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拍品专文
Keith Haring’s glyphic, monumental Untitled finds the artist innovating within his iconic style and formal vocabulary, using orange and black paint to great effect on raw, diamond-shaped canvas. Painted in 1984, at the height of Haring’s career, this canvas is both beguilingly simple in its premise but intricate and compositionally dense in execution. Four characters rendered with black outlines, some partially truncated by the canvas’s edges, swirl about amidst orange abstractions. Preceding the dense, all-over compositions of his last years, it is a pivotal work bridging his early, graffiti-influenced pictures and his later, more painterly efforts. An important mid-career painting, Untitled is a powerful example of Haring’s remarkable career and the famously dynamic and lively art world of 1980s New York more broadly.
Appearing to dance or kick a soccer ball, the central figure largely dictates the rest of the composition. Filled in by an ornate, horned abstraction on his chest, squiggles in his legs, dashes on his arms, and concentric circles in his head, the figure is activated by both his pose and his embellishments. Below him is a reclining figure–or perhaps a break dancer–framed by the canvas’s bottom corner. His impossibly elongated leg nearly spans the lower-right edge, here filled in by a kinked orange line. This figure sports an intestinal abstraction in his midsection, which extends to a spiral in his head. Two additional figures are cropped, to various degrees, giving the entire picture a sense of the infinite: as though Untitled offers a large, if incomplete, piece of the fantastic scene. Haring strikes a delicate balance between the tightness of the composition and its implication of the intimate, resulting in a highly effective tension that feels both planned and completely organic.
Untitled was originally painted as part of a set for Secret Pastures, an experimental dance performance choreographed by Bill T. Jones and his partner Arnie Zane at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Echoing the dancers’ sexually suggestive choreography, Haring’s figures are ambiguous in their intentions but clear in their unabashed sense of movement and rhythm. Jones, whom Haring famously used as a living canvas in an iconic 1984 work, sought to capture the oft-hidden energy of the New York streets. Who better to capture it, he posited, than Keith Haring himself? Haring’s energetic figures, with their invented symbolism and ambiguous sexualities, epitomize and define the performance’s objectives while operating highly effectively in its own right.
Haring’s colors, black and orange, take on distinct but equally important roles. The black, used to delineate the human figures and two floating circles, helps organize the picture and ground it in Haring’s familiar vocabulary. The orange, existing both within and without the figures, is both ornamental and foundational. While it certainly serves to placate Haring’s horror vacui, it also connects the characters, suggesting a sort of universality and democracy within Haring’s universe. Without either one of the colors, the picture loses its effectiveness, underscoring the precision and efficiency of Haring’s most accomplished compositions. Uniting the interior and exterior of the figures, Haring’s use of color also serves to affirm the essential graphicness of his work, suggesting that even representational motifs might sometimes be better understood in terms of their most essential and rudimentary characteristics.
Executed in 1984, when Haring was 26, Untitled coincides with the artist’s rapid ascent to international acclaim. During and around that fateful year, Haring executed large-scale murals in Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Berlin and New York. This period saw Haring’s works increase in scope and scale alike. Untitled reflects this definitive move toward monumentality, with its approximately 13-foot width and larger-than-life characters. This painting relates to his murals in its use of human figures as nearly abstract elements in service of the larger picture, typically eschewing narrative in the process. Untitled, with its frenetic and immutable energy, recalls the explosiveness and compositional spontaneity of his murals while retaining the chromatic refinement of his earlier works on canvas. Indicative of a powerful change in Haring’s artistic attitude, Untitled is both a pivotal example of Haring’s mid-career output and a revelatory object documenting his rapidly increasing notoriety.
Describing the unique simplicity of his canvases, Haring explains that he is “…trying to latch onto a more typically American simplicity, like that of Stuart Davis and Pop Art. I am not very much involved in European art. Maybe its content is stronger due to its cultural heritage, and American art and culture are perhaps emptier and more plastic, but that can be an advantage… ” (K. Haring, quoted in E. Sussman, “Songs of Innocence at the Nuclear Pyre,” Keith Haring, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1997, p. 22). Indeed, Haring’s graphic directness and formal literalness work to his advantage here. Using visual frankness to achieve an end that is at-once deeply layered and immediately, intuitively understood, Haring creates a powerfully approachable picture. Radically straightforward but exemplary of Haring’s most sophisticated tendencies, Untitled finds the artist at the height of his powers, effortlessly balancing scale, color and content in a way uniquely his own.
Appearing to dance or kick a soccer ball, the central figure largely dictates the rest of the composition. Filled in by an ornate, horned abstraction on his chest, squiggles in his legs, dashes on his arms, and concentric circles in his head, the figure is activated by both his pose and his embellishments. Below him is a reclining figure–or perhaps a break dancer–framed by the canvas’s bottom corner. His impossibly elongated leg nearly spans the lower-right edge, here filled in by a kinked orange line. This figure sports an intestinal abstraction in his midsection, which extends to a spiral in his head. Two additional figures are cropped, to various degrees, giving the entire picture a sense of the infinite: as though Untitled offers a large, if incomplete, piece of the fantastic scene. Haring strikes a delicate balance between the tightness of the composition and its implication of the intimate, resulting in a highly effective tension that feels both planned and completely organic.
Untitled was originally painted as part of a set for Secret Pastures, an experimental dance performance choreographed by Bill T. Jones and his partner Arnie Zane at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Echoing the dancers’ sexually suggestive choreography, Haring’s figures are ambiguous in their intentions but clear in their unabashed sense of movement and rhythm. Jones, whom Haring famously used as a living canvas in an iconic 1984 work, sought to capture the oft-hidden energy of the New York streets. Who better to capture it, he posited, than Keith Haring himself? Haring’s energetic figures, with their invented symbolism and ambiguous sexualities, epitomize and define the performance’s objectives while operating highly effectively in its own right.
Haring’s colors, black and orange, take on distinct but equally important roles. The black, used to delineate the human figures and two floating circles, helps organize the picture and ground it in Haring’s familiar vocabulary. The orange, existing both within and without the figures, is both ornamental and foundational. While it certainly serves to placate Haring’s horror vacui, it also connects the characters, suggesting a sort of universality and democracy within Haring’s universe. Without either one of the colors, the picture loses its effectiveness, underscoring the precision and efficiency of Haring’s most accomplished compositions. Uniting the interior and exterior of the figures, Haring’s use of color also serves to affirm the essential graphicness of his work, suggesting that even representational motifs might sometimes be better understood in terms of their most essential and rudimentary characteristics.
Executed in 1984, when Haring was 26, Untitled coincides with the artist’s rapid ascent to international acclaim. During and around that fateful year, Haring executed large-scale murals in Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Berlin and New York. This period saw Haring’s works increase in scope and scale alike. Untitled reflects this definitive move toward monumentality, with its approximately 13-foot width and larger-than-life characters. This painting relates to his murals in its use of human figures as nearly abstract elements in service of the larger picture, typically eschewing narrative in the process. Untitled, with its frenetic and immutable energy, recalls the explosiveness and compositional spontaneity of his murals while retaining the chromatic refinement of his earlier works on canvas. Indicative of a powerful change in Haring’s artistic attitude, Untitled is both a pivotal example of Haring’s mid-career output and a revelatory object documenting his rapidly increasing notoriety.
Describing the unique simplicity of his canvases, Haring explains that he is “…trying to latch onto a more typically American simplicity, like that of Stuart Davis and Pop Art. I am not very much involved in European art. Maybe its content is stronger due to its cultural heritage, and American art and culture are perhaps emptier and more plastic, but that can be an advantage… ” (K. Haring, quoted in E. Sussman, “Songs of Innocence at the Nuclear Pyre,” Keith Haring, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1997, p. 22). Indeed, Haring’s graphic directness and formal literalness work to his advantage here. Using visual frankness to achieve an end that is at-once deeply layered and immediately, intuitively understood, Haring creates a powerfully approachable picture. Radically straightforward but exemplary of Haring’s most sophisticated tendencies, Untitled finds the artist at the height of his powers, effortlessly balancing scale, color and content in a way uniquely his own.