Mercedes and the artist and film director Julian Schnabel announced a partnership at the recent Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. The deal involves Maybach, the? company’s high-end brand, and a piece by Mr. Schnabel named “Queequeg — The Maybach Sculpture.”
Stadiums, museum galleries, professorships and curator slots often carry the names of sponsors and donors, but I’m not familiar with a work of art carrying a corporate name.
Mr. Schnabel, 59, was one of the most prominent heroes of the 1980s art world, which saw prices soar. His trademark paintings incorporated pieces of broken plates. But Mr. Schnabel, who has directed a short film documenting the Maybach brand, may be better known as a filmmaker. His first film was “Basquiat,” made in 1996, about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Mr. Schnabel also gave the actor Javier Bardem his breakthrough role in “Before Night Falls.” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” received four Academy Award nominations. Mr. Schnabel’s new film, called “Miral,” is set to open next March.
The two-piece Maybach sculpture is named after the harpoon thrower of Herman Melville’s novel “Moby Dick,” and the top of the piece vaguely resembles a whale’s tail. At 3,280 pounds, the bronze-and-steel sculpture weighs about as much as an SLK sports car. The work will be part of a major retrospective of the artist’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
In addition, during Maybach Night at Art Basel, five Schabel pieces were auctioned off to benefit the J/P Haitian Relief Organization Foundation, established by Mr. Schnabel’s longtime friend Sean Penn.
Mr. Schnabel will also work with a program of the Wilhelm & Karl Maybach Foundation to mentor and support talented young artists.
“The Maybach Foundation’s concept of mentoring also carries great significance, as I have always felt it was important to support and promote young, talented artists,” Mr. Schnabel said in a news release. “And older artists should encourage younger ones.”
Maybach also announced a partnership with the Louvre in Paris, in which the automaker will sponsor sculpture exhibitions inside the museum’s signature glass pyramid. That space has not previously been used to display art, but it will now house a rotating series of works by artists supported by Maybach. The program will begin in January with a sculpture by Tony Cragg, an English artist, which will remain on display until October 2011. (Some of Mr. Cragg’s earlier sculptures include an assemblage of small toys including plastic cars.)
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