KEITH HARING

Blueprints, Maquettes and Altar Piece

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Blueprint Drawing, 1990,42 l/2" x 54"

June 4 - July 25, 1993

Bridgehampton, NewYork

This exhibition was curated by Henry Geldzahler.

Also on view, a long-term installation of works in lluorescent light by Dan Flavin,

 KEITH HARING
Blueprints, Maquettes and Altar Piece
Keith Haring's art is known primarily for its instant recognizability, its color and its
pizzazz; developed as street and subway graffiti it reads as its own trademark. The humor
and power of its images of birth, death, sex, love, nuclear energy and spaceflight instantly
convey a complex code of meaning.
This exhibition, Keith Haring: Blueprints, Maquettes and Altar Piece, is designed to
show that much deliberation went into formulating these icons. The Blueprint Drawings
of 1980 betray the arm and shoulder of an artist not totally secure in his drawing, an artist
in the midst of a work in progress. These JHinings were made during the time between
the subway work and that of the paintings designed for exhibition in art galleries. Their
charm and importance lies in their slightly tentative quality.
The corrugated cardboard maquettes for metal sculptures are shown in tandem with the
Blueprints because they also reveal the bare bones and grammar of Keith Haring's work.
The color was to come a bit later, after Keith's thoughts were in order.
The large bronze altar piece was Keith Haring's last major sculptural work.
Henry Geldzahler, May 1993
Keith Haring's images remain inexhaustible. Their resonance and vitality survive endless
encounters. Like Andy Warhol, his friend and mentor, he found ways in which to communi-
cate with the widest audience in America without in any way diluting his seriousness, wit or
ironic sense of distance.
A product of Pop Art, he belongs to the succeeding generation, to whom TV was a fact of life.
Bornin l958,hesaid: "Ifeel morethatl'maproductof Pop,ratherthanapersonwhois
calling attention to it," as was true of Warhol, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein. In 1966 I asked
in a lecture if one could imagine an art made by someone brought up with both television and
the example of Andy Warhol's art. In 1980 when I first saw the work of Keith and Kenny
Scharf, I realized that that conjunction had been made.
Pop Art describes the origin of Keith Haring's art and its destination. The last thing one
expected from Pop Art was a moral dimension and yet, in the generosity of his life as in his
uncomplaining death, Keith provided us with exactly that.
A large part of the staying power of his work has to do with its wordlessness and absence of
specificity or topicality. He said of the barking 'dog' in his work that iCs not just a dog but a
four-legged animal. It stands for Nature and even in its scale it is telling us something-small
it's a pet, large it is menacing. His frame of reference includes the imagery of his Catholic
boyhood immersion in the Bible, as for example in his vivid image of idolaters worshipping
the Golden Calf. Ancient runes and hieroglyphs are echoed in his work as are today's most
advanced artifacts, e.g., space ships and lasers.
Of his Mickey Mouse drawings, a tribute to the art of Walt Disney, he said that he'd been
doing them since he was a kid "partly because I could draw it so well, and partly because it's
such a loaded image...I did the (Sumi ink) drawings just after I saw the Whitney Museum
Disney show." It is unbearably sad that at the very end of his short life, Keith was
approached by the Disney Organization to discuss collaborations.
Eternally fresh, Keith Haring's images are so universal that they remain apt in every newly
relevant context, be it greed. patriotism or excess.
Keith produced a tuneful art that keeps us humming.
H.G. f or I nt e rv i ew, December 1992
 Checklist

Altar Piece, l99O Self-Portrait, 1989

Bronze with Gold Leaf Patina acrylic and silver paint on carbdoard
80"x60"x2" 8" x5ll2" x43l4"
edition: 9 with 2 artist proofs Untitled, 1987
cardboard, 13" x 8" x8 ll4"
The Blueprint Drawings, 1990
silkscreen, l0 drawings from a set of 18, King and Queen,1987
dimensions vary from 42 ll2" x 46 ll2" cardboard, tape, string and wire

rry"
to 42 ll2" x79" 19 ll2" x 8 ll2" x ll ll2"

Maquettes: Untitled, 1989

Red Dog for Miinster, 1987 acrylic and silver paint on cardboard
acrylic and gouache on cardboard approx. 8" x l0" x 10"
9 ll2" x 19" x 14 l/2"
Untitled, 1989
Untitled, 1989 acrylic and silver paint on cardboard
acrylic on cardboard approx 8" x l0" x 10"
5" x 10" x8ll2"
Untitled, 1989
Untitled, 1986 acrylic and silver paint on cardboard
acrylic on cardboard approx 8" x l0" x 10"
8 ll2" x7 ll2" x 5 ll2"
Untitled, 1989
cardboard, approx 8" x 6" x 6"

Keith Haring was born in Kurztown, PA in 1958. He studied at rhe school of visual Arts
from 1978-79. since his first show in 1978 he has been exhibited widely in the United'
States and in Europe. He died in 1990 in New York City.

All works collection The Estate of Keith Haring, except Altar piece, which is courtesy of
Sam Havadtoy. Henry Geldzahler would also like to thank J.P. Russell, Durham press and
the Tony Shafrazi Gallery.