A journalist, exhibition organiser and writer, Girst joined BMW in 2003 to develop its cultural role. With a strong emphasis of making the arts accessible, BMW backs contemporary music in museums, brain-storming on urban-living and the role of art, and two major museum partnerships: with the Tate in London and the Guggenheim in New York.  

The European agency that advises corporations on art sponsorship, Causales, has just awarded Girst the title of European Cultural Manager of the Year. Perhaps BMW’s most famous cultural product has been the hybridisation of BMW cars with art. Girst revealed the story behind these cars to our sister paper, The Art Newspaper Russia.

 

Thomas Girst:

Thomas Girst (Image: Courtesy of BMW Group)

I knew about BMW's Art Cars even before I joined BMW. I've always been excited by the story behind them, and it was amazing to take over the project because it began thanks to the racing-car driver Hervé Poulain rather than my colleagues in the PR department. 

Poulain shared his love of racing cars with his passion for art by people such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Alexander Calder, all friends of his. BMW promised that if he joined their team, he would get his cars decorated by artists—they never thought it would turn into anything serious, but the project became a success and Hervé the public's darling. 

When we select artists for the project, it doesn't mean that someone from BMW or I just talk to them; we have people who know a lot about contemporary art and we trust their judgement. We also aim to involve participants from all continents. 

We give them the M6 GT3 racing car to decorate—we decided once and for all that this was the model to be decorated. The project usually involves one artist a year, but BMW celebrated its 100th in 2016, so we decided to choose two artists this time. 

I think an extra twist in this story is that one of these two participants is the young Chinese artist Cao Fei and the other is one of the fathers of Modern conceptual art, John Baldessari, of the US. But this is a dream team.

 

Would it be possible for activists or, say, performance artists to join the BMW Art Car Project? You wrote a book about Dadaists, after all.

 

I've written three books about Marcel Duchamp. I think that art evolves and it's no longer about colouring cars—Cao Fei, for example, works with virtual reality. Because art evolves and our Art Cars Project evolves too, I exclude nothing. One thing I do know, though, is that we will continue to reject anything to do with pornography or racism; that is not the kind of collaboration we are looking for.

 

I think it's quite interesting that performance art is gaining so much momentum at a time when we literally live on social networks. It seems as though the public and pundits have a huge need to see, feel, and even smell; to be part of something human, something that creates an impression. What can be more beautiful than choreography, the movement of body in space? But BMW has partnered with London's Tate Gallery, where we run the BMW Tate Live Programme, which is all about performance art, so I imagine that performance artists will want to join this programme rather than work with cars.

 

How about the look of the car, from engine to hood? Is it design or is it art?

 

This is a question of terminology. As a journalist, you must have noticed that some words are used just about everywhere these days; for example, everyone is curating something. The same goes for art. I personally believe that the making of a car is more of a design thing. As our designer Karim Habib puts it, a car is a great deal of teamwork by hundreds and thousands of interior and exterior parts and materials. To some extent, design is dictated by engineering and to some extent, by us. This is why, when a car manufacturer starts talking about cars as an art form, I find it a bit presumptuous. 

At the same time, I have no problem with artists talking about the art of car-making. The Manifesto of Futurism said a racing car that "seems to run on shrapnel" is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. 

Here at BMW, we certainly see Art Cars as rolling sculptures. There is a century-old history of artists being fascinated by mobility, speed, and sound, all attributes of the car. Apart from our Art Cars Series, there are hundreds of other examples of how great artists worldwide work with this subject, so of course it’s art. As the corporation's employee, I do believe that a car is a form of art. We create some of the greatest designs on the planet, so why not call a spade a spade?