Luna Luna’s revival

It might seem odd to put the artist Drake in the same sentence as avant-garde art in Paris… however that is exactly what happened last year. In 2022, Drake helped bring back to life Luna Luna, an unusual carnival originally created by the Viennese artist Andre Heller in 1987.

For decades, Luna Luna was stored in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse, surrounded by old shipping containers and crates. For 35 years, the carnival was shielded from the public… almost no one realized the magnitude of artwork within the functional amusement park.

Luna Luna was the brainchild of Heller, a multi-media artist who cemented himself by creating flying sculptures, fire spectacles, and circuses. His hope was that the carnival would travel the world… similar to how Ringling Brothers’ circuses traveled throughout the country in the early part of the 20th-century.

About the carnival at the time it opened in West Germany in June 1987, (courtesy of the New York Times, as reported to Life magazine at the time), “There are 30 pavilions in this international carnival of the avant-garde, and each one simultaneously elevates the mind and makes the jaw drop.” There was reason to celebrate as an estimated 250,000 visitors came to the park that summer, Heller said he planed for Luna Luna to “travel the seas and the suns and the moons.”

Unfortunately, many different factors conspired against Heller, and the park permanently closed soon after it opened. The artist was all but assured that he would never lay eyes on his park again. In 2019, Michael Goldberg, a creative director, was surfing the web when he came upon mentions of Luna Luna. He tried to contact anyone he thought might be familiar with the story; however all he turned up was dead ends. As a last resort, he cold-called Heller’s studio.

Serendipitously at the same time, Heller had been communicating with Dieter Buchhart, a Basquiat scholar and art historian. Several collectors were interested in funding a proposition to “free” Luna Luna; however the contract insisted that the works be purchased “sight unseen.” Goldberg managed to peak the interest of Drake’s DreamCrew and almost instantaneously, they were 100% sold on the project.

Even though negotiations dragged on for several months, Drake remained committed to his $100 million bet. In January 2022, Luna Luna left Texas… in 44 containers, two wagons, and seven crates. With the condition of the works still unknown, it was decided that a large industrial workshop was necessary to revive the pieces. Kathy Noble, Luna Luna’s new curatorial director, called Luna Luna “a Trojan horse of experimental art.”

Noble continued, “The number of artistic movements it covers is kind of crazy. Everything from abstraction, art brut, Dada, Fluxus, Neo-Expressionism, nouveau realism, pop art, surrealism, Viennese Actionism…”. As important as it was to display all the existing rides, there is also a plan in place to commission new experimental works in a similar style.

Plans are for the carnival to open later this year in Los Angeles. Carnival of the Avant-Garde will have elevated rides, more interactive experiences, and restaurants… everything to make this a complete adventure. The park’s team of curators come from the world’s top museums including Tate Modern and the Shed. Following the grand opening, a worldwide tour produced by Live Nation is planned for 2024.

Even though Heller himself will be absent from the “reincarnation team,” there is no doubt that his vision for a traveling circus that acts as a fleeting museum was years ahead of its time. Contemporary art is truly a medium for entertainment and enjoyment. Even though he confirms that the path has been hard for him, Heller concludes, “It’s always out of every bad thing comes something extremely good. The change that this happened is so little that it must have an inner truth that I am not aware of yet.”