The inside story of New York artists Keith Haring and Jean Michel-Basquiat
Artist Keith Haring first found fame on the streets and subways of New York in the 1980s, before his works became highly sought-after with high price tags to match. And now Melbourne will get a world-first exhibition of his iconic art.
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Artist Keith Haring loved a to-do list.
“The to-do list was really the basis of his day,” Gil Vazquez, board president of the Keith Haring Foundation, explains.
“Call this person, get this sorted out, then do the work. The painting would begin in the evening. He was pretty efficient. There were more things crossed out than not.
“Keith did thousands of those to-do lists. It’s what kept him focused.”
Indeed, in his relatively short life, Haring’s paintings, drawings and sculptures, with messages about prejudice and injustice, apartheid and racism, environmental issues and the AIDS epidemic, made a profound impact, and continue to do so.
Haring, from a small town in Pennsylvania, found his voice and distinctive style when he moved to New York to study and focus on his art, while soaking up the city’s 1980s-era decay, distrust in politics, rise of hip hop, vibrant clubbing scene and underground gay culture.
His early work, chalk drawings inspired by the graffiti movement of the time, started in the New York subways.
It also informed his ongoing mission, even at the height of his success, to do public art and free works.
“There was no airs about it, there was no pretension with graffiti,” Vazquez says.
“Graffiti was also a protest, a rebellion. I think Keith had kinship with that as well.
“He did these quick drawings all over the city to bring the art to the masses. If they couldn’t get to a gallery, he brought his art to the people.”
We’re at Haring’s former studio, which now houses his foundation and some of the artist’s archives, on Broadway in New York’s fashionable NoHo district.
The archives include Haring’s art, books, sketches, notebooks, Polaroid pictures and exhibition catalogues as well as clippings, flyers and handmade invitations to shows.
Paint splotches on the floor, and paint that has bled through tarps and canvas Haring put directly on the wall, remain untouched.
“It tells a story about the space,” Vazquez says. “We certainly could have painted things over and had a nice clean office, but how horrible would that be?
“I can look at some of the outlines and remember what paintings they were. It’s part of what makes this space special.”
KEITH HARING AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT IN MELBOURNE
Haring’s work will be showcased in a world premiere exhibition called Crossing Lines, opening at the National Gallery of Victoria on December 1.
Crossing Lines will feature the work of Haring, who died from HIV-AIDS in 1990, aged 31, and another influential New York artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose in 1988, at age 27.
The exhibition will include works from each artist’s first exhibitions, their collaborations with each other, as well as with the likes of Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Madonna.
It will also present some of their most acclaimed artworks, including Basquiat’s crown and head motifs, and Haring’s radiant baby and dancing figures.
“Early on, they were really collaborative,” Vazquez says of Haring and Basquiat’s artistic relationship.
“The energy at the time was about collaboration. Later on, they started to develop their own careers (and) it wasn’t as collaborative … I wouldn’t say adversarial, I wouldn’t say it was a rivalry, but they certainly admired each other jealously, but not in a harmful or bad way.
“Keith, certainly with me, would say: ‘God, (Basquiat’s) work is so beautiful, I could never be that.’ It always struck me — ‘You know you’re Keith Haring, right?’
“I’m sure on Jean’s end, he wished he had the same access that Keith had. The things Keith was able to risk, I don’t think Jean would risk those things, and be successful.
“I don’t think Jean felt he could be overtly vocal politically because he was trying to be an artist. He didn’t want to rock that boat, whereas Keith, because of who he was, could do that. He had the privilege to do that, and he took those risks.”
KEITH HARING AND ART FOR ALL
However, as success grew, Haring struggled with his art moving from the streets and public spaces into the elite worlds of galleries and private collections.
“For him, to have economic success from selling his paintings — what he loved to do the most, art — was cause for relief and celebration,” Haring’s sister, Kristen, told Weekend.
“He was so excited to have money coming from his art, but it very quickly turned to, ‘Hey, if someone is buying this painting for $15,000 — and this is early 1980s money — what does that mean? Who is this person that they have this money to spend it on a painting, and if my paintings are now worth something, that is a real problem’.
“Keith wanted everyone to have access to art. He started struggling with, ‘How do I make my work available to as many people as possible?’”
Haring countered exorbitant gallery prices with a pop-up store that sold affordable merchandise, including prints and T-shirts.
Today, Haring’s designs are featured on T-shirts sold through clothing giant Uniqlo, a nod to his art-for-everyone ethos.
That’s not to say Haring didn’t enjoy success or the fame that came with it.
He was inspired by the energy New York’s hottest clubs, including Paradise Garage, Mudd Club and Danceteria, and hung out with the likes of Madonna, Grace Jones and DJ Larry Levan.
“The DJs almost served the role of a high priest at a church, so to speak. That was the congregation,” Vazquez says.
“You had disco, hip hop, punk rock and poetry. It was filled with like-minded friends from Downtown; then Uptown came Downtown. Everything was melding and clashing together. You would see a graffiti writer off the street standing next to Calvin Klein.”
HARING’S EYE FOR THE SPOTLIGHT
But success, Vazquez says, was indeed on Haring’s to-do list.
“I want to say Keith expected success. He prepared for it. His mission was to be successful, so I think he envisioned what his success would be like, and he manifested it.
“Most people don’t have ambitions of being famous. But he wanted that. It’s very rare that people want that.
“He wanted to be a famous artist, he wanted to be recognised. He wanted to be in the same conversation as the Picassos and Warhols of the world.
“And he was prepared, he was meticulous. He documented everything, he wrote things down, he saved things. He wanted to be studied beyond his own life.”
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‘GETTING SICK REALLY FOCUSED HIM’
Haring announced he was HIV-positive in a Rolling Stone interview published in August 1989. At the time, Ronald Reagan-era politics dominated, the gay community was still marginalised, and some described the AIDS epidemic as “gay cancer”.
“I’m 12 years younger than Keith is, and yet, somehow, I was the one that was closer to him emotionally than my two older sisters,” Kristen Haring says.
“From the time he started travelling a lot in the mid-1980s, he used to talk about the fact that he was going to die young. He talked to me from the time I was 13, 14, 15 years old, ‘If anything happens, you need to make sure everything is OK’.
“He was always a deep thinker in a way that was probably not healthy for a teenager to be thinking about the future like that.
“My own feeling is it was related to how much energy he had and what an intense personality he was.
“He was constantly in motion. When you have someone that’s such an amazing force … they seem to expend their energy intensely, then we lose them.
“I don’t want to make it sound like he was a negative person, or someone dwelling on that, because he was such a wonderfully open man, warm and optimistic about so many things.”
Vazquez says Haring faced his illness with courage and a determination to create more art.
“I think getting sick really focused him,” Vazquez says.
“A lot of the distractions, a lot of the partying went by the wayside around 1988 and 1989. The entourage, the club kids — there was less of that.
“When I first started coming here, there’d be 12 people in the studio, smoking the best weed in New York. They’d be here with Keith, then they’d go to the hottest party in the city. But there was less of that.
“Then it became, ‘What do I do?’ He didn’t know how much time he had left, and he wanted to work as much as he could, until he couldn’t anymore.”
Did the work go dark?
“I think occasionally it went dark,” Vazquez says. “Being aware of your mortality, the work would absolutely reflect that, but it wasn’t always dark.
“His work was very vibrant and cheery, and he would use colours to brighten it. But there was some darkness. That’s only human.”
Haring added his sister Kristen to the board of his foundation in 1989.
“He had time to do some planning. He was still young, I was still young. I was 19 when he passed away,” Kristen says.
“Being on the board of the foundation has been part of my life for 30 years.”
HOW HARING’S LEGACY LIVES ON
Kristen says her brother was “very specific” in written documents about “how he wanted us to look after his work and his legacy.”
To date, the Keith Haring Foundation has donated $25 million to causes related to education and treatment of HIV-AIDS, and also to disadvantaged youth.
“It’s so sad because Keith just missed the advances that were made in medicine,” Vazquez says.
“If you had survived past 1991, you probably could have lived after being diagnosed with HIV.”
Vazquez, who’s been with the foundation since 1990, says Haring’s former studio still has the artist’s boundless verve.
“I enjoy being in this space. It gives me energy,” he explains.
“It reminds me of times that I had here, it reminds me of him, but not so much in the nostalgic sense, but more of what he wanted to accomplish.
“Now it’s up to us to take the baton to finish off some the things he wanted to have happen.
“I take that very seriously. The legacy, the shows, the exhibitions, the kid who can buy a T-shirt at Uniqlo — it’s important.
“It’s up to us to keep Keith relevant and care about the causes he cared about. It’s all on the to-do list.”
Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines, NGV International, December 1-April 13.
* Nui Te Koha travelled to the Keith Haring Foundation in New York as a guest of the NGV.