Keith haring retrospect1/7/2024 ![]() The grounds, for the most part, are painted in solid colors, his zingy lines suspended. He depicted the horrors of Apartheid point-blank and in bloody, brutal terms, with scenes of lynchings, beatings, stabbings and worse. “Nobody had that get up and go, drive and bounce,Īt about three quarters of the way through the exhibition, where South Africa and Capitalism become targets, we see Haring’s political impulses operating at full force. As Tony Schafrazi, his dealer, recounted in a spellbinding interview published in the exhibition catalog, Haring could dance until dawn, and, without sleep, work into the next day, executing paintings across the city. With such manic machinations, Haring, I sense, was trying to bridge contradictions within himself, between the downtown party animal/ hip-hop instigator, and the political activist. But here there’s a twist: Where animals in so many Haring paintings represent The Man, in this they’re joyous partygoers. The effect is electric and borderline hallucinatory, reminiscent of New Zealand aboriginal art. A black-on-yellow maze of abstract patterning, it shows figures in alligator masks frolicking atop an ecstatic crowd of dancers. Nowhere do we see this more powerfully than in an untitled tarp painting that covers an entire wall in the fourth gallery. Like Picasso, he could begin a line anywhere and finish a painting of any size without once stepping back. Rudimentary cartoon figures set against grounds made of dots, dabs, dashes and interlocking geometric marks were his main building blocks and by varying their density and placement, he conveyed, in a sure and spontaneous hand, an enormous range of rhythms, moods and messages. ![]() Haring was a keen student of semiotics and urban codes, and he knew how to mix things up to create and confuse meaning. The movie’s tagline (“Being invisible gets you into spy rings, diplomatic circles and the girls’ locker room”) sums up Haring’s fugitive methods and ethos, as does a bit of graffiti (“Suck his invisible dick”) penned by someone, presumably not Haring, on the same poster. One, of an evil-looking, TV-shaped robot, appears next to an ad for The Man Who Wasn’t There. Still, you can get a sense of the culture-jamming effect these illegal acts had on unwitting New York commuters. It’s supposed to simulate the sickly fluorescent lighting of a subway platform, but it’s dimmer than any I’ve known. Unfortunately, those on view are not among his best, and the darkened corridor in which they’re displayed doesn’t help. They’re great guerilla art, and should rank among the show’s highlights. Between 19 Haring drew with chalk on papered-over billboards, executing drawings in minutes to evade the transit cops. The incubator for these ideas was the New York subway system. It includes: dancing crowds, snapping dogs, death-ray-emitting UFOs, club-wielding goons, erect penises, public sex acts, serpents, computer and TV monitors and, most importantly, a tribal-inspired type of hieroglyphic mark making that fused subject and ground in a way that made his allover/figurative paintings pulsate and glow like psychedelic poster art of the 1960s. Collectively, these works show the iconography Haring would employ throughout his career. They include a wall of drawings that graphically describe the pleasures and dangers of gay sex a smaller wall devoted to penis drawings made outside New York landmarks (Tiffany’s, MOMA) to provoke passersby and a notorious series of news collages that parodied sensational (“Reagan Slain by Hero Cop”) tabloid headlines. It’s filled with pictures that Haring posted or created in public. From there, the transgressions, celebrations and protests accrue, reaching the first of many emotional peaks in the second gallery. The first thing you see upon entering the exhibition is a mark-covered Statue of Liberty, a “defilement” that sets the “political” tone. The bigger story embedded in The Political Line has to do with the degree to which Haring continuously reformulated his visual vocabulary. On the political side, those familiar with Haring’s oeuvre aren’t likely to experience many revelations for Haring, who was openly gay, the personal and the political were inseparable. Untitled, 1981, diptych, a/c on enamel and fiberboard, 96 x 96 x 3/4"
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