour-contrast silk-screened paintings of everyday consumer products or celebrity images in repeat constantly questioned the elitist nature of fine art, cheekily alternating between making art of mass produced items and mass producing art itself. Always a contradiction with his art as his lifestyle, with his BMW art car, Warhol was the first artist to depart from the method of previous art car designers who expressed their designs through a scaled-down model, and then were assisted by technicians for the final execution. With the BMW M1, he returned to an abstract expressionist mode, personally executing the art work, taking paint, brush and finger to the car itself in his effort to depict speed pictorially.