Keith Haring | Luna Luna, A Poetic Extravaganza!

Keith Haring 

Luna Luna, A Poetic Extravaganza!

Langley, UK:  Van der Meer Paper Design Limited, 1986

30.5 x 30.5 cm. [folded],  61 x 30.5 cm. [unfolded]

Edition of 2000 

Almost three decades before Banksy’s Dismaland, Austrian artist André Heller created Luna Luna - an open-air museum and amusement park in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1987. The project was an attempt to "create a travelling terrain of modern art, that in the centuries-old principle of the fairground involves people of all ages and educational levels in playful acts”. He commissioned thirty-two of the "most important artists of the period” to design the attractions. 

Participating artists included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delaunay, David Hockney,  Roy Lichtenstein,  Kenny Scharf, Jean Tinguely, Roland Topor, and Keith Haring, who created a merry-go-round [see below]. 

The artists received $10,000 each, with Heller arguing "Listen, you are constantly getting the greatest commissions, everyone wants your paintings or sculptures, but I am inviting you to take a trip back to your own childhood. You can design your very own amusement park, just as you think would be right today.”

The event featured a reflective fun-house pavilion by Salvador Dalí, and "enchanted tree" by David Hockney, a boldly coloured glass labyrinth by Roy Lichtenstein, and a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Philip Glass composed the music for Lichtenstein’s labyrinth . Karajan recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic for Hockney's room and Basquiat chose the album Tutu by Miles Davis to accompany the Ferris Wheel ride. 

After decades in storage, the works were restored and new works were commissioned for Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy, which embarked on a global tour in 2023 with funding from Toronto singer Drake. 

This pop-up 3D offset cardstock multiple commemorating Haring’s carousel was produced in an edition of 2000, most of which were said to have been accidentally destroyed immediately after the fair. Estimates are that fewer than 200 copies remain. 

The work can be had for €950, from the Copyright Bookshop, here. 

Rhiannon Alpers | A Thousand Starlings

Rhiannon Alpers

A Thousand Starlings

San Francisco, USA : Gazelle & Goat Press, 2016

20 pp., 5.5 x 7.25”, hardcover

Edition of 30 signed and numbered copies

"The book explores an imagined journey, being carried through the comfort of one’s dreams. A journey guided by a murmuration of a thousand starlings, undulating and wisping through the evening sky, their soft voices calming and cooing as they head into the unknown.

Metaphors abound in this book. The support system of family and friends manifests in the starlings, and the twilight evokes a sense of comfort and stability amidst the unknown. The many threads pulling the dreamer along in this world are the guiding voices that safely and carefully show us our way. When we steer off course they gently nudge us and support us as we explore an unknown route. Murmurations themselves have an astonishing and dreamlike effect. Their immense rhythm and flow symbolizes the thin line between the dream and day.

Much of the symbolism also stems from the author’s rekindled interest in the long tradition of fables, passed on in her new nightly rituals of telling stories to small ears and eager eyes in the low light of the evening. It is in these final hours that our day fades away and our imagination is carried off to many wondrous places.”

- press release

Roula Partheniou

Happy Birthday to Roula Partheniou!!

[materials: acrylic on wood, drill bit, aluminum]

Les Levine | Levine’s Restaurant

Les Levine

Levine’s Restaurant

Filderstadt, Germany: Edition Domberger, 1969

50 x 65 cm.

Edition of 100

The artist as restauranteur has a long and rich history that includes Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark's FOOD, Jon Rubin’s Conflict Kitchen, Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy, EYE SCREAM by N.E. Thing Co., and Al’s Cafe by Allen Ruppersberg. Levine’s Restaurant preceded them all, and began as a proposed trade. 

Mickey Ruskin, the owner of Max’s Kansas City, approached the artist about trading an artwork for a tab at the club. Levine replied "Well, I'm a conceptual artist, so what can we do in relationship to that?"

From March to September 1969, Levine operated Ruskin’s 19th Street and Park Avenue South property as "New York's only Canadian restaurant". The venue featured "deplorable food and dismal light.” Some examples of the former include Salmon Steak Halifax, Chopped Chicken Liver Levine, and London Broil.

Levine viewed the restaurant as a kind of space-age Howard Johnson’s for tourists, but Ruskin hoped to corner the "meat-and-potatoes artists’ trade”. The decor revelled in its tackiness, with plastic light fixtures, kelly-green tablecloths, black walls, and white plastic bucket seats. The waitresses wore bowling team T-shirts, and the bartender was chosen because he was bland. 

This Edition Domberger boxed portfolio commemorating the project includes nine screen prints, a plastic sculpture of potato latkes, a bag of lentils, a stack of postcards,  a 26-inch-wide illuminated plastic sign, a T-shirt, and tablecloth, each signed and numbered (excluding the postcards and lentils), 

"Around the same time he presented “The Big Eye,” Levine issued a press release announcing the opening on St. Patrick’s Day 1969 of the Irish-Canadian-Jewish eatery Levine’s Restaurant. Initiated by Mickey Ruskin, proprietor of Max’s Kansas City, and designed by John Brockman, the restaurant could nonetheless be considered another instance of systems aesthetics from Levine’s artistic menu, this time using his name and biography as the conceptual backdrop to a “relaxing, pleasant environment”—albeit one where closed-circuit television had been installed to monitor each table. The place, contemporary with Allen Ruppersberg’s similarly conceptual Al’s Café in Los Angeles, was a total failure and closed after only a few months. Looking on the bright side, Burnham, ever a champion of the artist’s endeavors, found the work successful in terms of its further radicalization of the concept of the environment and in its direct engagement with the art world. He hailed Levine’s “ability to reify art as social context, that is, to create art out of whatever concerns art.”

- Tom Holert, Artforum

Yoko Ono and John Lennon from Roberta Flack’s Collection

In 1976, singer Roberta Flack purchased an apartment in the Dakota building at 1 West 72nd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was the first (and for decades, the only) black person to reside in the cooperative apartment complex. 

Her seventh floor, Central Park-facing unit [see below] shared a wall with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the three became friends. 

Their son, Sean Lennon recalls "I was very blessed that I grew up with the coolest neighbour in the world. At first, I didn't even think of Roberta as this incredible artist and musician, she was just this really cool neighbour. We used to call her Aunt Roberta, and we were very close."

Flack performed at John and Yoko’s One-to-One Concert in 1975, covered Ono’s song "Goodbye Sadness" for the first Ono tribute album, Every Man Has a Woman in 1984, and appeared in Yoko Ono’s music video for "Bad Dancer" [see below].

Roberta Flack sold her apartment in 2018, and died in 2025, at the age of 88. Her estate has recently begun to sell some of her belongings, including the above John and Yoko books, bags, cards, and invitations.