Andy Warhol

Mercedes-Benz Formel-I-Rennwagen W 196 R Stromlinie (1954), 1986

With his 1986/87 Cars series Andy Warhol holds an outstanding position in the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection. This was his last series of pictures, commissioned by the company on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the motor car, but never completed. 80 pictures were planned, intended to record the history of the motor car from the Daimler Motor Coach and the Benz Patent Motor Car dating from 1886 to the present day, using 20 selected Mercedes types. Only 36 pictures and 13 large-format drawings representing eight different models were finished. Warhol completed three additional large formats in the last two weeks before his death on 22nd February. The subject of Warhol’s Cars series is the automobile as a fetish of an expanding consumer society. As the artist put the brand Mercedes-Benz in the context of art, in the context of the ‘Warhol aura’ he managed to bring together two high-class products. The name Warhol has a ‘mythic’ attraction within the context of arts, as the attendances of his exhibitions are showing; just as the brand Mercedes-Benz in its context, which has—symbolized by the star—a constant field of connotations in the consumer society of the 20th century: beautiful, fast, modern, high-quality.