Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody and defines our existence as human beings

11 Nov 2023 - photos courtesy of Keith Haring Foundation

The title "Art is for Everybody" is taken from a notation made in Keith Haring's journal on the day, in 1978 when 20-years-old, he arrived in New York City. Some of his journals are on display in the ambitious gallery show Art is for Everybody. What is also on display is how that brief thought was not only an indication of Haring's ambition, but also a responsibility he took seriously. Haring was a hugely successful artist by almost any standard, whether critically, financially and just in sheer popularity. While Art is for Everybody contains extraordinary works on canvas, it also has samples of his Subway Drawings, flyer designs, t-shirts from the Pop Shop, and the PSAs he did for AIDS awareness. His work, seen in a cumulative format, seems self-consciously democratic and driven by his own whims. Or driven by where he saw a need, an empty canvas of some form that needed to be turned into art or political expression.

Art is for Everybody does a solid job of creating an overview of Haring's work and life. I had no idea he had created so many gigantic canvases for gallery consumption. Seeing how the clean graphic almost cartoonlike graffiti style translates powerfully into oversized and looming vistas makes one appreciate Haring's facility with a brush. And an imagination in overdrive. At the entrance to Art is for Everybody, here is a quote emblazoned above towering columns in Day-Glo colours: “I paint images that are derivative of my personal exploration. I leave it up to others to decipher them.” What follows is a fabulous flood of the familiar dancing figures, crawling babies, barking dogs, UFOs, Mickey Mouses, devouring pigs and floating hearts. Always in motion, deceptively simplistic, and hinting at meaning but only needing sheer emotion in order to exist and impress. To move, figuratively and in effect.

Haring's strong sense of community and community service is also conveyed. Aside from the aforementioned PSAs and the Pop Shop samplings, Art is for Everybody is filled with collaborations. Haring lived at the center of the '80s scene that was New York City. There are blown up Polaroids of him with famous and infamous alike, from Andy Warhol to Dolly Parton. Videos of his work with Bill T Jones. Flyers shilling for parties he threw or solo or group gallery shows.  A elongated crown he created for Grace Jones for a photo shoot with Robert Mapplethorpe. A pink leather suit that was, with the photographic evidence on display, worn by Madonna. Helpful notes beside paintings point out where Haring acknowledged classical influences from Picasso to Cezanne. His more frequently self-cited influences—Disney, Burroughs and Tom of Finland—are obvious but all are subservient to a restless street and club energy. Haring liked to work quickly, graffiti style, and let the subtext and thematic content surface later. He was, as all great artists are, in search of himself, as another prominently displayed quote says: "Art becomes the way we define our existence as human beings."

Though it isn't whitewashed, the death by AIDS finale makes sure of that, Haring's sexuality is not central to the thematic structure of Art is for Everybody. Which is a shame as the joy of gay sex is crucial to the exuberance of Haring's early work. There are penises aplenty and lots of buttfucking and gloryholes. One display case contains a series of drawings entitled "Selection of Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks 1978." The drawings are sketches, inspired by architecture, locations from MOMA to Tiffany's, "actual size," and general horniness. They are quite unlike the confident figures with fire engine red phalluses on canvas to come. There is a playfulness of discovery and possibility that echoes the gleeful promiscuity that Haring legendarily indulged in, the simple nerdy sexiness he exuded. This begins to change as we get to "Red Room" and an "Untitled," as many of his works were titled, red-drenched fusion of Haring and Hieronymus Bosch. AIDS has reared its ugly head. Haring's work doesn't get any less frenetic or upbeat, but the quotes where he measures time and the then ubiquitous, now heartbreaking, PSAs have a devastating effect. It becomes impossible to forget that the chubby cheeked Madonna he hugs in a Polaroid, is now on a greatest hit tour which features a billboard image of Haring during the diva's rendition of "Vogue" remixed as a eulogy to those we lost. 

I had intended to circle back to the beginning of the exhibit, to revisit the early drawings. To spend more time with his video works where his actual process is on display. To search out the one reference I came across to his longterm boyfriend Juan Dubose. To peer into the journal and the looping tape of the CBS Evening News covering his arrest for the creation of Subway Art. To gnaw at the puzzle that is the narrative revolving around the UFOs and the barking dancing dogs. There is a lot to absorb. But I was too overwhelmed. I will have to go back. My brain was stuck in a loop of wondering what Haring would have created had he survived. That huge suffocating sense of possibilities lost that is the closing chapter of that period of time in New York City. In the arts. But then I perused the flyer for Art is for Eveybody. The vibrant sunshine yellow backing a UFO directing its sex ray at the barking dogs and making them dance (or so I interpret it). The devastation didn't lift but it translated into a catharsis. I had been profoundly moved as surely as the PSA figures dance through "Ignorance = Fear" and "Silence = Death." And gained a bit of insight into defining our existence as human beings.