BLITZEN BENZ BANG. Daimler Art Collection

The Daimler Art Collection is regarded as one of the oldest and most important of Germany's corporate collections and at present contains approx. 1800 works. Originally the collection concentrated on abstract geometrical and minimalist art.

However, since the 1990s it has been supplemented by works which fall under the description of 'mixed media'. Some 300 of these are presented in this book, which covers artists such as Nam June Paik, John M. Armleder, David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Walter de Maria, Anthony Cragg, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and Sylvie Fleury. The book is divided up into the following categories:
- Car-related / Commissioned
- Commissioned Works
- Political Statement and Photography
- Pop Art und what came next
- Sculptures
- Situations and Ambient Art
- Video

Four typical examples are dealt with here:
The cover shows a still from the video work "Blitzen-Benz Bang" by Sylvie Fleury, a commission from 2005. In contrast to David Warhol, who described the commission he received from Daumler provocatively and pragmatically by saying: "I'm painting old Mercedeses for them", Sylvie Fleury treats the mythical automobile, represented here by a beautiful snow-white 1909 Benz, with irony - using rigid female models and industrious mechanics as spookily obsessive role clichés.

The New York artist Vincenz Szarek specialises in fibre-glass objects and work commissioned from him is also represented in the book, with the following commentary: "Speed, elegance, aerodynamics, luxury, sensuality, high-tech, glamor, independence, brilliance - faced with Vincent Szarek's metallic, gleaming objects the association spectrum opens out into a catalogue of terms that would do great credit to a prestigious modern lifestyle magazine. And it is not even surprising that his forms, partially borrowed from the outlines of tailor-made vehicles like racing cars or luxury limousines, can trigger such hedonistic reactions."

The mural "DC. Dame mi Carro" by Nic Hess is located on the stairway of the goup's HQ in Switzerland and with its alienated logos, comics and similar graphic elements is intended to mirror a convoluted motorway junction – witty, absurd and entirely free from any hierarchies.

However, my favourite is "Light Blue" by Francois Morellet, an installation made of bent blue argon tubes which is to be found in the atrium of the Debis building by Renzo Piano on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. The segments of a huge, gleaming blue circle unfold across the walls of the atrium, which in fact has the proportions of the nave of a church with its dimensions of 85 x 13 x 37 m (LxWxH), while at the same time the outline of the circle, which is controlled with geometric precision, creates an impression which is light, ethereal and almost as immaterial as a blue sky. Go and look at it if you can! And let's hope that Daimler will continue to collect works of art in spite of the crisis!

Facts
Author: Renate Wiehager (ed.), introduction by Tilman Osterwold et al., Text by Renate Wiehager, Contributions by Nadine Brüggebors, Claudia Seidel, Götz Adriani, Christian Ganzenberg, Wulf Herzogenrath, Gudrun Inboden, David Galloway, Ulrike Gehring, Pontus Hultén, Serge Lemoine, Ralph Melcher, Susanne Meyer-Büser
520 pages, 830 illustrations
25,0 x 29,5 cm, bound
Publisher: Verlag Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009
Publisher's recommended price: 68,- EUR
ISBN 978-3-7757-2310-7
Text German and English