KEITH HARING | Untitled

Casino Knokke, Knokke
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1987

Knokke, Casino Knokke, Keith Haring, 1987

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although there is more variation in the white background. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Untitled is an important and engaging work from the latter part of Keith Haring’s tragically curtailed life; an exuberant demonstration of the way that his style evolved, moving away from the instinctiveness of the subway drawings and towards a more established art historical tradition. This work is further important as a commemoration of Haring’s time in Knokke, a Belgian seaside town where he was particularly happy, and of the important relationships he had with the people who lived there. “Of all the places where Haring worked, Knokke was his favourite, with the sole exception of New York. In the whole of his recorded voyaging, Knokke is the only place where, upon return, he jots down ‘home again’” (Richard Farris Thompson, Ed., Keith Haring Journals, New York 1996, n.p.). In the summer of 1987, Haring travelled to Knokke to stay with the artist and art collector Roger Nellens and his wife Monique. The couple were dear friends who gave him moral support and privacy at a critical point in his life shortly after his HIV diagnosis. They also provided artistic inspiration and commercial opportunity. Haring was most inspired by his accommodation at Chez Nellens – he and his then partner Juan Rivera were invited to stay in a huge Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely sculpture known as The Dragon. Designed in 1971, The Dragon was a site specific sculpture habitat in the Nellens' garden originally conceived as a playhouse for their son Xavier and later functioned as a rarely used summer guest house. The exterior was designed by Niki, whilst the structure and interior were constructed and decorated by Tinguely. It was a magical space that entranced Haring and provided a dreamlike getaway from the outside world. For the entirety of the summer, he lived and worked in the bowels of The Dragon, breathing such life into the dormant structure that Niki de Saint Phalle actually came to Knokke to see her sculpture-building at last occupied. With her permission, Haring added an intricate staircase mural to the interior and painted one of Xavier’s surfboards that hung on the wall. Haring loved the house so much that he returned in October of the same year, describing the experience in his journal: “The moon was almost full last night and sleeping inside The Dragon at the Nellens’ house was really strange… light was pouring through all the round holes in the windows… Sleeping in Niki’s dragon was a lot like a dream anyway” (Ibid.)

As well as dear friends to the artist, the Nellens were important patrons for Haring at this stage of his life. Roger arranged a number of commissions and opportunities around Knokke, including a vast mural at the local surf club. The most important of these was the Summer Exhibition at Casino Knokke in which the present work was exhibited, organised by Roger and dedicated solely to Haring in 1987. The mural he created for the exhibition remains in the Casino today and is one of his largest and most significant works of this period. It exemplifies the changing emphases of Haring’s oeuvre from 1986 onwards, when his works became more composed and less instinctive; more closely related to the lineage of European art history than to the tradition of American cartoons. Haring’s typically abrupt journal entry for 20^th June (three days before the creation of the present work) describes the execution of the mural, his changing practice, and the exciting and energetic way that he worked: “To Casino to begin big mural… I do drawing with black acrylic of detailed ‘gambling scene.’ Big brush and pretty quickly. Very Dubuffet, or something, with a little hint of Stuart David. I finish at 3.30pm to applause” (Ibid.).

The present work serves as further demonstration of the growing influence of European art history upon Haring’s style. It could certainly be described as Dubuffet-esque, featuring the same fluency of line, the same limited palette emphasising blue, red, and black, and a comparable mode of warped and distorted portraiture. The jumbled physiognomy of the central figure, with one eye in the centre of the head and one in the upper left, is also reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s portraiture. We are led to think of works like Weeping Woman, now in the collection of the Tate and exhibited in Knokke in 1950, which features an equally chaotic visage. Pierre Alechinsky was one of Haring’s first great influences; his 1981 retrospective at the Carnegie Museum of Art was, for Haring, “the first time that I had seen someone who was older and more established doing something that was vaguely similar to my little abstract drawings” (Keith Haring in conversation with David Sheff, ‘Keith Haring: Just Say Know, Rolling Stone, August 1989, online). The Belgian Alechinsky would have been on Haring’s mind in Knokke, and the swirling dynamism of his style forms an obvious antecedent to the present work. It is further noteworthy that Haring associated the Casino mural with Alechinsky explicitly, describing its “Very ‘Cobra’ brushwork” in a later journal entry (Ibid.).

The present work has an almost classical mood. Its medusa-like composition merges Haring’s instinctive and intuitive draughtsmanship with influence from the canon of twentieth-century Western art. In its appreciation, we understand his desire to compare his own oeuvre with the most important artists that came before him. In the context of his HIV diagnosis, and the AIDs crisis that had already taken so many of his friends and loved ones, this historic ambition seems particularly poignant. But there are no musings on mortality in this work. It is an exuberant picture filled with Haring’s pictorial enthusiasm. It typifies his feelings at the end of that summer: “I feel more optimistic after being in Europe and I think it might be a good idea to live longer” (Ibid.).



This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Keith Haring and numbered 052705A4.