.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘… the very act of painting placed you in an exhilarated state—it was a sacred moment’ (Keith Haring)
The present work on paper by Keith Haring is a vibrant early example of the American artist’s celebrated visual language. It was executed in 1980 during his residency at P.S. 122—a non-profit arts organisation known today as Performance Space New York (PSNY)—on the corner of First Avenue and Ninth Street in the heart of New York City’s East Village. Concluding with an open-studio exhibition, this was a key moment for Haring which saw the arrival of his signature style. He had moved to the city just two years earlier. Executed on a ground painted pale pink, this large-format work depicts a UFO blasting a beam of energy towards a room or box which holds five silhouetted figures, their hands linked in a chain. Spaceship and earthlings alike emit sparks of energy. Haring’s use of red, orange and green spray paint gives the picture a fluorescent glow. Its soft haze works in tandem with the sharp, comic book-esque lines in black ink to create an image which is both of this world and out of it.
The flying saucer is one of the defining motifs of Haring’s early practice, which drew equally on contemporary painters such as Pierre Alechinsky and New York’s thriving street-art scene. Haring had grown up in small-town Pennsylvania in the 1960s, a period when the US was gripped and terrified by stories of UFOs. For the young artist, alien spacecraft were not objects of fear but instead symbols of otherness and forbidden desires, shooting energy rays that could endow their receivers with special power. Haring would later claim the UFO motif had a pivotal role in his artistic development. ‘Out of these drawings,’ he said later, ‘my entire future vocabulary was born. I have no idea why it turned out like that. It certainly wasn’t a conscious thing. But after these initial images, everything fell into place…’ (K. Haring quoted in J. Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York 1991, p. 20).
In these early years Haring also staged a performance series called ‘Acts of Live Art’ at Club 57, around the corner from P.S. 122. He was fascinated by dance, movement and communal experience, and often brought these themes into his art. The figures in the present work stand together in a room that radiates a yellow incandescence, illuminated like the nightclubs he frequented in downtown New York. Holding hands, they represent a democratising spirit of friendship and solidarity—a message that would reverberate through the artist’s entire career, even as he came to deal with darker subject matter such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic. ‘Above all,’ writes Thomas Calvocoressi of Haring’s paintings, ‘they fizz with a relentless energy; the feeling that Haring is in a (very real) race against time to cover every surface’ (T. Calvocoressi, ‘Keith Haring’s urgent optimism’, The New Statesman, 3 July 2019). Thrumming to an alien rhythm, the present work is a vital example of his effervescent practice.
The present work on paper by Keith Haring is a vibrant early example of the American artist’s celebrated visual language. It was executed in 1980 during his residency at P.S. 122—a non-profit arts organisation known today as Performance Space New York (PSNY)—on the corner of First Avenue and Ninth Street in the heart of New York City’s East Village. Concluding with an open-studio exhibition, this was a key moment for Haring which saw the arrival of his signature style. He had moved to the city just two years earlier. Executed on a ground painted pale pink, this large-format work depicts a UFO blasting a beam of energy towards a room or box which holds five silhouetted figures, their hands linked in a chain. Spaceship and earthlings alike emit sparks of energy. Haring’s use of red, orange and green spray paint gives the picture a fluorescent glow. Its soft haze works in tandem with the sharp, comic book-esque lines in black ink to create an image which is both of this world and out of it.
The flying saucer is one of the defining motifs of Haring’s early practice, which drew equally on contemporary painters such as Pierre Alechinsky and New York’s thriving street-art scene. Haring had grown up in small-town Pennsylvania in the 1960s, a period when the US was gripped and terrified by stories of UFOs. For the young artist, alien spacecraft were not objects of fear but instead symbols of otherness and forbidden desires, shooting energy rays that could endow their receivers with special power. Haring would later claim the UFO motif had a pivotal role in his artistic development. ‘Out of these drawings,’ he said later, ‘my entire future vocabulary was born. I have no idea why it turned out like that. It certainly wasn’t a conscious thing. But after these initial images, everything fell into place…’ (K. Haring quoted in J. Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York 1991, p. 20).
In these early years Haring also staged a performance series called ‘Acts of Live Art’ at Club 57, around the corner from P.S. 122. He was fascinated by dance, movement and communal experience, and often brought these themes into his art. The figures in the present work stand together in a room that radiates a yellow incandescence, illuminated like the nightclubs he frequented in downtown New York. Holding hands, they represent a democratising spirit of friendship and solidarity—a message that would reverberate through the artist’s entire career, even as he came to deal with darker subject matter such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic. ‘Above all,’ writes Thomas Calvocoressi of Haring’s paintings, ‘they fizz with a relentless energy; the feeling that Haring is in a (very real) race against time to cover every surface’ (T. Calvocoressi, ‘Keith Haring’s urgent optimism’, The New Statesman, 3 July 2019). Thrumming to an alien rhythm, the present work is a vital example of his effervescent practice.