Untitled (Hollywood African Mask)

The legendary New York artist Keith Haring’s Untitled (Hollywood African Mask) is an exceptional and exceedingly rare example from his sculptural mask series, one of only eight monumental masks which the artist created. Distinguished by its striking graphic presentation, the present work marks a particularly innovative moment in Haring’s career. With other masks held in Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, the Tai Pei Collection, and several prestigious private collections, Untitled provides an eloquent collision of the artist’s idiosyncratic graffiti-inspired working practice with his active interest in and advocacy of different cultures.

Emerging from the artist’s fascination with folk art and the art of Africa and Mesoamerica, Untitled belongs to a long tradition of Western artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Constatin Brancusi incorporating traditional mask motifs into their practices. Here, Haring finds inspiration in the form of a Masai mask, mingling his iconic white-on-black linear vocabulary with the East African group’s tradition of body-painting. Haring studied this culture whilst collaborating with the Jamaican singer and model Grace Jones on the music video for her “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)” in 1984; he dedicated another work from his mask series to her, Untitled (Grace Jones Mask).

In the present example, Haring anthropomorphizes his aluminum mask form, adding two bent legs at the bottom and the torso, arms, and head of a figure at the crest of the sculpture. The work thus embodies a singular entity, within which a crescendo of energetic movement and imagery mingles. Stylized yellow eyes stare intensely at the viewer, approximating in form the hieroglyphic eye of Horus symbol from ancient Egyptian religious imagery. Haring morphs another humanoid figure into the nose shape, the legs curving up to form a sort of mustache; a Latin cross nestles within this figure’s torso, doubling as the mask’s nasal bridge. The bright yellow in mask’s the eyes and lips, as well as the deep blue seen in the swirling face of the topmost head and within the mask’s mouth, add a splash of color against an otherwise monolithic palette while also heightening the three-dimensionality of the sculpture. Haring expertly works his trademark style within the traditional shape of the mask, exploiting strategies learnt from his long experience graffitiing unorthodox media to meticulously execute this work.

1987 was a whirlwind year for the now-famous artist. Rattled by the death of his friend and mentor Andy Warhol, he embarked upon a European tour, calling upon artist friends including George Condo and Julian Schnabel, and attending many gallery openings. In March, he saw a Jean-Michel Basquiat show at Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, after which he saw an exhibition on African art; both shows evidently provided inspiration for the series. That same month, after attending a Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition in Munich, Haring described having lunch with his friend, the sculptor Jean Tinguely: “fun as usual!’, had ‘brought masks [...] and turned the atmosphere around immediately!” (K. Haring, ‘1987’, Keith Haring Journals, London, 2010, n.p.). Tinguely, known for his kinetic sculptural machines operating from the Dada tradition, frequently incorporated masks into his works, possibly providing Haring with the inspiration to begin working on his first and only masks later that year, infusing in them the motifs he had seen previously in Dusseldorf.

Untitled’ s rhythmic black forms in enamel over shaped aluminum attest to Haring’s interest in three-dimensional and unconventional media. Its dark, foreboding imagery, incorporating religious motifs including Latin crosses among frenzied figures, constitute a trenchant examination of systems of power and racism which he valiantly fought against up until his tragic death in 1990. “All stories of white men’s ‘expansion’ and ‘colonization’ and ‘domination’ are filled with horrific details of the abuse of power and the misuse of people…,” he said, “I’m glad I’m different. I’m proud to be gay. I’m proud to have friends and lovers of every color. I am ashamed of my forefathers. I am not like them” (Keith Haring, Journals, Penguin Books Classics, 2010, p. 130).

Thus, Haring’s oeuvre writ-large challenges uncritical, culturally imposed certainties, weaving between cultural influences while emphasizing diversity and the inconsistencies of history. Contemporaneous to the present work’s execution, Haring writes from Europe about his distress receiving news that the death of Michael Stewart, a Black graffiti artist who died following arrest by transit police for marking up a subway station wall. Haring was a dedicated supporter of equal rights, a prominent AIDS activist, and a stringent opponent of Apartheid, supporting the “Free South Africa” benefit concert in 1988. An astute semiotician, Haring ironically incorporates symbolic motifs from divergent sources together in Untitled as a poignant extension of his social justice work.