Hasta La Ideas

Jeff Koons fondles an inflatable in his Manhattan studio last night, where guests including BMW President Jim O’Donnell, architect Richard Meier, and every museum director in a 50-mile radius celebrated the announcement that Koons will create the next BMW Art Car.

Last March, when a selection of BMW Art Cars were exhibited at New York’s Grand Central Station, we tried our best to convince the impeccably dressed BMW execs to spill the beans on who would follow in the footsteps of such artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jenny Holzer. Despite our eyelash-batting pleas (in charmingly bungled German), they would divulge only that “plans were underway” for the next creative customization. Well, now the secret is out: Jeff Koons is creating the seventeenth BMW Art Car as the program celebrates its thirty-fifth year. The announcement was made last night at a event held at Koons’s Manhattan studio (as followers of the UnBeige Twitter feed already know). “The entire BMW Group is looking forward to this celebration of contemporary art by Jeff Koons, one of the greatest artists of our time,” said BMW president Jim O’Donnell in making the announcement. Koons, who first expressed his desire to create a BMW Art Car in 2003, said that he is honored by the commission. Stay tuned to UnBeige for details on the model Koons will be working with as well as his preliminary design (is chromium steel too on the nose?). The completed car will be unveiled later this year.

“I tried to portray speed pictorially,” said Andy Warhol of the BMW M1 he transformed into an Art Car in 1979, pictured above on exhibit in Grand Central Station’s Vanderbilt Hall last spring. “If a car is moving really quickly, all the lines and colors are blurred.” (Photos: UnBeige)

Previously on UnBeige: