Basquiat x Warhol
Running from April 5 to August 28 at Fondation Louis Vuitton, the exhibition Basquiat x Warhol: Painting 4 Hands represents the most extensive collection of the body of work the two artists realized as a “unique mind” in the words of Keith Haring.
This exhibition constitutes a prime example of how the act of tracing a clear chronology becomes impossible once hands belonging to different bodies are mixed. There’s no possible separation as soon as they share the same surface. Nobody can claim ownership of these paintings, they belong to now inseparable bodies and what dwells between them.
The blackness and anti-systemic drive of Basquiat’s art assault the pop and empty collusion between capitalism and Warhol’s canvases; they get absorbed into these paintings while at the same time opening them to alien forces. If Warhol’s art can resist the impact force of Basquiat’s aggressive and all-ingesting signs (Warhol’s contribution doesn’t amount to context or frame), it can’t prevent them from digging holes all over its surface. An interval in the performative repetition of modern economic regimes, these black holes infect the autoreferential purity of every transaction: $ becomes a stain that won’t go away. It still works, it can still buy things but it will also expose its own secret: a deadly caricature of death.
Reconciliation is impossible and these paintings are not a truce: their seething surface doesn’t present any indication of compromise between the two artists, but “conflict” is not an adequate word to describe this incendiary collaboration. Maybe “conspiracy”?
artists’ work courtesy of FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON
article and photo reportage DAVIDE ANDREATTA
More to read
