A large Andy Warhol portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat in a jock strap is the first thing you see at “Downtown/Uptown.” And the choice is fitting, said in Whitehot , because the towering electric-red silk-screen image “captures everything about ’80s art: the need to shout above cultural noise, the wholesale packaging of sexuality, and the commodification of, well, everything.” Warhol, then in his 50s, was the new generation’s spirit guide and Basquiat a rising star, about to lead a New York City–based cohort including Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger to a level of pop celebrity that was unknown a decade earlier. Those artists and roughly 20 more are featured in this all-star group gallery exhibition co-curated by 1980s gallerist and impresario Mary Boone, wh

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