Keith Haring

Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York 

Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach

Sale: Christie’s, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, 9 November 2005, Lot 561 

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Keith Haring, 1982

New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Keith Haring: Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures, 2003 

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some light rubmarks in placed to the extreme outer edges. There is evidence of rust and associated minor paint loss to all four corners and in places to the overturn edges. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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“This show was Haring epic, Part One, with all scenes, fragments, motifs and media assembled, structured graphically and architectonically.”

Edit de Ak and Lisa Liebmann, 'Keith Haring: Tony Shafrazi Gallery', Artforum, January 1983.

Executed in 1982, Untitled is archetypal of Keith Haring’s inimitable graphic style and narrates the artist’s first major critical breakthrough. It was exhibited in Haring’s landmark show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery held during the very same year of its creation. Depicting a dollar-sign emblazed totem upon which Haring’s signature figures appear to be either dancing or in the act of vandalism, this piece confronts the thematic of wealth and the US economy prevalent during a period of financial tumult. Between 1980 and 1982, America witnessed a significant economic recession accountable in some part to the energy crisis of 1979 and the aggressive inflation that ensued. However, with the strengthening economic policies of the Reagan administration – a government who famously endorsed a laissez-faire and unregulated approach to commerce and industry – the mid-late 1980s witnessed the most extraordinary financial boom since the Golden Age of Capitalism following World War II. As an image therefore, Untitled seems to vacillate between an expression of economic injury and a cult of worship and premonition of the affluence that would shortly erupt in the USA.

Alongside Haring's breakthrough exhibition at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1982 was also the year of Andy Warhol’s famous exhibition of Dollar Signs at Leo Castelli’s Greene Street Gallery. It is very likely that Haring saw this show and perhaps the choice of subject for Untitled stands as visual evidence of Warhol’s influence on the young artist. As Haring famously quoted: "You see, whatever I've done would not have been possible without Andy. Had Andy not broken the concept of what art is supposed to be, I just wouldn't have been able to exist" (Keith Haring quoted in: John Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York 1991, p. 169). Much in the same way that Warhol continuously confronted the theme of money, wealth and the cult of the consumer, Haring appears to hold up a mirror to consumer driven society.

However, if in subject matter Haring was alluding to Warhol’s precedent, then in style he was strikingly individual. The present work typifies his idiosyncratic mode of depiction, which fused comic book precedent with strains of graffiti to perfectly distil the Zeitgeist of 1980s New York: “Resorting to a legacy of symbols and archetypes that lurk in the collective unconscious, Haring introduced a vortex of tremendous disorder, a spasmodic agglomerate of seething images. Latent things awoke, to reveal the authentic matrix of life and existence in a city such as that of New York, which revolved around frenzy, abnormality, and gratuitousness” (Germano Celant, ‘Keith Haring: Labyrinths of Life and Death’ in: Germano Celant, Eds., Keith Haring, New York 2007, p. 28).

Thanks to his earlier experience of working at Shafrazi’s gallery, Haring finally establish a long-desired professional relationship with the dealer and his first solo show opened to tremendous acclaim, both critical and commercial, in October 1982. In Shafrazi’s own words: “In 1982, Keith had what I call his ‘coming-out show’…The opening drew close to a thousand people and spilled out onto the streets for hours. He was ‘it’. The crowd was amazing – filled with celebrities, socialites, downtown Club 57 family, art students, and all of Keith’s way-uptown hip-hop friends from the Bronx and Harlem. What a mix. It was truly a magnificent happening” (Tony Shafrazi quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Milan, Fondazione Triennale di Milano, The Keith Haring Show, 2005-06, p. 105). Suddenly celebrated as a hero of the city’s hippest community, Haring was invited to exhibit in Europe; Holland, Italy, Belgium, and England as well as in Japan. Painted in 1982 and exhibited in this momentous show, Untitled stands as witness to the breakthrough moment of Keith Haring’s career.