With "Andy Warhol & Keith Haring. Party of Life", Museum Brandhorst is presenting the world's first comprehensive institutional exhibition dedicated to both artists. The title of the show is borrowed from the motto of Keith Haring's birthday celebrations: "Party of Life" tells of the cosmos of the 1980s, of MTV, discos, voguing, hip-hop, new wave and graffiti. In this environment, the exhibition traces Warhol and Haring's friendship as artists. It reveals parallels in their artistic self-image, their openness to cooperation and collaborative projects and their inclusive attitude: art and its messages should reach as many people as possible.
They were pop stars, charismatic networkers and (self-)marketing geniuses: Andy Warhol and Keith Haring are not only among the most famous artists of the second half of the 20th century. They also revolutionized the established ideas of art and its distribution. Warhol's pop images and Haring's dancing figures are part of our collective visual memory and are still omnipresent in advertising, fashion, music and film today. Despite their great age difference and different styles, the two artists were friends and companions. They met in the New York art and clubbing scene and influenced each other - and many others.
Key Visual "Andy Warhol & Keith Haring.Party of Life", Museum Brandhorst, © Design: Parat.cc
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Keith Haring (1958-1990) both came from Christian families in Pennsylvania. As young homosexual men, however, they left the heteronormative structures behind them early on - both moved to New York (albeit 30 years apart). As a co-founder of Pop Art, Warhol changed the understanding of art, but also the concept of art, and was a decisive influence on the young Haring. He left thousands of "Subway Drawings" in the public space of the New York subway, used his art in activist poster campaigns and, with Warhol's support, opened the Pop Shop in 1986, where he sold T-shirts, buttons and posters designed by himself and other artists. During this time, Warhol produced TV shows, created commissioned works and celebrity portraits. Or he painted a racing car in 1979, creating the most famous art car for the German car company BMW. Both artists distanced themselves from an elitist concept of art, flirted with commerce and used a wide variety of spaces, channels and media.
Keith Haring, Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1985, acrylic on canvas, Udo and Anette Brandhorst Collection © The Keith Haring Foundation, Photo: Haydar Koyupinar, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Museum Brandhorst, Munich
Along thematic rooms, the exhibition shows that the works of Warhol and Haring from the 1970s and 1980s were not only created at a time of extreme socio-political tensions, but are still highly topical today. The two artists' engagement with excessive consumer culture, the possibilities of new media, queerness, gentrification, fears of nuclear war and activism as well as the striving for community in times of crisis can be experienced in the exhibition. The flip side of the "Party of Life" can also be found against the backdrop of the smouldering AIDS epidemic and the two artists' confrontation with death. It is prominently visible in the multi-part collaborative work "Apocalypse" (1988) by Keith Haring and the author William S. Burroughs, which is being shown in the museum for the first time as a new addition to the Brandhorst Collection. In impressive images and texts, the two artists present New York in the 1980s as an apocalyptic landscape.
Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980, acrylic, silkscreen ink and glass dust on canvas, 228.4 x 178.2 cm, Udo and Anette Brandhorst Collection © 2024 The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Haydar Koyupinar, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Museum Brandhorst, Munich
In addition to this joint work, numerous collaborations between Haring and Warhol will also be presented, as well as projects created in exchange with artists, performers, authors, sprayers or music and fashion icons of the time, including Richard Avedon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, William S. Burroughs, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura, Courtney Harmel, Eric Haze, Jenny Holzer, Bill T. Jones, Grace Jones, LA II, Madonna, Robert Mapplethorpe, Malcolm McLaren, Yoko Ono, Kenny Scharf, John Sex, Stephen Shore, Tseng Kwong Chi, Vivienne Westwood and many more.
"Andy Warhol & Keith Haring. Party of Life" presents a large number of works from the holdings of the Museum Brandhorst as well as relevant loans from institutional and private collections. In addition to famous key works, the exhibition also focuses on film and photo recordings, archive material, posters, records and everyday objects.
The show at Museum Brandhorst, which houses the largest Warhol collection in Europe with over 120 works and a growing collection of Haring works, thus opens up new perspectives on both artists.
June 28, 2024 to January 26, 2025
www.museum-brandhorst.de
