click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Getty Images/BMAC
- Untitled subway drawing on paper
Last month, a New York City subway station made headlines when a work crew painted over a graffiti-covered pedestrian tunnel in Washington Heights. While some locals welcomed the newly white walls — reportedly primed for future murals — others were dismayed by the erasure of artwork that helped define the area's character. As the Daily News observed, the tunnel was even featured in Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In the Heights.
Whatever one might think of graffiti — Is it vandalism? Is it even art? — some purveyors use the medium as social message. Today, renowned British artist-activist Banksy reaches beyond the street to nearly 12 million followers on Instagram. Four decades ago, Keith Haring became an art superstar more laboriously: one drawing at a time, using only chalk.
click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Getty Images/BMAC
- Untitled subway drawing on paper
Seventeen of Haring's images, salvaged by a New York City building superintendent and later purchased by art dealer and collector Alex Trimper, are now on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in an exhibition titled simply "Keith Haring: Subway Drawings."
Subway stations and tunnels provided ample canvases for the Pennsylvania-born artist in the form of the matte black paper with which subway authorities covered blank advertising billboards. Needing to work quickly and clandestinely, Haring developed a distinctive drawing shorthand that is now recognized worldwide: simple, cartoony figures enhanced by lines that indicate movement. In effect, he created his own visual language, which he used primarily to promote love, equality, harmony — and safe sex.
click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Getty Images/BMAC
- Keith Haring
Not long after Haring arrived in New York, so did the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Eventually, the global epidemic would claim more than 40 million lives, including Haring's. But over the 1980s, the artist made countless subway drawings, appeared in solo and group exhibitions, produced a multitude of sanctioned public art projects, designed sets in theaters and nightclubs, and developed designs for products such as Swatch watches and Absolut Vodka.
Before Haring died — in 1990 at age 31 — he established the Keith Haring Foundation. According to its website, its mandate is to "provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children's programs," as well as licensing Haring's work. To date, the foundation has 185,000 followers on Instagram.
"Keith Haring: Subway Drawings" is on view through April 16. Learn about related programming at brattleboromuseum.org.