Rock stars of art
AN exceptional double bill opened this week at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, with shows celebrating two artists and iconic figures of 20th-century art – Egon Schiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Although separated by almost half a century, the artists' trajectories share several characteristics, with fleeting yet intense careers that both left their mark on the art world.
Like rock stars of the art world, both Schiele and Basquiat were dead by 28. Yet in their short lives, the two artists rose to become what Fondation Louis Vuitton describes as “major figures in 20th-century art” in the space of barely 10 years. The galleries of the French luxury house's Parisian centre for art and culture will celebrate the artists' different bodies of work in a double bill of exhibitions.
The shows feature works from very different times and places; on the one hand, Vienna in the 1900s – a vibrant hub of intellectual and artistic life marked by the Secession – and, on the other, the underground scene of 1980s New York with its questioning of art and identity.
The Schiele exhibition is billed as the first monograph of the artist's work in Paris in 25 years.
The show features some 120 works including major pieces by the artist, such as Self-Portrait With A Chinese Lantern and Pregnant Woman And Death . The show is organised chronologically across four rooms charting the concept of the line and how it developed in Egon Schiele's work.
The Jean-Michel Basquiat show features 135 works from 1980 to 1988. Highlights include the artist's Heads, gathered together for the first time at Fondation Louis Vuitton, and several collaborations between the New York artist and the godfather of Pop Art, Andy Warhol. The exhibition is organised chronologically and by groups of works defining themes.
Basquiat and Schiele run till Jan 14, 2019, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.