KEITH HARING
Untitled, 1988
Acrylic on canvas
120×120 inches (305×305 cm)
Signed, dated, located and inscribed ‘NOV. 8 1988 (ELECTION DAY) BUSH WON. OH SHIT. NOW WHAT? © K. Haring 1988 NOV.8 NYC(+)’ (on the overlap)

Provenance
Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in 1988

 

Christie’s Paris: 2 December 2019
EUR 2,230,000

Source: Christie’s
Keith Haring (1958-1990) (christies.com)

 

Painted in 1988, Untitled is a bold and monumental example of Keith Haring’s iconic graphic language.
Haring distils the lively, cartoonish line characteristic of his practice to a striking composition in white on black. To the right, a human figure stretches his arms to the full three-meter height of the canvas. He is bound in a white rope, which unwinds across the painting to loop through the upheld arms of two further figures to the left. This duo is joined at the hip into the form of a giant pair of scissors, whose blades – as is made clear by a dynamic, comic-strip burst of line – have snipped through the rope which runs between them. With its mural scale and clear, frontal impact, the work has the immediate power of an Ancient Egyptian tomb painting. The composition is instantly legible, animating Haring’s joyous visual wit with a powerfully simple social message: by working together, we can help our fellow man.

Haring began drawing on New York’s subways in the early 1980s. Sometimes creating up to forty pictures a day, he would chalk in white on the blacked-out surfaces of empty advertisement spaces, a mode of expression echoed in the present work’s monochrome. Combining a graffitist’s subversive humor with sharp cultural intelligence, he developed an eloquent practice that engaged with contemporary issues through rich semiotic tableaux. Haring made art that was accessible, intuitive and open, seeking ‘a more holistic and basic idea of wanting to incorporate [art] into every part of life. While alluding to Pop culture and socio-political affairs, Haring’s deceptively straightforward style was underpinned by references to centuries of art history, derived from hours spent in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He channeled these myriad influences with improvisatory flair, conceiving his characters as parts of a larger linguistic whole which could be dissembled, disassociated and rearranged according to the poetic flow of the artist’s logic.

 

Indeed, the hybrid human-scissor motif of Untitled would recur in several other works, including his major 1989 church mural Tuttomondo in Pisa, Italy, and his iconic ‘Stop AIDS’ poster design of the same year, in which the blades sever the body of a serpent. Where some of his large-scale works display teeming, almost Bosch-like visions of civilization, crowded with feverish activity and mythic references – Untitled sees Haring at his most economical, delivering a totemic picture of human care and cooperation. Created just two years before his untimely death, it is a powerful and clear-eyed summation of his work.