Keith Haring

The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Keith Haring at Gladstone in 2011.

 

While Haring's animated contours and a pop-graffiti aesthetic are most closely associated with his signature iconography such as the radiant baby and barking dog, many of the underlying themes of his work were founded upon culturally subversive attitudes towards sexuality, gender, religion, and politics. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Haring arrived in New York in 1978 at the age of 19 when he enrolled in the School of Visual Arts. During this period, Haring began to establish a visual language that was centered upon dynamic mark-making techniques, compositional structures and, most importantly, the immediate primacy of the line, which would serve as the foundation of his artistic inspiration throughout his career. Influenced by an eclectic range of references including the work of Pierre Alechinsky, graffitied subway cars, comic book strips, and William Burroughs, the origins and development of Haring's work remained consistently rooted in his commitment to the irreducible principals of drawing.

 

 

This special publication focuses on the evolutionary period of Haring's early drawings, which traces the development of his formal language and elaborative visual vocabulary. His sketches capture his avid exploration of artistic impulse, and the initiation of his working processes through which the basic components of his practice and aesthetic sensibility would take shape. Haring's meticulously angular pen and ink compositions and loose, gestural graphite lines exemplify the opposing forces at play that would later become the enduring tenets of his work. Fusing the multiple strains of his early drawings, Haring generated a uniquely singular graphic vision that he pursued with unwavering conviction, dedication and spirit.

 

Published by Gladstone, 2011

 

Paperback (spiral)
English
76 pages
8.6 x 5.9 inches; 21.8 x 15 cm
ISBN 978-0-9703422-2-5