David Hockney BMW 850CSi Art Car Stars At Frieze London

BMW brings the spotlight to Frieze London with David Hockney’s BMW 850CSi Art Car, a “rolling sculpture” that swaps racing stripes for painterly storytelling. On show at The Peninsula London during the fair, the Hockney car—Art Car #14—puts the 850CSi’s long bonnet and broad flanks to work as a canvas, turning the coupé inside out with sketched engine forms on the bonnet, an outlined driver on the door, and the artist’s dachshund, Stanley, perched on the rear bench. Green sweeps along the body, suggesting passing scenery, so the car reads like motion captured on metal.

This London stop is part of the BMW Art Car World Tour, marking 50 years of the programme, with Frieze acting as a high-profile pit lane between global stages. Alongside the fair’s contemporary energy, the Hockney BMW underscores how surface, proportion and stance can carry narrative as well as speed. It follows landmark appearances from New York to Istanbul, joining a lineage that includes Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney himself and Jeff Koons—each using bodywork as a medium without blunting the car’s character.

Hockney’s treatment speaks the language of engineering as much as art. The 850CSi’s muscular haunches become frames for colour fields; panel gaps act like drawn lines; vents, light clusters and glasshouse are folded into the composition. The effect is almost X-ray: drivetrain hinted on the bonnet, occupant suggested in profile, cabin and landscape blending as if the coupé were transparent at speed. It’s a fresh take on perspective and movement—motoring viewed from the inside out.

Across Regent’s Park and Kensington, BMW’s cultural partnership meshes neatly with the capital’s autumn calendar, with curated talks and concierge shuttles keeping the art crowd on the move. The Peninsula hosts the Hockney BMW through early November, dovetailing with classic-car gatherings and auctions nearby, so sculpture, heritage and road craft share the same postcode. For visitors, it’s a rare chance to stand within arm’s length of an icon that usually lives behind ropes or in books—and to read a familiar grand tourer as a piece of contemporary art.

Half a century on from the first Art Car, the message remains clear: when the right artist meets the right shape, a car can carry more than passengers. Hockney’s BMW 850CSi proves it with grace—an everyday grand tourer reimagined as a moving canvas, equally at home under gallery lights or idling kerbside with the city reflected in its paint.