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There was a point in the 1980s when the art of Keith Haring seemed ubiquitous. Everywhere you went in New York—or at least within the confines of the mythical “downtown” of that era—you could see Haring’s trademark radiant babies, UFOs and dog-headed figures adorning tenements and subway stops like the work of some demented Egyptian tomb painter. Haring certainly wasn’t the only street artist of his time—this was, after all, the golden age of graffiti, when murals took over entire subway trains—but he was one of the first white guys to try his hand at it, and he was chiefly responsible for attracting the art world’s attention to the genre, even though his style was very different from uptown pioneers like Lee Quinones.
Marked by simple, bold outlines, Haring’s imagery, which combined pop euphoria with the look of timeless tribal petroglyphs, was equally at home on canvas as it was on alleyway walls. Like his idol Andy Warhol, Haring bridged the worlds of straight and gay, commercial and fine art, fashion and funk. But while Warhol applied the techniques he learned as graphic artist to high art, Haring went further, opening his Pop Shop in the mid-’80s to sell items like T-shirts to the masses. He was the first artist, arguably, who was a brand, and in this respect he prefigured contemporary figures like Takahashi Murakami. Haring died of AIDS in 1990, at age 31, and in certain respects the New York he represented—edgy and energetic—died with him.
The Universe of Keith Haring screens at Tribeca starting Apr 30.
