This is part car, part art!
While this is not really a new but rather growing trend, Art Cars are becoming more and more commonplace in both the automotive and art communities. In fact there are museums and parades dedicated to celebrating the movement and some automakers, such as BMW and Porsche, have offered their contributions.
Purists and traditional automotive enthusiasts may or may not understand the movement yet what Art Car artists are doing is not far off from what many in the automotive community have been doing for decades. Although the growing trend in Art Cars is moving towards a more extreme level of personal expression, it could be said that aftermarket car designers are accomplishing the same goal of taking something made in a factory and adding personality that can’t be put there by an assembly line.
The history of this growing trend can be traced back to the 1960’s with customized Volkswagen vans and, perhaps the first sports car entry, Janis Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356. In the 1990s, it really picked up speed, with many big names, such as Larry Fuente, David Best, and Harrod Blank making contributions. A notable early attempt at the up and coming medium was when pop-artist Peter Max purchased a VH1 giveaway collection of Classic Corvettes to be used as a canvas, an idea that never came to fruition.
Much of the time, art cars are owned, driven, and displayed by their creators who are often lesser-known artists but names such as Andy Worhal and Roy Lichtenstein have created some examples in the past.
One of the most recent examples of modern automotive art work is this Porsche Taycan 4S. This groundbreaking electric vehicle is wrapped in, hyperrealist artist, Richard Phillips’ ‘Queen Of The Night’ painting. RM Sotheby’s is offering this stunning Porsche art car without reserve at its upcoming April, 2021 auction and proceeds from the sale will benefit Switzerland’s cultural creatives that have been affected by the pandemic.
