Seeing the origins of an artist is a fascinating privilege for those of us who have endured enough years to reflect on them. With the work of Keith Haring, whose early work (1978 to 1982) is now a large-scale exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, it is an especially beguiling nostalgia trip. His was a well-documented life, whether it was his fellow School of Visual Arts students, Warhol devotees or himself recording it. In this exhibition, his art and his life are exposed in tandem.
Haring arrived in New York in 1978, at age 20, hungry for art. It's easy to see that his style was unique from the earliest sketches and notebooks, many on display here, along with a range of portraits of the artist as a young man. From the beginning, his work was meticulous, both in the visual and literal notes he crammed onto each page, taking the reader on a journey through his thought process.
One blue-lined page looks like an accountant's notebook. It is Haring's ciphers—his code lettering, numbering and symbol system that, once committed to paper, became his Rosetta Stone. He was establishing a scheme and style that were the building blocks of all that would follow. In a way, Haring's familiar broad ink strokes were his instant trademark, and the lines formed were his language.
He also was clearly having a lot of fun. With bold strokes come bold messages. Haring's abstractions let him simplify the religious, right-wing, TV culture that played in contrast to his underground art world.
Downtown Manhattan, at the time, was both grungy and rife with artists. They may have been starving, but their nightlives were full. At this exhibition, authenticity amps up with audio tracks from the era. At different galleries, we hear the music that would have been blasting at the Mudd Club or Paradise Garage—like Blondie, Kim Wilde, The Clash and so many more who have wound up on our favorite "greatest hits of the '80s" compilations.
Haring was in the middle of the social mix, hanging out with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf and others who sprang from the lofts a then still-seedy SoHo. They influenced each other and shared media and concepts.
Haring gladly took on the role curator and organizer, putting on open-invitation, one-night-only art shows at random locations. Some of the flyers and signs he painted are assembled here. In this exhibition, they are the gateway to a very cool multi-media room that loops some of Haring's experimental videos and show glimpses of Haring the party boy.
These galleries also are where we see how Haring applied his art to the canvas of the city—direct displays of art for the general public. Already, his style was notable. No one waiting for a train could ever mistake Haring's white-on-black subway-platform chalk drawings as graffiti worth dismissing. He would paper over advertisements, draw new works on them, then call his friend and photographer Tseng Kwong Chi, who would come shoot them. Posterity was not lost on these young artists.
Collaborations like theirs were common, and encouraged Haring's irreverence. His unabashed homosexuality was one topic among many that inspired him to combine politics with art.
For a man who loved text and language, he made what fun he could from the dark cloud of Reaganism. His New York Post word collages and flyers feature reshuffled newspaper headlines that gave Haring his own media voice, shouting out headlines like "Reagan: Ready to Kill," and "Pope Killed for Freed Hostage." They were another way to recreate reality by regurgitating society's own words.
Recurring images are part of Haring's hieroglyphs, influenced by movies and books of his youth (he was an avid reader). Mysterious pyramids and flying saucers, familiar dogs and crawling babies, radios and nuclear reactors—visually they hold universal meaning that changes by context. It's incredibly fun to see the countless ways he adapts them. Their power fluctuates accordingly—in one "Untitled" 1980 piece, a dog floats godlike before a crowd; in another it gets sodomized.
For Haring, sexuality was another cause to expose. Sex held power and was inherently exciting, especially gay sex, the ultimate taboo. He used his own body for his art sometimes painting his own body. He also got into the physical process of his painting large-scale works à la Jackson Pollock. One of the exhibition's captivating videos is his first one, Painting Myself into a Corner, where he creates a full piece while moving to the beats of Devo.
Speaking of sex, the penis is another motif in his work, packing power as well as whimsy, as in the "World Trade Center" drawing of twin penis towers, part of the graphite collection Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks, 1978.
It is a tremendous loss for his admirers to have lost Haring in 1990 at the young age of 32 from AIDS-related complications. Fortunately, he was prolific and created art for the masses—including public murals around the world—and he continues to influence generations of street artists, fashion and product designers, muralists and others.
Large and small, intricate and broad, Haring's rapturous simplicity can't help but draw the eye. It's also easy to enjoy it aesthetically, making the search for meaning optional. An October 14, 1978, journal entry suggests that's exactly how Haring wanted it:
"I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached," he wrote. "The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring together ideas."
"Keith Haring: 1978-1982" will be on view through July 8 at the Brooklyn Museum. Call 718-638-5000 or visit www.brooklynmuseum.org .
