Artists & Works |
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| Keith Haring American (1948-1990) UNTITLED (1981) sumi ink on paper 41" x 52 1/4" |
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| ©The Estate of Keith Haring |
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Keith Haring is often called an urban painter, not only because his style is associated with graffiti, but also because the images seem to be in aggressive motion. The short, exclamatory lines around the dancing figures and barking dogs in this paintings could be seen as indications of violence or anxiety—or as lively and amusing stylistic elements. In this untitled work, figures face off in every direction, creating an explosive effect. Since there is no color to distract or soothe the eye, shape and movement control the painting. Haring says, "A lot of the drawings are about power and force: the transfer of power, power being used for different reasons." |
CRITICAL EXCERPTS |
| NYTimes, Cathleen McGuigan, 2/10/85 "Haring’s' images of a crawling baby or a barking dog have become ubiquitous items of graffiti art, a style that first grew out of the scribbling (most citizens call them defacement) on New York City's subway cars and walls... For many new art patrons, connoisseurship of contemporary art is a necessary part of the urban life style. They look for paintings that are aesthetically aggressive, that physically assault space..." |
| Interview with Barry Blinderman, in Art Talk: The early 80s, ed. Jeanne Siegel, da Capo Press, 1988 from intro (Siegel): A year after leaving the School of Visual Arts (where he studied with Joseph Kosuth and Keith Sonnier), Haring began drawing white chalk figures on the black paper which was pasted over expired billboard ads in New York City subway stations. He developed personal signs—crawling baby, barking dog, TV sets, telephones, flying saucers—that have remained mainstays of his private mythology. Blinderman discusses with Haring this iconography as well as his abbreviated drawing style and its relation to graffiti. He characterizes Haring's tableaux as lying somewhere between the realm of cave art and cartoon—capturing the mystery of ancient ritual and the obsessions of high society. From the start of his career Haring was superenergized and directed. Between 1980 and 1981, he exhibited in the Times Square Show, New York/New Wave at PS1....[etc.]...He became a good friend of Andy Warhol, echoing Warhol's discarding the distinctions between high and commercial art. Haring died February 16, 1990. from interview text: "I was interested in what using images could convey that words could not. I had been doing performances and video pieces with a lot of verbal elements, and was getting frustrated with the use of words. The images became another vocabulary—signs and symbols which became more significant through redundancy. The crawling figure that I draw, for example, has become a sign...The earliest subway drawings were done with black pilot markers over Johnny Walker Red ads...I lived near Times Square and worked downtown, so I was on the subway at least twice a day. By moving from the East Village to Times Square, I increased my audience by tens of thousand of people...I've always been interested in Chinese calligraphy, Mark Tobey's work, and Dubuffet's idea of art brut. That's why I was attracted to graffiti right away...So much information can be conveyed with just one line, and the slightest change in that line can create a totally different meaning. Economy has played a big part in the work from the beginning...A lot of the drawings are about power and force: the transfer of power, power being used for different reasons...It's really a four-legged animal rather than a dog. It's a basic symbol for animal life or for nature. We don't understand animals after all this time—what they think or if they think. When the animal is bigger than the man, it stands for nature or a predator. Scale becomes a tool...When the animal is small, it could be the man's pet...I was born in 1958, one of the first babies of the space age. I grew up on TV. I feel that I'm a product of Pop, rather than a person who is calling attention to it." |
| Keith Haring statement in John Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. “Around 1983, I became aware that imitations of my work were springing up all over the world. In Australia, I saw Keith Haring T-shirts. In Japan I saw Keith Haring T-shirts and posters. In Europe I saw Keith Haring graffiti of the baby and of the dog. My things had entered into the popular culture whether I wanted it or not. Because these works registered as public gifts to the world, people felt they were allowed to copy them—to make them their own. The stuff had become a kind of international vocabulary to be used by everyone. Well, it gave me pause. In my studies of semiotics, I understood that the more exclusive something is, the greater value it has...And that’s the game you’re supposed to play. From the beginning I was against this game. Although I had a foot in the art world, I wasn’t going to compromise and let the art world manipulate the work and make it become something it wasn’t.... So I endorsed the fact that the work had entered the popular culture. Instead of suing people and saying, “This is mine! You can’t do this!” I decided to participate in the flow of fakes—and the way I did this was to show people the difference between the real thing and the imitation... At any rate, what I’m leading up to is the Pop Shop. It’s now 1985, and I begin thinking about the Pop Shop, which doesn’t open until 1986...It was a real tightrope, and dangerous on either side. You had to avoid crass commercialism and also keep some hold on the art world—and I wanted to do that, because I wanted to keep the respect of artists who meant something to me. ...I discussed the Pop Shop many times with Andy Warhol, and he was totally supportive of my taking the plunge, and not caring what people thought...So I went ahead and found this space near my studio on Lafayette Street. I looked for the capital and I started investigating how I was going to create this business and what kind of products I was going to make...” |
| Statement by Tony Shafrazi in John Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. “Any work that addresses and reflects a more populist language will be disdained by the art establishment. It’s for this reason alone that Warhol was shunned for so many years by museums in America. The same goes for Basquiat even after his death.” |
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Statement by Francesco Clemente in John Gruen, Keith Haring:
The Authorized Biography, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
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