Julie Mehretu’s BMW Art Car #20 Brings the M Hybrid V-8 to Le Mans

BMW’s 20th Art Car puts a contemporary artwork on a 640-horsepower M Hybrid V-8 headed for the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans. Julie Mehretu’s design treats the race car as part of the artwork itself: digitally altered images, layered dot grids, bright veils of color and black marks flow across its bodywork. The car, carrying number 20, was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris ahead of the race on June 15–16.

That idea gives this car a place in a tradition that has connected BMW’s racing program with artists since 1975. The first Art Car was a BMW 3.0 CSL commissioned by driver Hervé Poulain and painted by Alexander Calder for that year’s Le Mans race. Calder, known chiefly for sculpture, had also painted a Braniff Airways DC-8 in 1973; its bright finish was called “Flying Colors.” The BMW project became one of his final works before his death in 1976.

Mehretu, a New York-based artist born in Ethiopia, came to the project with an interest in the people and processes behind a modern endurance racer. She attended the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January and watched BMW’s cars compete. “Designers, engineers, aerodynamicists and so many other creative minds are working on taking this vehicle to its extreme,” she said. “When it goes out on the racetrack now, so many dreams will be fulfilled.”

Artwork shaped around the car

The process began with photographs altered digitally and assembled in layers. Dot patterns and colored veils sit alongside the black marks associated with Mehretu’s work. Rather than treating the car’s surfaces as a flat canvas, she used 3D mapping to fit the design to the M Hybrid V-8’s contours.

Her description of the concept starts with a model of the BMW in her studio, set in front of one of her paintings. She imagined the car passing through that image and being changed by it, calling the result a “remix, a mash-up of the painting.” In her account, the image seemed to drip onto the car; even the BMW’s kidney-shaped front openings appeared to take in the painting. The design’s layered, shifting look follows that premise: the machinery becomes part of the visual composition.

The choice of a race car matters. Endurance racing puts the artwork in a setting where speed, changing light and long hours on track affect how it’s seen. The paintwork also has to sit across body panels and aerodynamic surfaces built for competition. BMW hasn’t supplied details here about the materials or application process, so the practical focus is the visual result and the car’s stated race role: an M Hybrid V-8 with 640 horsepower, entered at Le Mans as number 20.

A collection with a racing history

BMW Art Cars are selected by an international panel of judges, and the collection has included artists with sharply different approaches. Andy Warhol’s fourth Art Car is among the best known. He painted the BMW M1 himself, applying 13 pounds of paint in 28 minutes. Warhol said he wanted to make speed visible, with lines and colors blurred by motion. The car finished sixth overall at Le Mans in 1979.

The first four Art Cars raced at Le Mans. That pattern paused in 1982, when Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs painted flames on a production BMW 635 CSi for car number five. The Le Mans connection returned with Art Car number 15 in 1999. Jenny Holzer, whose work is known for its use of words, placed phrases across the BMW V-12 LMR: “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT” on its top, “LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL” on the rear wing and “THE UNATTAINABLE IS INVARIABLY ATTRACTIVE” along the driver’s side.

Mehretu’s car joins a set of Art Cars that have raced at Le Mans, including Calder’s 1975 entry, Frank Stella’s 1976 car, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1977 car, Warhol’s 1979 M1, Holzer’s 1999 V-12 LMR and Jeff Koons’s 2010 car. Their varied treatments make the collection a record of different ways artists have responded to the same challenge: making a recognizable racing machine carry a distinct visual idea.

On the way to Le Mans

Before reaching the French circuit, the car was scheduled to appear at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este on Italy’s Lake Como. Mehretu was due to present the 20th Art Car at the gathering, alongside historic BMW Art Cars displayed at Villa Erba, also on Lake Como. That setting brings the new entry together with several earlier cars that made their racing debuts at Le Mans.

The race crew named for the number 20 car is Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns and René Rast. The reported horsepower figure and driver lineup put the focus on the car’s competition role, while the artwork gives the entry a second identity beyond its place in BMW’s racing effort. Its performance will be judged on track; its design asks viewers to see the car as a moving image as well as a machine.

The collection’s history shows that those roles can coexist. Warhol’s M1 paired a hands-on paint job with a sixth-place Le Mans finish, while Holzer made the bodywork carry language. Mehretu’s approach instead layers a painted image over the car’s form, using digital alteration and 3D mapping to make the two interact. The next test for Art Car number 20 is whether that interaction holds up at race speed and across an endurance event.

Read more about the BMW Art Cars, Andy Warhol’s Art Car, Frank Stella and Jeff Koons. BMW’s collection is also listed here.