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Agence France-Presse

There are vanishingly few great collaborations in the annals of fine art. For a brief moment in the 1980s, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat showed the world how it was done.
It started with a bang. Warhol, 54, met Basquiat, 22, for lunch in October 1982 and took a Polaroid of them together.
Basquiat took it to his studio and returned just two hours later with a portrait. Warhol was stunned by its brilliance.
Soon they were working together on portraits that combined their favoured tropes: Basquiat’s masks, skulls, graffiti and obscure symbols; Warhol’s pop-art imagery, logos and newspaper headlines.

The brief, intense collaboration lasted from 1983 to 1985 and produced some 160 works.
An unprecedented number of them – 70, mostly plucked from private collections – have been brought together for a show that opened on April 5 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

“It’s definitely the most successful collaboration in the history of art between two great artists. It’s never been matched at this level or in this short space of time,” says Dieter Buchhart, the show’s lead curator and a Basquiat expert.
In room after room, two different aesthetics, generations and temperaments collide, and find an unexpected synergy.
“It is neither Warhol, nor Basquiat, but a third artist that emerges,” says Suzanne Page, the museum’s artistic director.
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“There was a great generosity between the two. They played with and provoked each other. Warhol allowed himself to be completely subverted by Basquiat’s interventions.”
At their best, it is hard to tell where one artist begins and the other ends, as in the monumental African Masks, , 10 metres (33ft) long.
Others are unexpected: Ten Punching Bags, never shown in their lifetimes, has the bags suspended in a line and decorated with the face of Jesus Christ inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, drawn by Warhol with the word “judge” and a crown of thorns added by Basquiat.

Cartoonist Keith Haring, a close friend of both – and who makes a cameo in the exhibition – praised their collaboration at the time as a “conversation in painting”.
But there were doubters as well. Many felt portraits should be the singular vision of an individual artist.
Their supporters saw the two artists more like great jazz musicians, riffing off each other. Basquiat was inspired by the master, Warhol was reinvigorated by his young friend.

“It released an incredible energy,” says Page, and on a more straightforward level, they shared an intuitive genius for composition and combining colours.
If Basquiat was the more serious, the more socially engaged – “carried by anger” at the invisibility of black people – Warhol was not as detached as he sometimes came across.
“He accepted the social engagement side of Basquiat, and shared it,” Page says. “Warhol was engaged too, in his own way. He was a very complex creature.”

What might have been seen as insolence in Basquiat’s approach – scrawling over works that Warhol had left around his Factory studio, for example – was totally accepted by the older artist.
Their collaboration ended happily. But within two years both were dead – Warhol following routine surgery and Basquiat from a heroin overdose. Already global superstars, their fame would only continue to grow.


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Basquiat-Warhol Paris exhibition has 70 ‘incredible’ works from ‘the most successful collaboration in the history of art’

Basquiat X Warhol. Painting 4 Hands, running until August 28 at Paris’ Louis Vuitton Foundation, shows 70  pieces made between 1983-1985 by ‘the most successful collaboration in the history of art’. Photo: AFP

Basquiat X Warhol. Painting 4 Hands, running until August 28 at Paris’ Louis Vuitton Foundation, shows 70  pieces made between 1983-1985 by “the most successful collaboration in the history of art”. Photo: AFP

Warhol (left) and Basquiat in 1984. Photo: Getty Images

A visitor takes a photograph of “Felix the Cat”, made in 1985 by Basquiat and Warhol, on show at the exhibition. Photo: AFP

A visitor looks at “Taxi, 45th/Broadway”, made in 1984-1985 by Basquiat and Warhol, on show at the exhibition. Photo: AFP

A visitor looks at “Untitled (50 Dentures)“, made in 1985 by Basquiat and Warhol, on show at the exhibition. Photo: AFP

A visitor looks at black and white photographic portraits of Basquiat (second left) and Warhol (left and right), on show at the exhibition. Photo: AFP

Picasso, Yayoi Kusama, Chinese art: the star lots at Sotheby’s, Phillips and Poly Auction spring Hong Kong sales

Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin (L) (2014)“ is expected to sell for HK$40-60 million at Sotheby’s 50th anniversary contemporary evening auction in Hong Kong. Photo: Sotheby’s

Detail from Yoshitomo Nara’s “In the Milky Lake” (2012), the star lot of the Sotheby’s contemporary evening auction in Hong Kong, which is expected to sell for up to HK$120 million (US$15.5 million). Asian art leads the way in the spring auctions. Photo: Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s is offering for sale an imperial falangcai “swallow” bowl that is expected to sell for HK$200 million (US$25.5 million). Photo: Sotheby’s

Yoshitomo Nara’s “Acid M. J.” (2009) is expected to sell for HK$34 million-HK$44 million. Photo: Poly Auction

Yayoi Kusama’s 2014 work “Pumpkin (L)” is expected to sell for HK$40-60 million at Sotheby’s 50th anniversary contemporary evening auction. Photo: Sotheby’s

“A-Pumpkin (BAGN8)”, a 2011 work by Yayoi Kusama expected to sell at auction for HK$40 million-HK$55 million. Photo: Sotheby’s

“My Heart is Flying to the Universe”, a 2018 mirror room by Yayoi Kusama. Photo: Sotheby’s

Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin” (1995) sold for HK$46 million. Photo: Phillips

“Infinity Dots (HTI)”, a 2001 triptych by Yayoi Kusama, sold for HK$22.5 million at a Philliips auction. Photo: Phillips

“The Road” (2018) by Matthew Wong sold for HK$29.5 million at the Phillips 20th century and contemporary art sale. Photo: Phillips

Abstraktes Bild (607-2), a 1986 work by Gerhard Richter, is expected to sell for up to HK$28 million at Poly Auction. Photo: Poly Auction 

Pablo Picasso’s “Femme dans un fauteuil” (1948). Photo: Sotheby’s

A blue and white ewer featuring a five-clawed dragon is expected to fetch over HK$80 million at a Sotheby’s single-lot auction. Photo: Sotheby’s

South Korean artist Kimsooja’s exhibition in Hong Kong invites viewers to pause and reflect

South Korean artist Kimsooja’s work “Geometry of Mind”, part of her exhibition “Topography of Mind” at Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong. Photo: Kitmin Lee

South Korean artist Kimsooja walks amid her work “Thread Routes – Chapter III (block printing table covers)”, part of her exhibition “Topography of Body” at Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong. Photo: Kitmin Lee

“Geometry of Body” is part of Kimsooja’s exhibition. Photo: Kitmin Lee

Kimsooja’s work “Geometry of Mind” – smooth clay balls placed on a plinth interspersed with rough fragments of clay. Photo: Kitmin Lee

A still from “Thread Route – Chapter III”, part of a video art series exploring textile traditions. Photo: Kitmin Lee

“Thread Route – Chapter III: Meta Painting” is among the works in Kimsooja’s exhibition. Photo: Kitmin Lee

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“Gravity”, a large-scale installation by Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Awol Erizku, is exhibited at the Pacific Place shopping mall in Admiralty, Hong Kong. Copies of the artwork were later found for sale on Chinese online shopping platform Taobao. Photo: Sam Tsang

Jakub Hrusa, chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Bamberg Symphony Orchestra

Banksy’s “Show Me The Monet”, the subject of a High Court writ in Hong Kong, at Sotheby’s auction house in London on September 18, 2020. Photo: AFP

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Basquiat X Warhol. Painting 4 Hands at Paris’ Louis Vuitton Foundation shows 70 of the 160 pieces the American artists collaborated on between 1983 and 1985
The ‘incredible’ artistic pairing is said to be unmatched before or since, with the works on show seemingly by ‘neither Warhol, nor Basquiat but a third artist’


Basquiat X Warhol. Painting 4 Hands, running until August 28 at Paris’ Louis Vuitton Foundation, shows 70 pieces created between 1983 and 1985 by the two American artists from different generations.


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