ONE hundred years after it first appeared, the Rolls-Royce Phantom remains perhaps an unexpected fixture in the story of modern art.
In 1955, Salvador Dali borrowed a black-and-yellow Phantom, filled it with cauliflowers and drove it to the Sorbonne to give a lecture, and in dramatic fashion, flung open the doors and let the vegetables spill onto the pavement. In further homage, years later, he etched a Phantom into a landscape, part of his Maldoror series.
Charles Sykes Poster. Image courtesy of Rolls-Royce
Andy Warhol, often described as Dalí’s successor, bought a 1937 Phantom in the ’70s, reworked as a shooting brake, and shipped it to New York, where it fit perfectly into his world of lavish parties, celebrities and an upscale social scene.
Other artists used the car differently, such as Dame Laura Knight, who turned hers into a mobile studio at Epsom and Ascot. Cecil Beaton and Pablo Picasso travelled in them, Peggy Guggenheim was collected in one, and whether for practical reasons or aesthetic ones, the car was a fixture in the lives of these celebrated creatives.
Charles Sykes. Image courtesy of Rolls-Royce
We saw the Phantom evolve from being transport to being the subject, as it’s been shown in galleries from the Saatchi to the Smithsonian, and it’s been painted, photographed and written into works by artists who usually had no interest in motors at all, but there the Phantom was.
It’s been linked to sculpture, too. Since 1911, every Phantom has carried the Spirit of Ecstasy, a piece by Charles Sykes, an artist trained at the Royal College of Art who was commissioned to create an emblem for the car; until 1948, each one was cast under his supervision, and most owners never realised they were driving a limited edition.
Rolls-Royce Phantom by Emmanuel Romeuf
To mark the centenary, Rolls-Royce has commissioned artists to create new works based on the Phantom’s role in contemporary art, one responding to Dali’s cauliflower performance, and the other will rework it through his infamous Pop Art vision.
by Felicity Carter
See more on rolls-roycemotorcars.com.