Just seeing these names gives us the chills. You have some heavy hitters in the title here and this piece is not just a headline to grab you in. This is not clickbait and not amateur hour. This is the real deal for the legends.
The Brant Foundation is pleased to present Basquiat x Warhol, an exhibition of works from the artists’ influential collaboration in the early eighties. Curated by Dr. Dieter Buchhart and Peter M. Brant in collaboration with Dr. Anna Karina Hofbauer, this is the first time this iconic collaboration has been the subject of a major New York exhibition in over twenty-five years.
Basquiat and Warhol occupied two distinct spaces in New York’s 1980s art scene. After their formal introduction in 1982 at Warhol’s Factory, the two would meet regularly, working on multiple monumental canvases at once, resulting in over 160 collaborative works created in the short period of from late 1983 to 1985. This enthusiastic exchange of energy is exemplified in their paintings, which illustrate a back and forth that is both tense and complimentary. The paintings are rife with both artists’ unique iconographies: Warhol’s screen-printed advertisements and cultural symbols are effaced by Basquiat’s iconic figures and signs; newspaper headlines included by Warhol are obscured and rewritten by Basquiat; scenes painted in Basquiat’s conceptual Neo-Expressionist style are joined by Warhol’s precise appropriations of brand logos. The artists also influenced each other: Warhol at times returned to his painterly beginnings, and Basquiat increased his use of the silkscreen-printing technique.
“In their collaboration, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol came together and opened new ideas and spaces of thought that mirror both our present time as well as the past and future. The results are brilliant artworks that continue to have an impact in our own time as they appear to address pressing and highly relevant contemporary topics such as racism and consumerism. Their collaboration was a unique project and probably one of the greatest and most enduring in all of art history,” says Dr. Buchhart.
This exhibit will not run long and it’s a piece of history we should never forget. Especially, New York history. The show runs through January 7th. For more information, visit https://www.brantfoundation.org/exhibitions/basquiat-x-warhol/