Author(s): Renate Wiehager

Art

"I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals," Roland Barthes famously said. "I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object." For evidence of this dictum, one need look no further than "Cars," the 1986-87 series of silkscreen prints and paintings that Andy Warhol (1928-1987) executed at the behest of Mercedes-Benz in honor of the esteemed German automaker's centenary. This volume of the same name collects Warhol's silkscreens together with the work of three other artists featuring Mercedes-Benz automobiles: drawings and airbrush paintings by Robert Longo (born 1953), videos by Sylvie Fleury (born 1961) and Vincent Szarek (born 1973), who takes design elements from the Mercedes-Benz SLR as the starting point for the sculptures depicted here.