Longtime friends of Keith Haring, many of whom are fellow artists, offer their thoughts on how the late street artist developed his practice, what shaped his vision and added new aspects to his legacy in a exhibition and an accompanying catalog at The Broad in Los Angeles next month.
The exhibition is the latest reappraisal of Haring’s work, which was largely ignored by museums before a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1997.
The new exhibition of more than 120 works, including archival items, draws on Haring’s personal diaries from the late 1970s when he was a student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York until 1988, two years before his death at the age of 31 from an AIDS-related illness. Artist Kenny Scharf met Haring in 1978 at the SVA, forming a New York art community that also included Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Photograph of Haring’s Tseng Kwong Chi in his Pop Shop, New York, 1986 Photo: © Muna Tseng Dance Projects Inc. Paintings: © The Keith Haring Foundation
Scharf tells The arts journal: “The kind of culture that Keith adopted, nobody did at the time – opening his Pop Shop [a New York boutique selling affordable merchandise], and the idea that art was for everyone. We got a lot of criticism for really wanting to express that attitude because a lot of people back then, and still [today]think art for all meant dumb art.
Cartoons played an important role in Haring’s approach to democratization. In the catalog, Kermit Oswald, former president of the Keith Haring Foundation, highlights the influence of Haring’s father, Allen, who was an amateur draftsman. “Long before Keith knew who Mickey Mouse was… he was already drawing these things with his dad, which I think had a profound influence on him. By the time he started to digest culture like the Smurfs, he was already playing this game with his dad, so to speak.
by Haring Untitled (1985) © Keith Haring Foundation
Haring created “a universal language with elements of cartoon as well as semiotics,” adds Scharf. Key felt-tipped works on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation are included, such as four untitled works from 1981 that show Mickey Mouse-like cartoon characters.
The exhibition will also include a selection of works by Haring’s friend and collaborator, Tseng Kwong Chi, who took more than 5,000 photographs of drawings made by Haring on the New York City subway between 1980 and 1985. The curator and former New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl writes in the catalog: “When the cops came while [Tseng] was shooting, Muna [Tseng’s sister] said to me, ‘Kwong Chi would pretend to be a tourist—’Oh, the subway, so interesting. It was almost like a guerrilla”.
• Keith Haring: Art is for everyoneThe Broad, Los Angeles, May 27-October 8
