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I hadn’t even heard of the original Luna Luna until I received an invite to check out its revival a couple of weeks ago. At first glance, its cross-decades lineup of contemporary art icons seemed too good to be true—as if the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Elvis had staged a festival that was lost to time. But the thin Google results proved this was legit, and after now visiting in person, I can tell you firsthand that Luna Luna is very much alive.
Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy has rescued an art carnival that was staged in Germany in 1987 and resurrected it on a soundstage in L.A., just next to the Sixth Street Viaduct in Boyle Heights. The restored swings, carousels and Ferris wheel (all of which you can look at but can’t touch) come from a staggering array of artists: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf and Sonia Delaunay, to name a few.
As of December 15, you can step inside Luna Luna for yourself at Ace Mission Studios. Timed tickets are available through the spring of 2024 and cost $38 on weekdays and $48 on weekends, with kids tickets for $20. There’s also an $85 VIP “Moon Pass” option that throws in parking, a pin and a chance to step inside both the Dalí and Hockney pieces—though more on that in a bit.
Though it was supposed to tour the world, Luna Luna never went on display outside of its original run in Hamburg until now. The short version of the intervening three decades: litigation, storage and hip-hop. A New York Times story from last year covers the story quite in depth, but essentially Luna Luna could find neither a permanent home (Vienna turned it down) nor a proper tour (plans to head to San Diego fell through), and the foundation that ultimately purchased it became tied up in lawsuits. As a result, the carnival was packed into 44 shipping containers, which were eventually moved to the Texas prairie. A few years ago, a handful of art world partners began an effort to purchase Luna Luna, which they were able to successfully do with the help of Drake (yes, that Drake) and his media company DreamCrew. Bought sight unseen, the unopened containers turned out to be in pretty good shape, and in January of 2022 they were brought into an L.A. studio in preparation for display.
The resulting show is a colorful jubilee of larger-than-life installations, originally created by the artists themselves (you can watch archival footage of Keith Haring standing in front of his carousel with a paintbrush in hand) or artisans at the Vienna opera. Of the nearly 30 original works, 16 are currently on display; the rest are in storage elsewhere in L.A. and undergoing restoration work.
To be clear, you can’t actually ride any of the carnival attractions (though you can walk inside of both Dalí’s and Hockney’s installations if you upgrade to a Moon Pass). Instead, the rides here are presented like they’re in a museum, though one with colorful lighting, whirling motors, jugglers, stilt walkers and musical compositions by Miles Davis and Philip Glass floating around. If you were only planning on visiting thinking that you’d get a seat on the swings, then you’ll need to adjust your expectations. But if, like me, you’re the kind of person who’s content strolling around Disneyland and soaking up the atmosphere without ever setting foot on a ride, you’ll love Luna Luna. (It’s also worth mentioning here that I explored the event during a nearly-empty press preview as well as a packed opening party and still found the atmosphere magical at both.)
“We really like how amusement parks encourage people to take their own pathways, so it’s kind of a very open experience,” curatorial director Lumi Tan says of Luna Luna’s layout. Each ride will flicker to life and spin multiple times an hour, but there’s no set route to move between them.
All that said, you can step inside of two stationary pieces: David Hockney’s Enchanted Tree, a towering, cylindrical pavilion where you can listen to waltzes, and Salvador Dali’s Dalídom, a geodesic dome lined with trippy triangular mirrors and shocking pink panels (of course there’s a photographer stationed near the entrance). That you can only do so if you spend $85 on the Moon Pass is admittedly a bit disappointing, but I do think you could observe both from the outside only and still have a fantastic time while saving quite a bit of cash.
Austrian artist André Heller first began to assemble the artists for Luna Luna in the early 1970s, and his inflatable, walk-through Dream Station is the first thing you’ll see outside of the show. Once inside, a 1930s swing ride covered in panels painted by Kenny Scharf will immediately compete for your attention, especially if it’s lit up and spinning. In fact, just about every attraction on display at Luna Luna will play music, illuminate or animate over the course of your visit, whether that’s the unmistakably Keith Haring carousel, Arik Brauer’s face-in-hole merry-go-round or the facade for Manfred Deix’s Palace of the Winds, which blasts a soundtrack of violin and farts (you can watch flatulent footage from the original theater in Hamburg, where bare behinds lined up on stage in front of microphones).
And that’s only the first room: Walk underneath Sonia Delaunay’s “Luna Luna” archway and you’ll find yourself in another cavernous space, anchored on one end by a white, all-wood 1920s Ferris wheel adorned with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s familiar motifs: anatomical, historical, and musical drawings and words, with a baboon’s ass visible on the back. This is where you’ll also find a glass labyrinth wrapped in triangular Roy Lichtenstein panels and a wedding chapel from Heller that lets you marry whoever or whatever you’d like (you’ll receive a Polaroid and a faux marriage certificate that you can void simply by ripping it up).
There’s a playfulness to most of the pieces here, and even though their sometimes grotesque characters and peculiar compositions don’t fit what we think of today as “kid-friendly,” this definitely was—and still is—something intended for all ages.
“Amusement parks are already a place where you feel this very large range of emotions,” Tan says. “I think André wanted to play on that and not have artists hold back.”
And they didn’t. This was still only a handful of decades removed from World War II, and the artists—many of them Jewish and based in Europe—were still processing the era’s trauma in their work. There’s an anti-fascist bent to much of it, too. Just look at Daniel Spoerri’s Crap Chancellery, a replica of the Nazi headquarters with columns topped with steaming piles of poop and an interior that doubled as both an actual bathroom and a gallery of digestion-inspired assembly sculpture (in L.A., only the facade and non-steaming poop pillars are viewable).
“It was not all just fun and joy,” Tan explains. “There was a lot of serious intent around reclaiming a childhood that they did not get to have in the postwar period.”
With such oddly impactful substance behind the aesthetics and such an array of artistic movements represented, it’s nearly impossible in our social media-driven age to think of how something like this didn’t become a cultural touchstone in the way that something like the more recent Dismaland did. Search online for Luna Luna now and you’ll of course find plenty, but even just a few weeks ago the internet was oddly thin on info about the initial run in Hamburg. As I was wrapping up my time inside Luna Luna, I couldn’t help but think how this was ever able to fade away in the art world, a scene that often exalts its big names like mythological titans. After all, around 300,000 people visited the original Luna Luna, and it had write-ups in Life and The New York Times around its opening. So what happened? That’s been part of Tan’s research in putting this show together. Her best understanding: The fair’s private sponsorship, Heller’s relatively locally-limited fame and a contempt for amusement parks made Luna Luna elude art historians’ notice. “Maybe people didn’t really think it was real artwork or they didn’t know how involved the artists were,” she muses.
It seems unlikely the same thing will happen again after Luna Luna’s L.A. run (and not just because of all of the items available in the gift shop, either). There are plans—presumably for real this time—for it to tour, and even if it somehow doesn’t, this will surely be the exhibition to see in L.A. for months to come.
Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy is open at Ace Mission Studios through the spring of 2024. Timed tickets cost $38 on weekdays, $48 on weekends, $20 for kids and $85 for VIP.