To coincide with the Basquiat x Warhol. Painting Four Hands exhibition, JAY-Z will give a celebratory concert to pay tribute to Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, on Friday 14 April 2023 at 9pm, in the Fondation’s Auditorium.
With the support of Tiffany & Co.
BASQUIAT x WARHOL
Painting Four Hands
From April 5 to August 28, 2023
(all courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton)
In spring 1985, Warhol told his gallerist Bruno Bischofberger that he and Basquiat had made numerous collaborations on their own initiative. They agreed to exhibit a selection of them at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Lower Manhattan. Basquiat chose Michael Halsband - whose work with singer Klaus Nomi had caught his attention - to take the photo for the poster. The image was to evoke a boxing match. On July 10, Basquiat and Warhol arrived at Halsband’s studio with gloves and shorts. Three of the images were finally selected to promote the exhibition; the photographer shares 86 of them here.
Designed in the late 19th century, the General Electric logo is one of the icons of the American way of life. From the 1950s, the brand could be found in every household. The omnipresence of the monogram logo, affixed to refrigerators as well as aircrafts engines, would be enough to justify Warhol choosing it,even if it were not coupled with a calligraphic game suited to the pleasure of painting. The two artists dedicated an entire series to it, one that is remarkable in its effects of transparency, juxtaposition, and inversion. Most of these works were started by Basquiat, who created his drawings using silkscreen, a technique that defined the work of his older counterpart.
Bernard Arnault, President of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, wrote in foreword to the exhibition, "Some forty years later, this exhibition is an invitation to live in the present and experience, in the Fondation’s galleries, one of the most intense artistic episodes of the second half of the twentieth century. Because by creating “with four hands,” the two artists not only expressed generosity and reciprocal confidence, they also invite us into their conversation. While working with Basquiat, Warhol stopped hiding behind the screen of his silkscreens. He once again picked up his brush to paint logos and newspaper headlines free of any pretense. Basquiat then found himself in front of immense formats, as if facing a wall. Called to action, he worked swiftly. He often extended the lines traced by his elder to let new forms emerge. He sometimes completely subverted the overall balance, amending the canvas with a wide swath of color to provoke his partner and incite him to respond. Their mutual fascination created conditions for a deluge of motifs and signs; their brushes reveal a shared image. What this exhibition shows us, through some hundred paintings and even more documents, is the emergence of a work signed by a “third mind,” as their friend Keith Haring put it. And it is absolutely thrilling!I would like to thank guest curator Dieter Buchhart, who, in collaboration with Suzanne Pagé, artistic director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and deputy director Sophie Durrleman, staged this incomparable adventure from its inception to maturity. His collaboration with Fondation Louis Vuitton curator Olivier Michelon has played a decisive role in the success of our ambitions. Dieter Buchhart is responsible for expanding the exhibition’s scope, to include several artists with close ties to Basquiat and Warhol at the time. Their inclusion helps us better understand the distinctive artistic and social context that shaped New York in the early 1980s. In particular, the exhibition includes a number of works by Francesco Clemente, who was also part of the adventure at the beginning. Without Bruno Bischofberger, this exhibition simply would not have existed. A friend and gallerist to both Basquiat and Warhol, I truly admire his audacity. Who else would have suggested that two such unique personalities create paintings together? The exchanges between Bruno Bischofberger and my advisor Jean-Paul Claverie were in fact the starting point for this initiative..."
“Basquiat x Warhol:A Dialogue in Contradictions”
(Text from the catalogue) By Dieter Buchhart, Curator of the exhibition
In 1985, Basquiat said that he had created “a million paintings”1in collaboration with Andy Warhol. He was referring to one of the most important artistic collaborations in art history,carried out by two of the twentieth century’s most important and influential artists. But despite the general acceptance of Warhol and Basquiat as leading representatives of art history, their unique collaboration is generally looked upon with a good degree of skepticism. As the keyboarder ofthe band Duran Duran and friend of both artists Nicholas Rhodes put it, “It’s always strange tome that collaborations between some of the greatest artists don’t seem to be taken as seriously ordon’t have the value that pieces by individual artists have. That makes no sense to me, being amusician. Some collaborations are the greatest things”. For Rhodes as a musician, collaboration issomething self-evident, even an urgent necessity, while in the fine arts, despite the accepted work ofartist collectives like the Guerrilla Girls, the Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.), or TeamLaband artist duos like Gilbert & George or Peter Fischli & David Weiss, collaborations are still seenwith a critical eye when two individual artistic personalities create a group of works jointly. But in Virgil Abloh’s words, “Life is collaboration. Where I think art can be sort of misguided is that itpropagates this idea of itself as a solo love affair - one person, one idea, no one else involved”.3But why is the outdated urge to favor and give greater value to the artistic genius as lone wolf stillso widespread, especially considering that artistic collaboration was already part of the artisticpractice of the 1980s? Does not the collaboration between two geniuses bear within it the potentialto create something even more significant, even more important? Rhodes argues accordingly,“When you pull together these two incredible talents and minds [Warhol and Basquiat] and youpiece it together and make it work, you get this explosion of color and energy that you’re nevergonna get from either one of them [in exactly that way]. And so, when I first saw the collaborations,I was completely speechless”.4But what exactly is the significance of Warhol’s and Basquiat’s joint project? What distinguishes itfrom other artistic collaborations and makes it so significant and current even today? Why did itleave observers “completely speechless?"[...]
According to Jay Shriver, a studio assistant at Warhol’s factory during the years of collaboration, Basquiat and Warhol’s collaboration already began in 1983 with the modification of small panels by Warhol with motifs such as eggs, dollar signs, or crabs and lobsters.6Here, Warhol not onlysupplied these paintings to his artist friend, but according to Shriver encouraged him to continueworking on them.7While he took up the engagement with his Lobster variations by modifying the lobster, but keeping the subject of the maritime creature, in Don’t Tread on Me he added the formulation “Don’t Tread on Me” as a critical commentary. Here, two opposites literally meet, two different world views. While Basquiat exercised an explicit critique of capitalism, Warhol was apparently the perfect incarnation of the artist as businessman. “Being good at business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”.8He tore down all barriers between business and art and adopted the rules of industrial society bycommunicating the impression that he had artwork produced on an assembly line at his Factory.But it is still a matter of controversy today whether Warhol was pursuing the mere glorification ofconsumer goods as icons of modernity in the sense of an affirmation of capitalism or intended anironic take on the represented and lived world of consumption. Since the artist’s death, a moredifferentiated point of view has taken hold. The image of Warhol as a star artist is understood moreas a mask that, like his silk-screens, reflects the mechanisms of modern capitalist consumer society.All the same, a conscious ambivalence remains in Warhol’s work that leaves open the questionof whether the artist explicitly sought to criticize the system or wanted to sharpen the audience’sawareness of their own approach to the world of consumption and media that dominates oursociety. Basquiat’s clear anti-capitalist attitude is expressed clearly in his counter-workDon’t Treadon Me, where he refers to the Gadsen Flag, a historic American flag that shows a rattlesnake rearingup to bite on a yellow background.Beneath the image of the snake, the slogan “Don’t Tread onMe” can be found. The flag was named after the American general and politician ChristopherGadsden and was considered a symbol of the colonies during the American Revolution andbecame an important symbol for freedom of thought and anarchism. To that extent, this was notan act of animosity, but a friendly yet critical modification of an existing work intended by bothsides, for “collaboration can be conspiracy, and it can be open”.9[...] Artistic work in various artistic disciplines such as painting, performance, music, or film wasespecially widespread in the New York art scene of Downtown Manhattan in the late 1970sand early 1980s; collective artistic work was common practice among younger artists. Warhol’sopenness to the various media since the 1960s was surely an important model here; he had workedin a whole range of artistic media and over the years was constantly expanding his repertoire.6Jay Shriver was . . . hired as a studio assistant by Warhol in 1980, helping to create paintings as well assist in producing three television shows created by the artist.
Ultimately, over a two-year period Warhol and Basquiat created more than 160 collaborations,making up more than a tenth of Basquiat’s painting oeuvre.On closer inspection, various groups of collaborations can be distinguished: first, Warhol’s hand-painted logos like Arm & Hammer, the Olympic rings, or Paramount; second, simple motifs ofWarhol’s like dogs, household appliances, or fruits as basic themes, third Warhol’s more complexvisual creations like a landscape to which Basquiat reacted; and fourth, those paintings withheadlines provided by Warhol; fifth, works whose foundation motifs took the form of silkscreens;and the sixth and last group of collaborative works, joint works initiated by Warhol in a copy andpaste style of the highest complexity.Arm and Hammer IIrepresents a key work to understanding theirjoint collaboration. Warhol painted the company logo of the American baking soda manufactureron the prepared acrylic gold background twice, each one filling half of the image and evoking thedoubling and multiplication of a motif, a stylistic device that he had used frequently since his earlysilkscreens from 1962. The golden background in turn refers to works likeGold Marilynand theemphasis on the iconicity of the well-known image. Basquiat concentrated on reworking the leftlogo. He obliterated the arm and hammer with white acrylic and painted onto it the face of jazzmusician Charlie Parker and the heads side of a coin.With the year 1955, he referred to the yearof Parker’s death; the musician’s saxophone seems to explode the logo.15Interview with Jay Shriver published in the catalogue.16Jean-Michel Basquiat interviewed by Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis.17Interview with Jay Shriver published in the catalogue.18Jean-Michel Basquiat interviewed by Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis.
Basquiat crossed out the words “ARM” and “HAMMER” with broad black brushstrokes and wroteover them with “COMMEMERITVE” (a play on the words “commemorative“ for memory/remembering [coin]) and “ONE CENT,” but he again crossed out these words. Very much in terms of his understanding of emphasizing them: “I cross out words so you will see them more:the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them”.19[...]Thus, despite the aesthetic and creative contrasts between the two artists, a mutual influence is clear. While Warhol, inspired by Basquiat, returned to his painterly beginnings, from around 1961,Basquiat in contrast used silk screening in their collaboration. The result was an additional series of works that take Basquiat’s silkscreens as a starting point, evoking the construction drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, but concretely referring to A. C. Gilbert’s 1935 Erector Set: “The World’s Greatest Toy - Developed by the Gilbert Hall of Science”, whose windmills, catapults, and meansof movement and transportation, Basquiat captured in the largeformat painting. Basquiat responded with a black head evoking a skull with broad white brushstrokes ascontour lines and limited by green lines in a suggested rectangle.Basquiat and Warhol attained the highest complexity and synthesis of their two positions in workslikeChina Paramount,Untitled, and6.99. InUntitled, Warhol created a network of athletic goods likea catcher’s glove, a tennis racket, and loafers. A dialogue in contradictions, this develops into anetwork of symbols, numbers, signs, objects, heads, and light blue and ivory surfaces of color, likeone of Basquiat’s spaces of knowledge in which the artist combines everything around him andwhat he gathers about him. For Basquiat always copied consciously and transformed the foundaesthetic material as in the copy and paste sampling of the internet and post-internet generationinto his own aesthetic. In so doing, he creates as part of the “copy society”20using copy and pastea cultural technique and an aesthetic principle21as “a key cultural technique of modernity.”22Following this cultural technique, Warhol’s “1/2” combines with “exercise specials”, Basquiat’sblack heads, his African-American athletes, vegetative structures of life and growth, the A in thename of Hank Aaron to form an overall ensemble with an inner logic that for the beholder, asalways in Basquiat’s art, is able to open new conceptual spaces. The same is true inChina Paramount,in which Warhol’s private relationship to Jon Gould, a manager at Paramount, is expanded usingthe logo of the film studio with a profile of Ronald Reagan saturated with numbers, US foreignpolicy toward China, all sorts of mask-like faces of Black figures and other people of color to aspace of association and in the dialectic space of thought illustrates Warhol’s dictum: “I thinkthose paintings we’re doing together are better when you can’t tell who did which parts”.2319Quoted in Robert Farris Thompson, “Royalty, Heroism, and the Streets,”
TIn one of their final joint works,6.99, which was created at Warhol’s new studio, his last Factory at22 East 33rdStreet highly painterly elements by Warhol of a woman in profile and two Americanfootball players running towards own another in black and white encounter Basquiat’s fire-spittinghead in the lower right corner, brushstrokes in a gestural white that counter, sometimes obliteratingthe colorful surfaces, and lines like sutures that cover the deleted bodies of the figures on the leftand in the middle of the image around and next to the flaming head.24All of this beneath “6.99”,the sale price painted by Warhol on a red background, the sign of the capitalist economic systemdominating the dynamized visual events, bracketed like a footnote on the lower left by the number“5599” probably added by Warhol. The dynamic, the burning lungs of the middle figure, thevirtually gesturally placed brushstrokes, seem like the finale of a symphony and form the ultimateclimax of this unique joint project.Warhol and Basquiat’s collaborations were “physical conversations” in the sense of dialoguesand physical confrontations and demanded a great deal of mutual respect and acceptance. ... As their collaboration gradually came to an end, the two artists remained friends. Warhol’s death on February 22, 1987 due to complications during a gall-bladder operation hit Basquiat very hard.
The following year, Basquiat died surprisingly on August 12. Like Warhol, he too sampled fromhumanity’s collective visual memory. While Warhol used the worn-out icons of capitalism,Basquiat transformed the found aesthetic material, like the cut-and-paste sampling of the internetgeneration, into his own aesthetic; he always collaged his “own hand”.
“Collaborations :Reflexions on the Experiences with Basquiat, Clemente and Warhol”1(text from 1995, republished for the catalogue) Bruno Bischofberger, Special Advisor for the exhibition
In the winter of 1983-1984, on the occasion of one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s many visits to our home in St. Moritz, we spoke about works that artists had done together, so-called collaborations. There wereseveral reasons why we had started talking about them. Basquiat had done a 120 × 120 centimetersacrylic on canvas painting in our garage together with my daughter Cora, who was not quite fouryears old at the time.2In my guest book in St.Moritz, Basquiat drew, at the same time, a double-page drawing, also with Cora. The baby-child “primitive” technique of my daughter and Basquiat’sindependently chosen “primitive” style were a perfect fit. Already during my first visit to his studio in1982 in New York, he answered my question about which artists had influenced him: “What I reallylike and has influenced me are works by three to four-year-old children”. The same guest book shows,immediately preceding, a two-page color pastel, a collaboration between Francesco Clemente andCora, dating from the preceding winter (January 1983), and signed by Francesco with both names.Again, some pages earlier, dated March 1982, one finds two drawings by Walter Dahn and Jiří GeorgDokoupil. These artists had, during that stay, painted a small group of collaborations using acrylic oncanvas in our garage, one of which was hanging in our house in the winter of 1983-1984.All these were reasons for Jean-Michel Basquiat and me to start talking about collaborations. I personallyhad been fascinated by such works for some time. I knew the collaborations of painters from the fifteenthto the nineteenth centuries and the cadavre exquis of the Surrealists. For over twenty years, I had owneda collaboration, dating from 1961, between Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, and Daniel Spoerri.I also owned a painting that had been jointly painted by Enzo Cucchi and Sandro Chia, and since 1983,I had bought my first works by the New York artists David McDermott and Peter McGough.The conceptuality of these paintings fascinated me, because through the voluntary act of collaborating,a certain theory became more apparent than in works which the artists created individually.I had noticed that in the works of the so-called “postmodern” movement a certain kind of conceptualcollaboration was taking place, because artists were referring to other artists’ works or integratingparts thereof in their own paintings. From a large diversity of examples let me mention: Caravaggio inseveral early works of Julian Schnabel, from 1980-1981, Watteau and Giacometti in works by DavidSalle, and early works of Warhol in his own series ofReversal Paintings(1979-1980).1This is an edited version of the text that was first published in Tilman Osterwold, ed.,Collaborations: Warhol, Basquiat Clemente(exh. cat. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1996).
A project had developed in my mind to ask Andy Warhol, whose main dealer I had become in 1968, whether he would make some works together with one or two younger artists that I represented. At that time, I asked Jean-Michel Basquiat in St. Moritz whether he would be interested in doing some collaboration paintings with Warhol and perhaps another artist. Jean-Michel was exceptionallyreceptive to new ideas and immediately agreed. He was surely also interested in creating workstogether with the famous Warhol.In fall 19824, I brought Jean-Michel Basquiat to Andy Warhol in the Factory and this is how theyreally got to know each other. I had a firm agreement with Warhol that I could propose youngerartists, which I found interesting, for an article inInterview Magazine, which we had founded togetherin 1969. Warhol also let me decide which young artists I could bring with me to the Factory to have aportrait done, in exchange for which they could swap one of their works. Warhol trusted my judgmentand it was of no consequence that the works that he received in exchange were often worth much lessthan his portraits. In this way, Andy established a relationship with the generation of younger artists.When I told him that I would bring Jean-Michel Basquiat for a portrait session and the usual buffetlunch at the Factory on Union Square the next day, he seemed rather surprised and asked me, “Doyou really think that Basquiat is such an important artist?” Warhol was not familiar with Basquiat’snew work and told me that he remembered having met the artist on one or two occasions, on both ofwhich Warhol had felt him to be too forward. Basquiat had been trying to get to know Warhol andhad offered him his street sale art, small drawings on paper that Warhol had been very skeptical of.Warhol photographed Basquiat with his special Polaroid portrait camera. ... Jean was aggressive and “point blank,” while Andy was shyand polite. Jean had the nerve to do anything he felt like, anywhere he felt like it, and Andy lovedto watch. It was a wonderful kind of give and take that enabled each of them to fulfill their ownsecret desires. The relationship was built on mutual respect. Jean had sought after Andy since hewas a teenager, and by 1980, he had been to the Factory on several occasions. In time, Andy grew torespect Jean-Michel. The more he saw his work, the more he loved it. Andy eventually trusted Jeanto the point that he would actually let him cut and sculpt his “hair”. The respect ran deeper than justaesthetics. Each had a fascination with the other’s impenetrable shell. The mystery that was Warholwas challenged by the complexities that were Basquiat. Their projected “images” were powerful anduncompromising, while they both harbored a vulnerable, humble spirit, which endowed both ofthem with a sense of humor. They “understood” each other.A successful collaboration is always the result of a successful relationship. The paintings are thephysical proof of the harmony that existed beyond the canvas. I’m not sure if their collaborationwas a deliberate, planned strategy or if it simply “happened.” Jean was spending more and moretime visiting the Factory and eventually started painting there. This is not hard to imagine, sinceJean painted anywhere he found himself. He would create with whatever materials were readilyavailable on whatever surface would sit still long enough to draw on. Andy was also a workaholicand loved the added incentive of havingJean around. They exercised together, ate together, andlaughed together. The great thing about visiting Andy was that he was always working. Whether ornot there may have been endless interruptions from phone calls and visitors, there was still a sensethat in between, a lot of things were getting done. There were always new paintings leaning againstthe wall, new piles of Polaroids, and new clippings or photostats of prospective projects. For an artist,the most important and most delicate relationship he can have with another artist is one in which heis constantly challenged and intimidated. This is probably the only productive quality of jealousy.The greatest pleasure is to be provoked to the point of inspiration. Most artists only admit it to one ortwo others whom they feel are equal to themselves. Very few would accept the notion that their peersare actually superior. However, in the privacy of their own thoughts, they must admit to them selves that these thoughts arise and usually lead to a kind of unspoken competition.
NEW YORK’S DOWNTOWN ART SCENE IN THE 1980S
A collective energy characterized New York’s art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More than a decade earlier, Warhol, with his radical openness to different artistic practices, paved the way for collaboration to become more widely accepted. But it was also artists linked to the world of graffiti—used to working together and navigating varied supports and disciplines—who made collaboration much more than an exception: it became one of the period’s defining features.
Throughout his career, Warhol sought the sensational and the mundane in the press, making magazine and newspaper headlines subtexts in his work. With Basquiat, the use of the headlines was different. As he said, "[Warhol] would start most of the paintings. He would put something very concrete or recognizable, like a newspaper headline or a product logo, and then I would sort of deface it, and then I would try to get him to work some more on it, and then I would work more on it." The legibility of the texts is totally transformed, privileging the lettering’s formal, even sonorous, impact. Fragments of words are captured in a network of information constructed by the two artists.
Those close to Basquiat have testified to his desolation following Warhol’s death on February 22, 1987. Gravestones are a clear manifestation of this grief. In the form of a polyptych, the painter erected an altar where we can recognize several references to the work of Warhol. Though the two artists drifted apart after their joint exhibition in 1985, they stayed in contact. Warhol kept Physiological Diagram (1985) in his reserve; in its format and anatomical subject, it is like a collaboration waiting for Basquiat.
PAINTING FOUR HANDS
"I think those paintings we’re doing together are better when you can’t tell who did which parts, Warhol wrote in his diary. Initially simple interventions by Basquiat on Warhol’s canvases, the paintings by the two artists culminated, at the very end of their collaboration, in a complex entanglement in which personal subjects such as racism (Felix the Cat) or the connection to the body are addressed. 6.99 is a stratification of forms and meanings. The painting is literally covered with scars (pentimenti), but these are also drawn,echoing the scarred torsos of both Basquiat and Warhol.
Chronology Basquiat x Warhol
Compiled by Antonio Rosa de Pauli
1928 Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh on August 6. 1949After finishing his pictorial design studies, Warhol moves to New York. Within a decade, he will become one of the most successful graphic designers and illustrators in the United States. 1960: Jean-Michel Basquiat is born in New York on December 22. Warhol creates his first paintings, inspired by newspaper ads and comic books. 1962, Warhol begins using the mechanical reproduction process of silks creening. Characterized by its "pop vocabulary, his work is exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. 1963 Warhol moves to a new studio on East 47th Street,where artist Billy Name covers the walls with aluminum foil and silver paint: the famous Silver Factory is born, center of the underground scene. 1965 Basquiat begins kindergarten; his mother Matilde encourages his interest in art, taking him to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Warhol’s first retrospective is held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. He declares he is giving up painting to devote himself to making films. 1968 In May, Basquiat is hit by a car. He has his spleen removed and remains in the hospital for a month, during which time he becomes entranced by Gray’s Anatomy, a gift from his mother. The plates in this reference book will be a major influence on his work. The Factory moves to 33 Union Square West, and on June 3, Warhol is shot by Valerie Solanas. He miraculously, he survives but is hospitalized for eight weeks. 1969: Bruno Bischofberger, Warhol’s main gallerist since 1968, joins forces with him to found Interview Magazine. In 1974, Jean-Michel and his sisters Lisane and Jeanine move to Puerto Rico with their father, Gerard. 1976The family returns to New York, and Basquiat briefly attends Edward R. Murrow High School before transferring to the experimental City-As-School.1977, Basquiat and his high school friend, graffiti artist Al Diaz, sign a series of poetic statements as SAMO; these appear across New York and attract the art scene’s attention. 1978 Warhol produces portraits of Liza Minnelli and Muhammad Ali, among others. This portrait work occupies much of his time and finances all his activities. 1979 Basquiat ends SAMO and begins painting. He approaches Warhol in a Soho restaurant and sells him two postcards, collages made with his friend Jennifer Stein.
1980 Basquiat visits the Factory thanks to Glenn O’Brien,one of the writers of New York Beat Movie/Downtown 81, a film in which he also plays the lead role. He briefly meets Warhol again, who buys a man-made sweatshirt that he designed himself. Basquiat shows his work publicly for the first time in the Times Square Show. 1981: Basquiat’s reputation grows with his participation in the exhibition New York/New Wave. His first solo exhibition takes place in Italy, at the Mazzoli gallery in Modena. 1982 was Basquiat’s first solo exhibition in the United States, at the Annina Nosei Gallery, followed by a second, in April, at Larry Gagosian’s gallery in Los Angeles. In May, the Swiss gallerist Bruno Bischofberger becomes his exclusive representative. On October 4, Bischofberger officially introduces Basquiat to Warhol at the Factory. Excited by meetings, Basquiat creates his celebrated work, Dos Cabezas.1983 Basquiat begins spending time with Paige Powell,associate editor of Interview Magazine. She fosters the relationship between the two artists; Basquiat moves into a loft he rents from Warhol at 57 Great Jones Street. He becomes a regular at the factory. With Warhol, he visits galleries, museums, and clubs. In the fall, Bischofberger proposes a collaborative project to Basquiat, Warhol, and Francesco Clemente. The three artists are all enthusiastic. Bischofberger commissions 15 works, which he will present in his Zurich gallery twelve months later. At the end of the year, Basquiat and Warhol begin collaborating on their own, working on small silkscreens by Warhol, on which Basquiat paints. 1984 Warhol begins moving to an old Con Edison building at 33 East 33rd Street to set up his new factory and group together his studio, video studio,and the offices of Interview Magazine. For over a year, the old Factory at 860 Broadway has remained vacant, and Basquiat and Warhol meet there to paint nearly every day. On September 17, Warhol writes in his diary, "Jean-Michel got to painting differently, so that’s a good thing". 1985 Warhol tells Bischofberger that he and Basquiat have been creating work together. At Warhol’s request, Bischofberger makes contact with Tony Shafrazi to organize an exhibition of these collaborations in his New York gallery. To promote the exhibition, Basquiat asks photographer Michael Halsband to take a series of photos of the two artists, both wearing boxing shorts and gloves. The exhibition Warhol/Basquiat: Paintings opens at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery on September 14, with 16 paintings lent by Bischofberger. "The paintings looked really great; everyone seemed to like them, #Warhol writes in his diary, but almost all the reviews are negative. On September 19, Warhol writes: And there in Friday's Times, I saw a big headline: ‘Basquiat and Warhol in Pas de Deux." And I just read one line—that Jean-Michel was my mascot.’ Oh God". Dispirited by the critical reactions, #Basquiat slows and then stops his collaboration with Warhol, to the latter’s great disappointment. 1986Warhol works on a commission related to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, a subject also found in the Ten Punching Bags, realized with Basquiat. Basquiat travels to Africa for the first time. 1987 Andy Warhol died on February 22. 1988: Jean-Michel Basquiat dies on August 12.
Comments