August 2023

Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands

Installation view, Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, April 5—August 28, 2023, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

Fondation Louis Vuitton curator Olivier Michelon discusses Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, the most comprehensive exhibition of the artists’ collaborative works ever shown.

From 1984 to 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) produced approximately 160 canvases together. Fondation Louis Vuitton recently presented Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, the most comprehensive exhibition ever dedicated to this collaborative body of work. Curated by Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer in association with Fondation Louis Vuitton curator Olivier Michelon, the exhibition brought together more than three hundred works and documents, including eighty paintings signed jointly.

Interview by Dan Golden

I’d love to start our conversation with an introduction to the exhibition.

This exhibition is focused on the collaborations made by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol between 1983 and 1985. We are presenting around half of the 160 paintings they made together. This is the core of this exhibition, which retraces this extraordinary artistic adventure and also helps thinking of it in the broader context of the New York art scene of the early 1980s.

Please tell me about the curation of the exhibition.

This exhibition was curated with Dieter Buchhart and Anna-Karina Hofbauer. They were already curators of the retrospective devoted to Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2018. At that time, we exhibited some of Basquiat’s collaborations with Warhol, but they were seen in the context of Basquiat’s own work. As we worked on the exhibition, we realized that the joint production was about something else, about “another artist”, neither Basquiat nor Warhol. Bruno Bischofberger’s visit to Paris speeded things up, and the decision to do this collaborative exhibition was finally taken at the opening of the Basquiat retrospective.

Installation view, Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, April 5—August 28, 2023, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

How did you and your team approach developing an exhibition of this scale?

The exhibition features over 450 items, including photographs and archives. All this is presented in 11 rooms, with even more sections across the Foundation’s four floors, giving a total exhibition space of 3,500 meters squared. The building designed by Frank Gehry for the Foundation is an incredible tool for making exhibitions, but you also have to play with its own rhythm. One of the main challenges is to get visitors from one floor to the next. This led us to create a narrative thread in the exhibition, a certain linearity but also, as in a film, new starts.

Installation view, Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, April 5—August 28, 2023, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

Were there any particular challenges you can share in mounting this show?

The COVID-19 epidemic obviously complicated matters, and we are indebted to the lenders for their long-term trust. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has been an incredible support. But with the notable exception of this institution, very few works are in public collections. Dieter and Anna’s work has also been to convince the owners of these paintings, work by work, to lend them. That was the only way to bring together what will undoubtedly remain the most important exhibition devoted to these collaborations to date.

Can you provide some insight into the relationship between Warhol and Basquiat? How did each fuel the other?

So many things. There’s their mutual fascination with their works, characters, and stories. Warhol was a model for Basquiat. He invented a new relationship with popular culture. He remained the symbol of the mythical New York underground of the 1960s while at the same time being a famous character in magazines and TV. With Basquiat, Warhol rediscovered a sense of urgency and ebullience, as well as the freedom to paint. Basquiat proudly said that he was the one to have got Warhol to hold a paintbrush again.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Arm and Hammer II, 1984-1985, acrylic, silkscreen ink, and oil stick on canvas, 65 3/4 x 112 inches, Collection Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland, ©The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by ADAGP, Paris 2023

What was the significance of Bruno Bischofberger to Basquiat and Warhol’s relationship and collaboration?

We are honored to have Bruno Bischofberger as a special advisor for this exhibition. He is central to the relationship between the two artists. He officially introduced Basquiat to Warhol. Prior to this meeting in 1982, Basquiat had approached Warhol several times, but with no real exchanges. He needed the trust of his brilliant dealer. In 1983, Bischofberger asked Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Warhol to work together on 15 works. It was at this point that Basquiat and Warhol understood the pleasure of working together.

“Warhol was a model for Basquiat. He invented a new relationship with popular culture. He remained the symbol of the mythical New York underground of the 1960s.”

Is there a specific work in the exhibition that stands out for you?

Difficult… 6.99, which closes the exhibition. Warhol kept this work in his private living room at the Factory, and it is clearly the one in which the two artists’ work is deeply intertwined, even to the point of intimacy, if we refer to the scars Basquiat drew on it. Those scars are like seams in a patchwork; they are marks of a painting made of fragments and repaints, but they also refer to the scarred bodies of the two artists. In 1968, Warhol was shot. By a miracle, he survived, but that left him with serious physical scars. The same year, Basquiat was hit by a car and had his spleen removed.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, 6.99, 1985, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 117 x 161 inches, Nicola Erni Collection. Photo: ©Reto Pedrini Photography, ©The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by ADAGP, Paris 2023

Basquiat and Warhol’s collaborative paintings are enormous in scale. What do you think was the significance of them working so large?

Warhol’s studio isn’t called the Factory by coincidence. The production that came out of it competed with the modern world - the cinema and advertising. In the 1980s, Warhol’s works reached gigantic formats. This also made them an incredible medium for Basquiat, as these works are like walls or even like paths. Basquiat often painted on the ground.

What was the public/critical reaction to Basquiat and Warhol’s collaboration when the work was created and shown?

Bad. The question is whether these paintings have actually been seen. Critics have projected onto them what they think of the two men: an established artist in search of inspiration and youth. An ambitious young man determined to take some of his elder’s success. Basquiat was perceived as being instrumentalized by Warhol. Today, many of our visitors ask us, “What did Warhol do in his paintings?”

“With Basquiat, Warhol rediscovered a sense of urgency and ebullience, as well as the freedom to paint.”

Installation view, Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands, April 5—August 28, 2023, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

How do you view Basquiat and Warhol’s collaboration from a contemporary perspective? How might we reconsider or reapproach the work through a modern lens?

The collaborations take place at a special moment in the history of media beyond painting. In 1982, the launch of the CD marked the first massive domestic use of digital reproduction, and everything was about to accelerate. Images soon followed. The copy/paste that is so familiar to us was anticipated by Basquiat and Warhol in their paintings. They were ahead of our digital landscape.

Will the show travel elsewhere after it closes at the end of August?

In October, the Brant Foundation in New York will present an exhibition devoted to these collaborations, also organized by Dieter Buchhart, but it’s not a touring exhibition in the strict sense.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Paris
April 5—August 28, 2023

Fondation Louis Vuitton
@fondationlv

Olivier Michelon
@oliviermichelon

Olivier Michelon at the public preview of the exhibition Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 hands. ©Fondation Louis Vuitton/Jean Picon/SAYWHO

Olivier Michelon is a prominent French art historian and curator at Fondation Louis Vuitton.