Untitled

a more holistic and basic idea of wanting to incorporate [art] into every part of life...Taking it off the pedestal. I’m giving it back to the people. (K. Haring, quoted in D. Drenger, “Art and Life: An Interview with Keith Haring,” in Columbia Art Review, Spring 1988, p. 53).

Untitled is an important early work that signals Keith Haring’s transition from urban graffito to meteoric art star. Pulling from the visual vocabulary established by his subway drawings, this dynamic canvas tarp shows dripping paint and energetic lines that tie his future fame to his humble beginnings. The present work was executed the same year that Haring began working with the gallerist Tony Shafrazi, a period that saw exponential growth for the painter. A year later, in 1983, he was included in Documenta and the Whitney Biennial, all while becoming an integral part of the burgeoning cultural scene in New York. However, far from becoming egotistical and falling into the trap of celebrity, Haring worked to create artwork that was accessible and went beyond the individual. “See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality,” he once noted. “When it is working, you completely go into another place, you’re tapping into things that are totally universal, of the total consciousness, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That’s what it’s all about” (K. Haring, quoted in D. Sheff, “Keith Haring: An Intimate Conversation,” in Rolling Stone, August 1989). Balancing the stressors of the real world with a more free, animated ethos, Haring opened up the door for generations of artists to come.

Painted on industrial-sized canvas tarpaulin, utilizing quick, decisive strokes, Untitled is a bold example of Haring’s instantly recognizable iconography. Employing a singular thickness of solid black line, he frames a faceless figure in a yellow square. The subject’s fingerless hands grasp onto its head and pull upwards, a motion emphasized by the use of several speed lines reminiscent of comic book art and cartoons. The disconnected head emanates similar lines that can be interpreted as shock, energy, or a holy radiance like that of the cephalaphore St. Denis. Haring used these action marks throughout his oeuvre as a means of creating motion and intrigue within his sometimes sublimely simple compositions. The gallerist Jeffrey Deitch remarked on the complexity of Haring’s work, noting, “They are not just drawings but ‘signs.’ But these rings of meaning around the individual figures are only part of the Haring process.

The work’s full impact results from a mélange of all these elements: context, medium, imagery; and their infiltration into the urban consciousnesses. [...] They diagram the collective unconscious of a city—a city that moves along happily enough, but just barely enough to keep from degenerating into the dog-eat-dog, topsy-turvy world of Haring’s images” (J. Deitch, Keith Haring, New York, 2008, pp. 220-221). Prominently dated ‘82’ in the upper right corner, Untitled is of a specific time and place. The white halo left around each of Haring’s dripping black strokes creates a glowing effect that seems to separate it from the everyday, but at its core, this is a document of the vibrant scene in 1980s New York of which Haring became a revelatory figure.
Though his style was, and remains, highly accessible to a wide audience, the subjects that Haring dealt with were often teetering on the edge of the surreal. Multiple appendages, phallic protrusions, aliens, and flying saucers all became commonplace within his visual vocabulary so that the self-decapitation seen in Untitled reads less as a grisly act and more like a playful parlor trick. Haring explained his use of fragmented figures on the edge of absurdity as “rather straightforward, [though] the combinations of them the way they’re rearranged and juxtaposed, sometimes contradicts. It’s not a straight ‘point A to point B’…many thoughts [exist] at the same time, like a dream state” (K. Haring, quoted in S. Couderc, “Keith Haring’s World,” in Keith Haring, exh. cat., Bordeaux, France: CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, 1985, p. 38). Drawing upon this, one could be reminded of the European Surrealists and their ability to transform the everyday into something otherworldly with just a simple alteration. René Magritte’s Le Principe du plaisir (1937) presents a similar scene where a bust-length portrait depicts a man whose head has become a burning orb of light. Thinking along this thread and taking into account the halo of lines and the shape of the head in Haring’s work, the outline of the cranium in Untitled suddenly becomes a lightbulb. The universal symbol for a genius idea is held aloft by a headless body while its yellow light pervades the entire canvas. Haring’s knack for coaxing multiple readings from flat planes of color and bold outlines served as the perfect method for delivering complex ideas in accessible formats.

In 1981, while strolling the streets of the East Village, Haring noticed vinyl tarpaulins being used by Consolidated Electric to protect their equipment during construction. Seeing these readymade surfaces strewn about, he became interested in other theoretical uses. Sourcing a supplier from which he could buy the tarps in various colors, the artist began to paint on them as he would have on a wall, train car, or canvas. Leaving the metal grommets intact, they carry an industrial quality that is in keeping with Haring’s outsider beginnings. In Untitled, Haring trades the vinyl for canvas, but the tarp format remains an important aspect of the entire composition. By employing everyday materials in his work, the artist strove toward creating “a more holistic and basic idea of wanting to incorporate [art] into every part of life, less as an egotistical exercise and more natural somehow. I don’t know how to exactly explain it. Taking it off the pedestal. I’m giving it back to the people, I guess” (K. Haring, quoted in D. Drenger, “Art and Life: An Interview with Keith Haring,” in Columbia Art Review, Spring 1988, p. 53). This democratization of artwork became a major ambition for Haring as he sought to equalize the area between the chaos of the streets and the homogeneity of the white cube gallery.

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality. When it is working, you completely go into another place, you’re tapping into things that are totally universal, of the total consciousness, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That’s what it’s all about. (K. Haring, quoted in D. Sheff, “Keith Haring: An Intimate Conversation,” in Rolling Stone, August 1989).