Today, BMW and Jeff Koons unveiled the preliminary designs for the company’s 17th Art Car, which will appear on June 1 at the Centre Pompidou before heading to Le Mans, France, to be entered as car #79 in the city's legendary 24-hour endurance race.

Koons joins predecessors Alexander Calder (who designed the inaugural Art Car in 1975), Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, and other legendary artists who have participated in the 35-year-old project. Warhol’s edition, completed in 1979, was the last Art Car to appear in the legendary Le Mans race, a fact that seemed to delight Koons as he made his presentation alongside Alain Seban, president of the Centre Pompidou; BMWNorth America president Jim O’Donnell; and BMW Motorsport director Mario Theissen.

With its riot of colors and Pop sensibility, two artistic gestures dear to Koons, the car’s design looks as if a psychedelic rainbow had exploded on its roof as it moved along a racetrack at high speed. The effect was apparently created within the Koons factory — which ARTINFO visited back in February — by computer programs able to model the way that light bends. Christmas lights also served as an inspiration for the design, according to the artist.

Koons married this high-contrast, raw-energy design — a “winning aesthetic," he said — to an ultralight-weight paint in order to give Andy Priaulx, the British racing phenom who will drive the car in Le Mans, a competitive advantage. "Winning is the most important thing,” the artist declared at the conference. (“He looks like one of the car executives!” a person sittingnext to ARTINFO noted.)