Untitled 

Medium: Woodcut in colors on Japan paper
Year: 1983
Image: 19 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches (49.5 x 62.2 cm)
Sheet: 23 3/4 x 29 3/4 inches (60.3 x 75.6 cm)
Edition: 60
Artist’s Proofs: 6
Literature: Littmann p. 29

Signed, dated and numbered in pencil

 

Keith Haring was a staple at Paradise Garage, a legendary nightclub celebrated for its multi-cultural gay dance scene and commemorated as the birthplace of the modern nightclub. Haring is credited as the key figure behind the exuberant convergence of art, music and performance that developed there. From the early 1980s up until its closure in 1987, Paradise Garage was central to Haring’s world to the extent that he would schedule his trips abroad for his international exhibitions around the nightclub’s biggest nights, leaving on Sundays and returning before or on Saturdays.

Madonna at the Party of Life, 1984

This print was gifted to the present consignor by Haring himself, as a thank you for her documentation of his legendary Party of Life at Paradise Garage in 1984, an annual event that ran until 1986. The artist completely transformed the club environment with huge, spray-painted banners and tarps adorned in his distinctive iconography of hieroglyphic dancing figures. The party featured a performance from Haring’s good friend Madonna, who debuted two songs from her upcoming album Like a Virgin while wearing a custom painted two-piece suit from Haring. This was the only party Haring threw at Paradise Garage, moving the next two Parties of Life to the Palladium in order to account for the rapidly increasing guest list. In his journals, Haring described how the dance scenes at Paradise Garage inspired the creation and considerable production of hieroglyphic dancing figures throughout the 1980s. Haring’s 1983 woodcut, Untitled, depicts two figures engaged in the iconic dance move, ‘the wave,’ a movement the artist particularly loved from the electric boogie style. The wave mimics the motion of water, as well as an electric current, which Haring successfully captures in this vibrantly colored and dynamic print. A current of energy rushes through the arms of the figures and sparks fly around their point of connection as the ‘waves’ pass from one dancer to another.

 

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Auction Results

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Phillips New-York: 26 October 2022
Estimated: USD 20,000 – 30,000
USD 44,100

KEITH HARING
Untitled (L. p. 29), 1983
Woodcut in colors, on Japan paper
Signed, dated, dedicated ‘FOR COURTNEY’, and numbered ‘AP 6/6’ in pencil
An artist’s proof, the edition was 60

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Phillips London: 21 January 2016
Estimated: GBP 7,000 – 9,000
GBP 23,750