PHANTOM AT 100: A SILENT WITNESS TO A CENTURY OF ART – AutoMart Canada

• Rolls-Royce celebrates Phantom’s century-long presence in the art world
• How Phantom was connected to leading artists, and how it became
  art itself
• Art for every Phantom: Charles Sykes and the Spirit of Ecstasy mascot

“For 100 years, the Rolls-Royce Phantom has moved in the same
circles as the world’s leading artists. As a symbol of
self-expression, Phantom has often featured in incidents of creative
significance – many of them defining moments of the last decade. As
we mark Phantom’s centenary, it is the perfect time to reflect on
this motor car’s endlessly intriguing legacy and the artistic
personalities who played a role in shaping its story.”

Chris Brownridge, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Rolls-Royce has been associated with the greatest
names in contemporary art since its foundation. Masters including
Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Christian
‘Bébé’ Bérard and Cecil Beaton all travelled by Rolls-Royce. Dame
Laura Knight, the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal
Academy of Arts, even used a Rolls-Royce as a mobile studio, painting
from its interior at racecourses such as Epsom and Ascot. The world’s
most notable collectors, too, were drawn to the brand, among them
Jacquelyn de Rothschild, Peggy Guggenheim and Nelson Rockefeller.

However, it is Phantom, the marque’s pinnacle product which
celebrates its centenary in 2025, that is most closely linked to the
art world. Over eight generations and 100 years, this motor car has
been owned by some of the most famous creatives in modern history.
Phantom itself has been exhibited in galleries around the world as an
artwork in its own right – from institutional collections, such as
London’s Saatchi Gallery and the Smithsonian Design Museum in New
York, to countless independent galleries and exhibition spaces.

This enduring connection between Phantom and the art world
reflects a long tradition of creative exchange. Over the years,
Phantom has attracted the most vivid artistic imaginations, giving
rise to encounters that are as unexpected as they are unforgettable.

SALVADOR DALÍ, THE CAULIFLOWER, AND THE FROZEN PHANTOM

Anyone rejoicing in the title Salvador Domingo Felipe
Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol, is always likely
to attract attention. But the Spanish artist better known by his
abbreviated name, Salvador Dalí, nevertheless went out of his way to
occupy the limelight. Having shocked the art world with his surrealist
images of nightmarish landscapes, chimeric animals, suggestive food
and melting clocks, he was eager to bring his unique brand of excess
and eccentricity to a wider audience.

In the winter of 1955, he was asked to give a lecture at
Paris-Sorbonne University. Seeing a golden opportunity to create a
moment in modern art, Dalí borrowed a friend’s black and yellow
Phantom and filled it with 500kg (1,100lb) of cauliflowers.

After a wild ride through the streets of Paris in his
brassica-laden motor car, Dalí pulled up outside the university and
flung open the Phantom’s doors, sending the cauliflowers cascading to
the cold December ground. How many of the 2,000-strong audience now
remember his exposition on ‘Phenomenological Aspects of the
Paranoiac Critical Method’ is debatable, but his arrival before
the lecture became legendary.

To honour this defiantly surreal performance, Rolls-Royce has
commissioned a contemporary artist to create an original artwork
inspired by this gloriously eccentric, cauliflower-filled Phantom moment.

This memorable moment was not the only time Dalí immortalised
Phantom. An artwork he produced for a 1934 illustrated book titled
Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) incorporated
a surreal interpretation of Phantom. In this piece, Dalí depicts the
motor car stranded in a bleak, icy landscape, seemingly frozen in
desolation. The image is both elegant and eerie, epitomising Dalí’s
knack for juxtaposing opulence with the absurd.

ANDY WARHOL AND MORE THAN 15 MINUTES OF FAME

Dalí spent every autumn and winter in New York City,
where he based himself in a suite at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan.
It was here, in 1965, that he first met a young visual artist named
Andy Warhol. This seminal moment in art was captured by British
photographer David McCabe, who later recalled: “Dalí turned the whole
event into theatre. Andy was petrified”.

Seen by many as Dalí’s natural successor, Warhol became one of
the most influential artists of the 20^th century. Unlike
his mentor, however, he actually owned a Phantom; a 1937 model that
had been converted into a shooting brake in around 1947. In 1972,
Warhol and his Swiss agent, Bruno Bischofberger, happened to pass an
antique shop in Zurich where it was on sale. Warhol bought it on the
spot and shipped it to New York. He owned the car until 1978, when he
sold it to his friend and manager, Fred Hughes.

In tribute to Pop Art’s lasting impact, Rolls-Royce has
commissioned a contemporary artist to reimagine Phantom in the style
that propelled this bold style from Studio 54 into the cultural mainstream.

AN ARTWORK FOR EVERY PHANTOM: CHARLES SYKES AND THE SPIRIT OF ECSTASY

This tradition of artistic collaboration and
connection with the world’s most famous and provocative creatives
dates back to Rolls-Royce’s earliest days, when a fine artist would
sculpt the brand’s most enduring symbol.

Since 1911, Rolls-Royce motor cars have been graced with the
most famous and evocative mascot in the world: the Spirit of Ecstasy.
This defining feature of the brand’s iconography was originally
created by talented and prolific artist Charles Robinson Sykes.

Following a scholarship at the Royal College of Art in London,
in 1902 he was hired by The Hon. John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron
Montagu of Beaulieu, to provide the illustrated elements of his
magazine, The Car Illustrated. Later, Montagu asked Sykes to
create a series of paintings depicting his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts.
These images caught the attention of Claude ‘CJ’ Johnson, the marque’s
first commercial managing director, who commissioned six Sykes oils
showing Rolls-Royces arriving at locations including the opera, the
golf links, and the salmon stream, for the company’s 1910-11 catalogue.

Soon afterwards – and despite Sir Henry Royce’s antipathy to the
concept – CJ had decided Rolls-Royce needed an official mascot. He
commissioned Sykes to create a sculpture inspired by the imposing
Greek statue The Winged Victory of Samothrace, which he had
admired at the Louvre in Paris. Sykes captured its impact, but created
a more ethereal figure that better expressed his experience of
travelling in a Rolls-Royce. Indeed, his daughter Jo recalled that he
was “very impressed with the smoothness and speed of the car and
imagined that even so delicate a thing as a fairy could ride on the
bonnet without losing her balance”.

Whatever Sykes’ primary inspiration had been, CJ was delighted
with the new mascot and appointed Sykes as sole supplier in 1911. From
then on, Sykes personally supervised his production team, with his
daughter Jo succeeding him in 1928. Until Rolls-Royce took production
in-house in 1948, every Phantom owner may therefore have unknowingly
owned a Sykes original.

Though now best remembered for his work with Rolls-Royce, Sykes
enjoyed a successful career as an artist. His work remains highly
regarded and is held in several institutional collections, including
the British Museum and the V&A in London.

PHANTOM: A CANVAS AND A CATALYST

As Phantom enters its second century, its artistic
legacy feels more relevant than ever. For creatives and collectors, it
remains both a canvas and a catalyst that offers visionary thinkers
something rare: a form of expression that is personal, timeless, and
charged with purpose.