Skateboards

Artists skateboards (some produced posthumously) by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bill Burns, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Mike Kelley, Harmony Korine, Yayoi Kusama, Faith Ringold, and Christopher Wool. 

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. 

Mixed messages from Keith Haring

 

Keith Haring and Andy Warhol play with nine year old Sean Lennon’s Computer

 

“Tuesday, October 9, 1984

I made up some things for Sean Lennon’s birthday and the painting was still wet—a little heart candy-box that said “I love you”—and I also brought a “paint brush” that instead of bristles had strips of red colored paper in a stack. And a bracelet I’d made out of pennies. PH picked me up and we went to the Dakota (cab $6.50). There were fans outside in honor of the day still on the “vigil.” Because the ninth is Sean and John’s birthday. Inside Yoko’s door everybody had taken their shoes off so there was a line of shoes. I wouldn’t take mine off, though, and I didn’t want PH to, either, so that I wouldn’t be alone. PH said that when she went to the Royal Palace once in Hawaii that the tour guides gave you booties to put over your shoes and that would be a better way to keep the house clean, I think. So then when we heard a glass drop and break, that was our excuse—that we didn’t want to be in our socks when there might be glass. 

Yoko ran to call Sean and he came in and said, “Did you bring my dollar?” Yoko said that he’d been remembering and wanting the other half of the dollar I tore in half the last time. So I gave him a whole bunch of torn bills that I’d brought for him and he went off to try to find the match to the half he had. Keith was there and he brought Kenny Scharf as his date. Walter Cronkite was there, and John Cage and Louise Nevelson and Lisa Robinson. On purpose for fun I had spelled Sean’s name “Shawn” on a couple of his gifts, and so when Sean autographed napkins for me he signed it that way, too. He was wearing Michael Jackson-type gloves, but on both hands, that his friend little Max Leroy, Warner Leroy’s son, had given him. Michael Jackson is his favorite singer. He said he likes Prince, too, and he must like Boy George, too, because later on his computer he did a drawing of Boy George. Sean and Keith hit it off. Keith is very good playing with kids—he was playing really “well with another baby that was there, too, coming after her with a stuffed animal. Sean sat between me and Roberta Flack. The cake was a big blond grand piano. Sean was the one who had the idea that it should be a piano. He has a piano in his bedroom. And he cut the cake. Harry Nilsson led everyone singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and later Sean made a really nice speech and said that if his father were there we’d be singing ‘Tor They’re Jolly Good Fellows”

We went into Sean’s bedroom—and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, “Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.” And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color. And then Keith and Kenny used it. Keith had already used it once to make a T-shirt, but Kenny was using it for the first time, and I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who’d helped invent it. 

Sean’s bedroom had two mattresses on the floor and lots of Beatles pictures and the big Rupert Smith picture of Yoko on the wall. There was wrapping paper and presents all over the floor, and lots of robot toys on the shelves. After we left I was so blue because before I was Sean’s best grownup friend and now I think Keith is. They really hit it off. He invited Keith to his party for kids the next day and I don’t think I was invited and I’m hurt.”

- Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries

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