Luna Luna: The Art Amusement Park

Product Information

In addition to the "wedding pavilion" and a "head-through-the-wall booth," he had a blue-red "dream station" built as a coffee house.

There were around 30 attractions, which included a walk-in "shadow room" by Georg Baselitz, a musical "enchanted tree" by David Hockney, and boldly colored glass labyrinth by Roy Lichtenstein. To help promote Luna Luna, each artist was invited to create a moon graphic and a short accompanying text. Over the course of 13 weeks, more than 240,000 people visited this unique take on a traditional amusement park. Just ahead of Watanabe in Japan, Études launched a capsule collection featuring images by Basquiat for AW22.The book also features a glow in the dark case, and a double-sided jacket showing a poster of the original park. Borrowing its name from Coney Island’s Luna Park, the colorful carnival was unlike anything that had ever come before—or since.

They could take in the view from atop a dazzling Jean-Michel Basquiat Ferris wheel while listening to Miles Davis. He knew the visual immediacy of his work – which echoes back to the vernacular of ancient Aztec, Egyptian, African and Australian Aboriginal art – and wanted to exploit it. Currently the New York Public Library has more than 100 books in its archive featuring Keith Haring in the title. At the same time, Heller had been toying with a relaunch, encouraged by Basquiat scholar Dieter Buchhart.

As well as extensive photography of the works, Luna Luna: The Art Amusement Park includes written material from the original site and exhibition, an essay by Hilde Spiel, and a poignant interview with André Heller. Taken as a whole, Luna Luna stands as a carnivalesque microcosm of the era’s preoccupations and anxieties. The immediacy and energy of his line – his radiant babies and dancing dogs in super-bright colours – are as much a part of the ’80s lexicon as the first MTV logo planted on the moon by an animated spaceman. She tirelessly photographed the works from inception to installation, and the results of her mission provide the book’s visual content.

DreamCrew, the arts and entertainment firm co-founded by rapper Drake, has acquired all remnants of Luna Luna, an otherworldly art carnival that debuted to the public just once in Hamburg in 1987 with attractions created by a number of notable artists. Luna Luna, which also featured interactive installations, games, and artist performances, was born from Heller’s belief that “art should come in unconventional guises and be brought to those who might not ordinarily seek it out in more predictable settings. He wouldn’t have been surprised by the legacy today,” says Gil Vazquez, who was close to the artist and is now executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation, responsible for charitable grants and the administration of exhibitions. Our small-group adventures are inspired by our Atlas of the world's most fascinating places, the stories behind them, and the people who bring them to life.Let yourself hallucinate in the Dalí Dome, a spatial experience with mirrors and a facade of fried eggs. The February 15 release of LUNA LUNA: THE ART AMUSEMENT PARK transports us back to the summer of 1987.