When artist Jeff Koons was asked to design a BMW Art Car in the late 2000s, he considered three concepts. “I made Plan A, Plan B and Plan C,” said Mr. Koons.
Since its inception in 1975, the Art Car program has commissioned top artists—including Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cao Fei—to create one-off iterations of a BMW vehicle, museum-quality pieces to be showcased or played with. The race car that Mr. Koons unveiled in 2010, had a breezy riot of brightly colored stripes. This design, he said, was Plan B.
Plan C didn’t hold Mr. Koons’ interest, so he rejected it. But Plan A stayed with him. “I wanted to make a car that, when it drove by, would become pop-pop-pop,” he said.
Now, a decade later, he has brought that vision to life with the 8 by Jeff Koons, a limited edition of 99 specially designed and equipped versions of BMW’s swoopy, four-door, 8-Series Gran Coupe sports sedan. This car was virtually unveiled on Wednesday in connection with the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, of which BMW is an official partner. In the United States, each example costs $350,000.
BMW has had success with similar limited editions, including a planned (pandemic interrupted) series of 500 M2 sports coupes designed by the artist Lenny McGurr, known as Futura, and a series of 150 M4 Competition sports coupes created with Ronnie Fieg of the streetwear brand Kith.
As one of the world’s best-known living artists, Mr. Koons cachet to the offer. “It’s good marketing for the company,” said Linda Yablonsky, an art critic and author of an upcoming biography of Mr. Koons. “But Jeff himself is really an evangelist for art. He wants to see art in everyone’s life. It doesn’t have to be his own, but he wants everyone to connect with art in some way because he believes it will do for them what it does for him – improve their lives.”
Discussions between BMW and Mr. Koons about the production of a limited-edition vehicle for sale to the public date back more than a decade. But it was unclear how this collaboration would take shape.
“I thought it would be one of these balloon dog-colored cars – bright yellow, bright red, bright blue,” said Thomas Girst, BMW’s head of cultural engagement, referring to the artist’s signature high-gloss sculptures, done in high-gloss polished stainless steel.
Mr Koons had another idea in mind. “I started working with a kind of rectangular design that became this kind of air that I incorporated, this emphasis on strength. And I use other visual ways to communicate energy and speed, and that excitement of movement,” he said.
But the bold linear graphics, bright colors and animated stars and explosions aren’t just superficial peacock. “When I drive by and someone says, ‘Hey, look at that,’ it’s not just about spreading feathers,” said Mr. Koons. “They see something that’s very visceral, and it’s visual.”
The design conveys a sense of vibrant emotionality, a fascination rooted in delight and joy. This sensibility continues in the interior, with its harlequin-like arrangement of contrasting colors and textures, all chosen by Mr. Koons.
The finishes are labor intensive. The paint on any car requires an 11-step process, including painting by hand. According to BMW, it is the most complex paint job ever performed on any of its series-produced road cars, taking 300 hours to complete each vehicle. (During one of Mr. Koons’s visits to the factory, according to Mr. Girst, the paint shop workers asked him to sign their atomizer. “And he did,” Mr. Girst said.)
Mr Koons has experimented with similar concepts, on a completely different vehicle. “It kind of looks like the paint job he gave the Guilty, a yacht he designed for Greek collector Dakis Joannou,” Ms Yablonsky said. “Jeff based it on World War I, dazzling naval camouflage, and combined that with a sort of tribute to Roy Lichtenstein, one of his artistic heroes,” she continued.
“So the bright colors of this car and the exploding, cartoonish Pop graphics go really well with his art,” she said. “And certainly, like Jeff himself, it’s very optimistic.” She added: “I’m curious to see what it looks like in motion.”
Soon this wish will be granted to Mrs. Yablonsky and other New Yorkers. It is planned that Mr. Koons will drive an 8 of Jeff Koons through Manhattan at the end of March and deliver the car to Rockefeller Center, where it will be on display from March 31 to April 4. At the end of the exhibition, this car will be auctioned by Christie’s, with the proceeds donating to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a charity that Mr Koons has often supported.
To show the car to collectors around the world, further premieres are planned this spring and summer (without Mr. Koons) in the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Belgium, China, France and England.
“There is already a lot of demand in the market, so we are confident that this car will sell out very quickly,” said Mr Girst.
Mr Koons also gets his own 8 from Jeff Koons. He said he was looking forward to driving the car “in New York, and from New York to Pennsylvania,” where he has a weekend home — his grandfather’s ranch.
This will be a major change from his usual ride. Since Mr. Koons has eight children and often travels with them, their friends, his wife and a nanny, he usually drives a 13-passenger Mercedes van.
“My kids say, ‘Dad, you should buy a sports car,'” he said. “But I like to be with my family. I enjoy being with them.” Since the 8 Series Gran Coupé has four seats, it lends itself to such togetherness. “So I ended up with the sports car I can see myself driving,” he said.
Does this vehicle rise to the level of art? “It’s a car conceived by an artist,” said Ms. Yablonsky. “But it’s still a car. A functional object. Most art functions no differently than art.”
BMW and Mr Koons remain open to future cooperation. “I think the story with Jeff is definitely an ongoing one,” Mr. Girst said. “The future is definitely electric, so why not, without promising anything, why not explore this further? There are certainly new challenges in electric car design, and new ways for artists to help address these challenges.”