Driving Color

I had the pleasure of stumbling upon this art show in the Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Station. The BMW Art Car show - where for the past 34 years BMW racing cars have been used as canvases by some of our most celebrated artists. This is an installation of four of the actual cars painted by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschen, and Roy Lichtenstein within the last 34 years of this tradition.

In addition there is a photographic and film installation of work done by contemporary South African artist Robin Rhode - where he infused this now traditional practice with new perspective and creativity "where the car is the brush, not the canvas". If you're in New York - go check it out - plus it's FREE!

Check out these photos I took while I was there. Thank goodness I had my little point and shoot with me:

As the artist explains:

"This work is an expression of painting in action - my hope is to communicate the power and thrill inherent in the creation of art", the artist said in a press release. "For me, the use of an untraditional paintbrush like a high performance car is a great way to investigate the relationship between emotion, technology and industrial creativity."

I loved this work - not because I'm a car lover or art fanatic - but because of what this artist was trying to do; to explore new life, to create beauty using such an aggressive method, such a hard and unchanging machine in producing infinite fluidity. It's a metaphor for something that I'm trying to work out here - like a the way fine aged wines are used analogously to describe the intriguing complexities of mature beings.
Photo by Zack Newmark

To create is to express, to communicate, to search for, find, or to give love. It's also a way to scream, curse, condemn, hate, paralyze, shock, or sabotage even. No matter what the creator or beholder gets out of it, "art" has the ability explore the full emotional, cognitive, and spiritual landscape, and while on the journey may liberate or devastate.

This show did neither for me I'll admit.

But when you think about it - cars, and the speeds they can reach have come to symbolize boundlessness, freedom, escape from conformity reaching into new unknown stretches of the reality - like that meditative longing mantra we Westerners are familiar with... 'just me and the road...'

And so, watching the cars create those lines on a 200 x 100 ft canvas (see video below) certainly made me think about the boundlessness that creativity has to offer - even and maybe especially when produced by a car...




For more on this check out:

World Car Fans

Keep an eye out for Denis Hopper's photos documenting this work in Vanity Fair! Yes Denis Hopper the actor. He's a shooter too. :)