LUNA LUNA LA

WHAT A PERFECT ADDITION TO THE LOS ANGELES ARTS DISTRICT! “Luna Luna Forgotten Fantasy” is being installed in a 60,000-sq.-ft. warehouse at 1601 E. 6th Street, to be opened later this month. This, after having spent 35 years in storage, the last 15 years of it in rural Texas.

Here are tidbits about Luna Luna, its founder Viennese artist/entrepreneur André Hiller, its original attractions designed by the likes of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delaunay, Keith Haring, David Hockney, and Roy Lichtenstein with music approved by Miles Davis and Philip Glass, its new one with the support of Canadian rapper Drake.

See Joe Coscarelli’s article “How Drake’s $100 Million Bet Saved the Long-Lost Art Carnival Luna Luna,” The New York Times, November 17, 2022, for details. Also Julia Binswanger’s article “When Keith Haring, Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Basquiat Created an Art Amusement Park,” Smithsonian Magazine, December 6, 2023. And Andrea Whittle’s “The Experimental Art Carnival Luna Luna Comes Back to Life,” W Magazine, December 1, 2023.

The Original Luna Luna, 1987. Cited in Coscarelli’s article: “In an earlier interview, Kathy Noble, the curatorial director of the new Luna Luna, called it ‘a Trojan horse of experimental art.’ She marveled at how Heller, by simply following his whims, had managed to construct a survey that covered large swathes of 20th century Western art history.”

“The number of artistic movements it covers is kind of crazy,” she said. “Everything from abstraction, art brut, Dada, Fluxus, Neo-Expressionism, nouveau realism, pop art, surrealism, Viennese Actionism.”

The original Luna Luna, in Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Image courtesy of Luna Luna LLC from W Magazine.

The Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat is at center left; the Keith Haring carousel at lower center; a pavilion of geometric trees by David Hockney, left center; and entrance gate by Sonia Delauney, lower right.

David Hockney works on his Enchanted Tree model in Los Angeles in 1986. This and following image by Sabina Sarnitz from W Magazine. 

W Magazine writes, “During the summer of 1987, thousands of people experienced what was praised by Life magazine as ‘an international art carnival of the avant-garde’ that ‘simultaneously elevates the mind and makes the jaw drop.’ But once the carousels stopped spinning at the end of the season, the rides and attractions were ‘buried alive,’ as Heller once put it, for 35 years.”

Summer of 1987, Luna Luna, Hamburg.

“There were plans to revive Luna Luna anywhere from Vienna to San Diego,” writes W Magazine, “but after a series of philanthropic false starts, funding disputes, and legal battles, the works ended up languishing in crates and shipping containers in rural Texas.”

The New Luna Luna. “In the end,” The New York Times’ Joe Coscarelli wrote, “it took the connections, resources and ingenuity of Heller, his musician son, a New York creative director, an art lawyer, a start-up founder, two powerful music managers, and a megawatt rapper who happens to be one of the most famous people on the planet to revive the ambitious project…. Heller didn’t even know who the rap star was until they were nearly partners.”

Smithsonian Magazine writes, “The new Luna Luna will be housed inside two warehouse spaces, with about half of the 30 original installations on display. Many of the historic rides are too fragile to operate, but visitors will be able to experience new rides, as well as enjoy live entertainment, snacks and souvenirs.”

The Basquiat Ferris wheel. (Now for display only.)

Smithsonian quotes Lumi Tan, the park’s curatorial director: “Luna Luna is so remarkable within art history, not just because of how well-known the artists were, but what the project represented: the breaking down of barriers between art movements, disciplines and generations; a truly successful ability to make the avant-garde accessible; and the prescient desire to immerse an audience completely in a sensorial experience.”

Helen Molesworth, the show’s curatorial adviser, says that “the warehouse space will employ dim, romantic lighting to evoke a carnival at dusk and show off the illuminated rides. The soundtrack will be distinctly 1980s, ranging from European pop hits to music by Glass and Davis.” 

“What we’re hoping is that the experience is something like seeing the original,” Molesworth says. “It’s going to have a magical feel.”

A magical feel, Philip Glass, and Miles Davis.  A neat combination. ds