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Lot Essay
‘See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality. When it is working, you completely go into another place, you’re tapping into things that are totally universal, of the total consciousness, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That’s what it’s all about. ’——Keith Haring
Executed in the breakout year of his career, Untitled is the epitome of Keith Haring’s dazzling personal iconography that continues to inspire the contemporary world. Started as a street artist painting quick, cartoonish doodles in the subway, Haring crafted his career from a frenzy of fluid continuous lines marked on unconventional surfaces, developing a simple yet impactful visual language that brought him to international stardom in the 80s. In the present work, Haring skilfully captivates the viewers with his stylistic memorable pictorial language highlighted by juxtaposing bright colours, red and green, against the black tarp – engaging the beholder’s eye and stimulating their perceptions.
Haring subverted common symbols and cartoon elements in service of a style that was charged with energy and that gratified the artist himself over time. While topics like war, sexuality and AIDS are widely known in Haring’s works, the explicit presence of traditional Christian imagery is no surprise for the short-lived ‘Jesus freak’ artist. In the present work, the central figure appears self-possessed with the arms crossed and beams of spiritual light glowing from within like a halo. On its sides are two symmetrical figures with arms raised above the head, as though worshipping the central figure in a sermon. Some believe that he was criticising how religion impacts one’s life, while others see an intricate interplay of biographical reflection and irony. Or, perhaps through oversimplifying their grandiose narrative imagery Haring poses a radical question towards the role of religion of his times. ‘Most religions are so hopelessly outdated, and suited to fit the particular problems of earlier times, that they have no power to provide liberation and freedom, and no power to give ‘meaning’ beyond an empty metaphor or moral code,’ Haring once remarked. (K. Haring, quoted in D. Galloway, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, in Keith Haring: Heaven and Hell, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2002, n.p.). This is the essence of Haring’s works—transforming the frenetic energy of New York City into a seemingly random series of rhythmic lines and symbols with great speed and exactitude, delivering messages beyond the cartoonish visual to reach the masses. The gallerist Jeffrey Deitch once decoded the complexity of Haring’s works, ‘They are not just drawings but ‘signs.’ But these rings of meaning around the individual figures are only part of the Haring process. The work’s full impact results from a mélange of all these elements: context, medium, imagery; and their infiltration into the urban consciousnesses. [...] They diagram the collective unconscious of a city—a city that moves along happily enough, but just barely enough to keep from degenerating into the dog-eat-dog, topsy-turvy world of Haring’s images' (J. Deitch, Keith Haring, New York, 2008, pp. 220-221).
Debuted in the solo show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1982, Untitled was realised the same year when Haring began collaborating with the gallerist Tony Shafrazi, and with a very specific medium that would reappear in the rest of Haring’s career. To prepare for his inaugural show at the gallery, Haring searched high and low for materials that share a similar embodiment as the walls in the subway that he started with. One day as Haring was walking down the streets in the city, he noticed that New York City’s electrical company used vinyl tarps to protect its equipment on the street. The machine-made quality of the tarp material intrigued Haring since it embodied the gritty, anti-art aesthetic he was looking for while the sheer size aptly fits his needs. Haring eventually found a supplier that manufactured made-to-order tarps, and toward the fall of 1982, he purchased various sizes and colours, many of which were shown at his inaugural one-man show at Tony Shafrazi’s Gallery later that year. The show created a buzz in the circle, as Tony recounts himself, 'in 1982, Keith had what I call his “coming-out show”…The opening drew close to a thousand people and spilt out onto the streets for hours. He was “it”.’
Soon, along with his friend and rival Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring became one of the seminal figures of the New York art scene in the early 1980s, emerging from the underground to become one of the biggest art stars. In less than a year, in 1983, the subway artist was included in Documenta and the Whitney Biennial. The present work was later shown in numerous of Haring’s landmark exhibitions, including the retrospective in Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997, and more in Milan and Luxembourg in the following years.
Executed in the breakout year of his career, Untitled is the epitome of Keith Haring’s dazzling personal iconography that continues to inspire the contemporary world. Started as a street artist painting quick, cartoonish doodles in the subway, Haring crafted his career from a frenzy of fluid continuous lines marked on unconventional surfaces, developing a simple yet impactful visual language that brought him to international stardom in the 80s. In the present work, Haring skilfully captivates the viewers with his stylistic memorable pictorial language highlighted by juxtaposing bright colours, red and green, against the black tarp – engaging the beholder’s eye and stimulating their perceptions.
Haring subverted common symbols and cartoon elements in service of a style that was charged with energy and that gratified the artist himself over time. While topics like war, sexuality and AIDS are widely known in Haring’s works, the explicit presence of traditional Christian imagery is no surprise for the short-lived ‘Jesus freak’ artist. In the present work, the central figure appears self-possessed with the arms crossed and beams of spiritual light glowing from within like a halo. On its sides are two symmetrical figures with arms raised above the head, as though worshipping the central figure in a sermon. Some believe that he was criticising how religion impacts one’s life, while others see an intricate interplay of biographical reflection and irony. Or, perhaps through oversimplifying their grandiose narrative imagery Haring poses a radical question towards the role of religion of his times. ‘Most religions are so hopelessly outdated, and suited to fit the particular problems of earlier times, that they have no power to provide liberation and freedom, and no power to give ‘meaning’ beyond an empty metaphor or moral code,’ Haring once remarked. (K. Haring, quoted in D. Galloway, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, in Keith Haring: Heaven and Hell, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2002, n.p.). This is the essence of Haring’s works—transforming the frenetic energy of New York City into a seemingly random series of rhythmic lines and symbols with great speed and exactitude, delivering messages beyond the cartoonish visual to reach the masses. The gallerist Jeffrey Deitch once decoded the complexity of Haring’s works, ‘They are not just drawings but ‘signs.’ But these rings of meaning around the individual figures are only part of the Haring process. The work’s full impact results from a mélange of all these elements: context, medium, imagery; and their infiltration into the urban consciousnesses. [...] They diagram the collective unconscious of a city—a city that moves along happily enough, but just barely enough to keep from degenerating into the dog-eat-dog, topsy-turvy world of Haring’s images' (J. Deitch, Keith Haring, New York, 2008, pp. 220-221).
Debuted in the solo show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1982, Untitled was realised the same year when Haring began collaborating with the gallerist Tony Shafrazi, and with a very specific medium that would reappear in the rest of Haring’s career. To prepare for his inaugural show at the gallery, Haring searched high and low for materials that share a similar embodiment as the walls in the subway that he started with. One day as Haring was walking down the streets in the city, he noticed that New York City’s electrical company used vinyl tarps to protect its equipment on the street. The machine-made quality of the tarp material intrigued Haring since it embodied the gritty, anti-art aesthetic he was looking for while the sheer size aptly fits his needs. Haring eventually found a supplier that manufactured made-to-order tarps, and toward the fall of 1982, he purchased various sizes and colours, many of which were shown at his inaugural one-man show at Tony Shafrazi’s Gallery later that year. The show created a buzz in the circle, as Tony recounts himself, 'in 1982, Keith had what I call his “coming-out show”…The opening drew close to a thousand people and spilt out onto the streets for hours. He was “it”.’
Soon, along with his friend and rival Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring became one of the seminal figures of the New York art scene in the early 1980s, emerging from the underground to become one of the biggest art stars. In less than a year, in 1983, the subway artist was included in Documenta and the Whitney Biennial. The present work was later shown in numerous of Haring’s landmark exhibitions, including the retrospective in Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997, and more in Milan and Luxembourg in the following years.