Andy Warhol & Keith Haring. Party of Life

Press preview: 26 June 2024, 11 a.m.
Opening: 27 June 2024, 7 p.m.
Duration: 28 June 2024 until 26 January 2025

You are warmly invited to a press preview on Wednesday, June 26, at 11 a.m..

Please obtain accreditation by no later than 11 a.m. on June 25, 2024 at presse@museum-brandhorst.de.

Program:

Inaugural address | Prof. Dr. Bernhard Maaz, Director General Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

Inaugural address | Achim Hochdörfer, Director Museum Brandhorst
Introduction | Franziska Linhardt, Curator

Afterwards:

Opportunity to pose questions to curators Franziska Linhardt
Exhibition viewing
Possibility to make film and photographic recordings in the exhibition

They were pop stars, charismatic networkers and (self-)marketing geniuses: Andy Warhol and Keith Haring were not only two of the most famous artists of the second half of the 20th century. They also revolutionized established ideas of art and its dissemination. Warhol’s pop paintings and Haring’s dancing figures are part of our collective visual memory and remain omnipresent to this day in advertising, fashion, music and film. Despite their large age gap and different styles, these two artists were friends and companions. They met in New York’s art and clubbing scene and influenced each other—and many others besides.

With “Andy Warhol & Keith Haring. Party of Life,” Museum Brandhorst presents the world’s first comprehensive institutional exhibition dedicated to the two artists. The title of the show borrows the motto from Keith Haring’s birthday parties: “Party of Life” relays the cosmos of the 1980s, of MTV, discos, vogueing, hip-hop, New Wave and graffiti. The exhibition traces Haring’s and Warhol’s friendship in this environment. It reveals parallels in their artistic identity, their openness to cooperation and collaborative projects, as well as in their inclusive attitude: Art and its messages should reach as many people as possible.

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) and Keith Haring (1958–1990) both came from Christian families in Pennsylvania. As young gay men, they soon left heteronormative structures behind them—both were drawn to New York (albeit 30 years apart). As one of the pioneers of Pop Art, Warhol changed the understanding and concept of art and was a major influence on the young Haring. The latter left thousands of “Subway Drawings” in the public spaces of New York’s subways, used his art in activist poster campaigns and opened his Pop Shop in 1986, with the support of Warhol, where he sold t-shirts, badges and posters designed by himself and other artists. During this time, Warhol produced TV shows and created commissioned works and celebrity portraits. In 1979 he painted a racing car, creating the most famous Art Car for the German car company BMW, which can also be seen in the exhibition. Both artists distanced themselves from an elitist concept of art, flirted with commerce and used different spaces, channels and media.

Through thematic rooms, the exhibition shows that the works by Warhol and Haring from the 1970s and 1980s were created not only at a time of extreme sociopolitical tensions but are still highly topical today. Both artists’ exploration of excessive consumer culture, the possibilities of new media, with queerness, gentrification, fears of nuclear war and activism as well as the pursuit of community in times of crisis can be experienced in the exhibition. The flip side of the “Party of Life” is also reflected against the backdrop of the festering AIDS epidemic and the two artists’ confrontation with death. It becomes prominently visible in the multi-part collaborative work “Apocalypse” (1988) by Keith Haring and the author William S. Burroughs, which is being presented in the museum for the first time as a new addition to the Brandhorst Collection. In impressive images and texts, the two artists portray New York in the 1980s as an apocalyptic landscape.

In addition to this joint work, numerous collaborations between Haring and Warhol are presented, as well as projects created in cooperation with artists, performers, authors, graffiti writers and 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 Museum Brandhorst’s comprehensive holdings, as well as significant loans from institutional and private collections. In addition to famous key works, the exhibition also focuses on film and photography, archival material, posters, records and everyday objects. The exhibition at Museum Brandhorst, which houses the largest Warhol collection in Europe with more than 120 works, as well as a growing collection of Haring’s works, thus opens up new perspectives on both artists.

Curators: Franziska Linhardt in cooperation with Arthur Fink
Curatorial Assistant: Zakirah Rabaney

Magazine
Based on Warhol’s groundbreaking “Interview” magazine and inspired by Haring’s belief in making art accessible to everybody, a special issue to accompany the exhibition will be published in cooperation with the magazine ART. Interviews, articles and photo series offer many insights into the friendship and work of these two outstanding artists in the thrilling New York of the 1980s.
Available in the museum shop for € 16 or in stores as a double issue with the July 2024 edition of ART magazine

Museum Brandhorst x FILMFEST MÜNCHEN
The fifth cooperation with FILMFEST MÜNCHEN is dedicated to the cinematic and artistic subcultures of New York in the 1980s. From the first week of the exhibition, a film program in the media room at Museum Brandhorst will complement the exhibition’s themes. In addition, selected films will be shown in Munich cinemas from June 28 to July 7, 2024.

Young Night
Museum Brandhorst is launching the “Party of Life” exhibition on June 28 with the Young Night. Admission is free from 6 p.m. to midnight. There will be workshops, art talks, music by Public Possession and the Blitz Club as well as a film program in collaboration with CineYou, the participatory format for the young audience of FILMFEST MÜNCHEN.