Starting with the Basquiat x Warhol – Painting Four Hands exhibition which was a remarkable success, attracting 700,000 visitors in 2018, the Fondation Louis Vuitton opened the curtain for this year, this time revealing undiscovered works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from his collaboration with Andy Warhol. The exhibition opened on April 5 and will close on August 28, wanting to offer the public the opportunity to admire great visual inventions by two leading artists. Between 1984-1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol jointly produced around 160 paintings, “à quatre mains” (with four hands), including some of the most important works created during their careers. The artist Keith Haring, who witnessed their friendship and collaborative production, went on to say that it was a “conversation that takes place through painting, rather than words, and two minds merging to create a third separate and unique mind”. Curated by Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, in collaboration with Olivier Michelon, curator of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the exhibition will bring together more than 80 paintings jointly signed by the two artists. Individual works by each will also be shown, as well as a series of works by other important artists such as Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer and Kenny Scharf, in order to bring out the energy of the downtown New York art scene in the 1980s. The exhibition will be further enriched and interspersed with photographs, including Michael Halsband’s famous ‘Boxing Gloves’ series of photographs produced for the poster for the Basquiat x Warhol – Painting Four Hands exhibition.

Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol
Handball, 1984

Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled (Andy Warhol with Barbells), c. 1984 – Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984 – Andy Warhol Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat as David, 1984

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Collaboration No. 19, 1984-1985

Oilstick, collage, silkscreen ink, and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 169 x 309 cm
Private collection, Israel
Courtesy Zidoun- Boussuyt Gallery, Luxembourg

All photos Courtesy of presse.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat Licensed by Artestar, New York,
© 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ADAGP, Paris