Salvador Dalí, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Kenny Scharf, and Roy Lichtenstein are just some of the modern art heavy hitters who contributed to Luna Luna, an incredible art amusement park founded by Austrian Artist André Heller that's been sitting in storage since the late eighties. Meant to be a traveling carnival, it debuted in 1987 in Hamburg, Germany, ran all that summer, and then a legal battle curtailed its world tour, until now. A "reimagined" Luna Luna will return in 2024 with "an evolving collection of new rides and amusements from a growing family of contemporary artists spanning art, music, food, and more."
Luna Luna saw nearly a quarter of a million visitors in its first—and only—summer. A change of ownership after its initial installation trapped the project in a legal battle, and it was instead locked away in storage. It was more than three decades before it was seen again. In 2022, a team of creatives organized to buy the contents of the original presentation, restore it, and launch a multi-city tour starting in 2024. To mark this new chapter, Phaidon has also re-issued Luna Luna: The Art Amusement Park, a book first published in 1987 that includes numerous photographs and documentation along with cover drawings commissioned by the artists.
The photos are sheer eye candy. BEHOLD:
