Art and automobiles with Mercedes-Benz and Virgil Abloh

How do you tell apart an art connoisseur from a casual dilettante?

An art connoisseur will buy a painting of a Mercedes for the same price that the dilettante will buy an actual Mercedes.

With a twinge of guilt, we declare that we’d prefer driving an actual Mercedes (thank you very much) to a mere painting of it. Still, that doesn’t mean one can’t aspire to higher spiritual standards. After all, car creation demands both science and art.

On September 8, 2020, Mercedes, in collaboration with famous artist, architect, and fashion designer Virgil Abloh, will premier project Geländewagen: a life-sized painting of the Mercedes class G model.

This massive endeavour will move to auction, with the proceeds going towards supporting the global art community, which has suffered at the hands of COVID-19. The highest bidder will also get a backstage pass to see Virgil Abloh in the skin.

On a related note, artwork at auctions sell for notoriously high prices. But hey, if you’ve got the moolah, get the painting, and then get the same model, in the same colour, and that’s a garage worth showing off any day. As they say, you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Who is Virgil Abloh?

If you don’t know the first thing about art but are passionate about racial equality and diversity, you still should pay attention to this event. Virgil Abloh presents a rare case of an African American man beating structural racism on his rise to prominence as an artist.

From his humble upbringing, to interning at Fendi in Rome with Kanye West, and from desecrating deadstock Ralph Lauren shirts to founding “Off-White”, his journey is an inspiration to budding artists around the globe. Controversies aside, of course (err’one got problems).

Teaming up with Mercedes to bring art and automobiles together is just another step in Abloh’s glittering career. After all, he did skip his final critique at graduation to meet with Kanye West’s people and discuss a potential deal. It sure as hell paid off.

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