Over the Moon
- The Art Fart
- Mar 15
- 5 min read
Well, folks, I finally made it: Luna Luna at The Shed in New York City has been the hottest art ticket in town for some time, but the meager state of my wallet & the steep price of the show (40 American shekels!) prevented me, quite frankly, from dashing there with bells on. I gave up bacon & cheeseburgers for a whole month just to scrap up enough puppet cash to get my little tuchus there after they extended the show (twice!), but finally I made it! Oy!
I knew what was in store for me: apparently some yay-hoo in the 80s put on a legendary functioning art carnival, with rides & games, the whole shebang, with contributors ranging from cool scene kids of the moment Keith Haring (who designed a carousel) & Basquiat (Ferris wheel) to established art stars like Roy Lichtenstein (a glass labyrinth I got lost in), Salvador Dalì (a geodesic dome of mirrors called Dalìdome, in case you need to see your haircut from every angle), David Hockney (a big-top zoetrope-like spooky wooden cylinder called Enchanted Tree, which was empty when I went but apparently had performers that acted as live mirrors of viewers), & Kenny Scharf (a colorfully decorated wave swing & plenty of life-size toony characters, a definite highlight). And those are just a few! Viennese art weirdo, pop star, & creator of this marvelous little whimsy party, a Mr. André Heller, “the most influential art curator you’ve never heard of”, talked over thirty artists into contributing to the venture, which was staged in a field in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987, clocked over 300,000 visitors, & was slated for a world tour. Alas, the tour was abruptly canceled & the carnival vanished into storage & obscurity until its revival here in New York City.
This could only be staged at The Shed, & I would go so far as to say this show officially solidifies the fledgling art space as the institution du jour of the New York art scene — they’re really the only ones with enough space to have functioning carnival rides, complementary enveloping light & sound installation, plus live performers, an overlook, & a gift shop (of course). The sheer scale of the show is enough to dazzle any casual art fan, & the fact that none of us has ever heard of it is even more dazzling — a point hit upon in the wall texts over & over again, for surely this is one of the more incredible art happenings of the 80s, if not the entire twentieth century. One can see how, given the lighthearted spirit of the endeavor, the seriously unserious attitude (I mean it’s literally a carnival for crying out loud, replete with a ”fart orchestra” where viewers recorded their own farts — this was, of course, not on offer at the contemporary iteration) might have made it feel like a bauble, a piece of sparkly candy that the more “serious” art crowd thus overlooked, even ignored — however, if it had toured the world, surely it would have tickled even the most sober of viewers, & thusly made its dent. It almost feels like it could have changed the course of art history had more people experienced it.
Nonetheless, it is the most au courant show for our particular moment. Have you noticed, the more dire the political & economic situation, the weirder the cultural scene seems to get? How better to fight tyranny & chaos than with an army of glitter & clowns? Cue the puppets! The performances & life-size puppets (which included butterflies that chased viewers around, a giant elephant that defecated fabric carrots, & variously costumed creatures making a general, ambient, sufficiently wacky ruckus) designed by the Puerto Rican art collective Poncili Creación, were the stars of the show. Especially since you couldn’t actually ride the rides, which created the strangest of disconnects. Would it really have been so bad to allow people a go? There was a sense of gee whiz, what a shame to the whole thing that is endemic to the museumification of art that the entire original enterprise was in fact working against, thus creating a show at odds with itself. Fun fun fun! But don’t touch. Thank the art gods for Poncili Creación, whose Poncililand was hands down the best part, since you could actually play around for a change: a room full of modular pillow-like face & body parts could be reconstructed to create your own creatures & outfits — a life-sized Legoland that felt like an adult sandbox.
Just across the way from Poncililan lay a ludicrous chapel with performers who offered to marry viewers to anyone or anything, with a certificate & everything — this was a radical concept in the 80s. Aw, the 80s! How we yearn for the past! That was my biggest critique of Luna Luna: it left me with an itch I couldn’t quite scratch, because it placed everything just out of reach. There is definitely a tendency in New York of mythologizing the glorious past, when Keith Haring & Basquiat were running around the city, when things were relatively affordable etc. The way this show was presented almost demanded that it be viewed as an occasion firmly situated in the past. Where have we arrived from there? A carnival full of rides you can’t ride? The statement seems clear. We’re less inclined to have any real fun these days, & more often than not settle for a selfie. Open up those damn rides, say I! Why must the fun be vacuum-sealed in the past? Despite this, incredibly, the show manages to be a success: what is art but a ride for the mind, anyway? The disconnect seems unfair, but one that is part & parcel to the experience of art: a world you can only enter via the imagination. Even if we were able to ride the rides, still we must go home to our individual realities. How best to merge the two? The world of art & the world itself? This is what you are left contemplating from the overlook as you watch the empty rides whir: the distance between the feeling of watching a ride & being on one, between art & life, childhood & adulthood, the mind & reality.
Oy gevalt! I’d rather just ride the rides!
—The Art Fart
Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy was on view at The Shed in New York City from November 2024 thru March 2025. Check their site to see tour dates. Photos © Sabina Sarnitz, courtesy of Luna Luna, LLC.