Then begins an unprecedented complicity between the icon of "Pop art" and this talented emerging black artist, nicknamed the "Radiant Child", which will give rise to 160 paintings made with "four hands" between 1983 and 1985, 70 of which are presented from Wednesday at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
"This is certainly the most successful collaboration in the history of art between two great artists, never equaled at this level and in this period of time," said Dieter Buchhart, Basquiat specialist and main curator of the exhibition, "the first world retrospective of this magnitude Warhol/Basquiat with four hands".
Many of the paintings belong to private lenders and have never been brought together in such large numbers, says Suzanne Pagé, general commissioner and artistic director of the foundation.
The work "6.99" (1984) by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton before the opening of the exhibition "Warhol/Basquiat à quatre mains", on March 29, 2023 in Paris © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Some 300 works and documents are on display, including, in addition to the duo's very large formats, a series of photographs of Michael Halsband's two boxing artists, works by Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer and Kenny Scharf, as well as collaborations with Francesco Clemente.
Black figure
Room after room, two aesthetics, two generations and two temperaments intersect and merge: that of Basquiat's "rage and commitment to make the black figure exist", with a "fantasy of childhood" imbued with "gravity", according to Ms. Pagé.
And the "more distanced" Warhol, who intervened in all media (painting, performance, sculpture, photos, graffiti, TV, magazines, cinema ...) and who broke a lot of rules, inscribing folk art in classical modernity," she adds.
The work "Taxi, 45th/Broadway" (1984-1985) by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton before the opening of the exhibition "Warhol/Basquiat à quatre mains", on March 29, 2023 in Paris © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Drama, police violence and racism thus cross consumerist madness, popular culture and pop imagery, all intertwined with signs, graffiti, symbols, letters and numbers.
In yellow on a black background, "Taxi, 45th/Broadway", for example, represents a black man trying to stop a taxi in the street, "infamous white, with a red face, who passes sneering," comments the specialist.
"It's not Warhol or Basquiat, but a third artist that emerges," she says.
Keith Haring described this work with "four hands", inspired by musical collaboration, a "conversation in painting", full of "respect", generosity and trust but also a joust.
A huge painting 10 meters long, entitled "African Masks", a mixture of masks and real figures - probably alluding to an exhibition at the MoMA of the time on primitivism and modernity - is part, according to Ms. Pagé, "of the most successful, the +organic+, those where we no longer distinguish who did what, as Warhol himself said".
The work "American Masks" (1984-1985) by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton before the opening of the exhibition "Warhol/Basquiat à quatre mains", on March 29, 2023 in Paris © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
"Extraordinary energy"
"Warhol, no doubt tired of the mundane portraits he made in silkscreen printing and concerned about everything that was happening in the art world in New York Downtown needed to participate in this extraordinary energy," infused by Basquiat and his group of friends.
The "Radiant Child" made him take the brush again and work "like crazy". If no one was able to attend the interventions in turn on the canvases, at Warhol's "factory" or in Basquiat's studio, "we know that Warhol first worked at the bottom, on a large format, fixed the lines of force and logos, neutralized, diverted or even denied by Basquiat". An "insolence totally accepted" by his elder, says the commissioner general.
The work "Felix the Cat" (1985) by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton before the opening of the exhibition "Warhol/Basquiat à quatre mains", on March 29, 2023 in Paris © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
The exhibition concludes with a monumental work never shown during the lifetime of the two artists, "Ten punching bags", ten hanging and lined up boxing bags that reveal their approach to death: on each of the bags, the face of Christ inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, drawn by Warhol, who was a believer, with the word Judge and a crown of thorns, added by Basquiat.
Warhol died following surgery in 1987. Basquiat joined him the following year, at the age of 27, from an overdose.
© 2023 AFP