凱斯‧哈林

Estate of the Artist
Deitch Projects, New York (acquired from the above in December 2002)
Private Collection, France
Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, May 13, 2004, Lot 23
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Keith Haring, October - November 1982, p. 56, illustrated 
Tokyo, Mitsukoshi Museum of Art, Keith Haring: A Retrospective, May - June 1993, cat. no. 9, p. 22, illustrated
Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'arte contemporanea; Malmö, Malmö Konsthall; Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Sam and Ayala Zacks Pavilion, Keith Haring, February 1994 - February 1995, cat. no. 36, p. 90, illustrated in color
Madrid, Fundación la Caixa; Vienna, KunstHausWien; Sydney, Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Keith Haring: A Retrospective, 1995 - 1996, p. 90, illustrated
Wellington, City Gallery, Keith Haring: A Retrospective, March - June 1999 (show originated at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York) 
Pisa, Palazzo Lanfranchi; Rome, Chiostro del Bramante; Catania, Castello Ursino, Keith Haring, December 1999 - June 2001 (Rome and Catania only)
Luxembourg, Dexia Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, Keith Haring, June - September 2007, pp. 112-113, illustrated in color
Paris, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Keith Haring, The Political Line, April - August 2013, cat. no. 67, p. 147, illustrated in color

Alexandra Kolossa, Keith Haring 1958-1990: A life for art, Cologne, 2004, p. 26, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition. At regular intervals of approximately 16" to 17", there are five horizontal creases extending the width of the tarpaulin which are related to the folding of the work for storage. Various scattered intermittent, and mostly minute, hairline cracks are evident in the thicker areas of purple pigment, as is to be expected due to the inherently smoother support surface of the vinyl coated tarpaulin used by the artist. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. The unstretched canvas is not framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Visually electrifying and vigorously dynamic, Keith Haring’s monumental tarp painting from 1982 harnesses an inner voltage that imbues it with an energetic and striking immediacy archetypal of Haring’s most accomplished compositions. A barrage of incident saturates every square inch of the nearly 3-meter tall and 3-meter wide surface, populated by Haring’s most iconic symbols: the seated stick figure, tumbling men, and crouching babies all interact in a painterly tour de force of inter-connecting lines and shapes. Though Haring’s imagery most closely aligns with cartoon and graffiti, the artist considered his nearly hieroglyphic lexicon as belonging firmly in the pictographic tradition of other cultures and civilizations, such as the painting of African masks, Chinese calligraphy, and age-old cave paintings. His vivid repertory of form is on full display in the present work, predominated by an arresting violence that conjures the paintings by Hieronymous Bosch and Francis Bacon, not to mention his peer Jean-Michel Basquiat. Recalling the paintings of Bosch and Bacon in its amalgamation of the monstrous with the bizarre, Untitled (January 16, 1982) presents an immensely powerful dystopian vision in which normality has been totally suspended in favor of an utterly surreal tableau. The present work represents an early, definitive summary of Haring’s pictorial lexicon. In its exceptionally poised economy of form and vivid painterly qualities, Keith Haring’s colossal painting energetically signals a formative moment in the career of this " radiant child," and invokes the unrivaled creative dynamism of New York City’s fertile streets at the pinnacle of the 1980s. The present work possesses a graphic symmetry and kinetic gestural motion exemplary of Haring’s most beloved compositions, employing Haring’s instantly recognizable, culturally pervasive pictorial language of bold contoured lines, expressive comic rays, and boisterously mobile stick figures.

Haring’s confident hand draws bold, self-assured strokes, eschewing a pre-meditated schematic plan for spontaneous genius; never erasing or reworking, Haring’s virtuosic gestural ingenuity flows directly through his brush onto the canvas. Executed in 1982, the present work emerges at the zenith of Haring’s career and the electric downtown East Village art scene of the 1980s, which Haring trailblazed alongside his contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, as well as their friend and compatriot, Andy Warhol. Of the paintings that launched Haring’s international renown, Elisabeth Sussman wrote, “The tarps were deceptively simple and graphic, and their imagery and palette predominated in Haring’s art over the next eight years in ambitious paintings, murals, and commercial products. As for color, the tarps reintroduced the commercial colors of sixties Pop and traffic signs. Typical were bold primaries (reds, yellows) but also black, purples, greens, oranges, and pinks. Haring painted thick, heavy lines with a velocity that flung a trail of drips over the surface.” (Elisabeth Sussman in Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Keith Haring, 1997, p. 18) Haring’s larger than life figures are compressed in perspectival space, formally emulating the iconography of sculptural reliefs from antiquity that would depict figures within narrative scenes as two-dimensionally flattened and in side profile. The vibrant Untitled (January 16, 1982) is notable for its exceptionally sumptuous drips, as cascades of fluid ink and acrylic pour down and across the vinyl surface. Unique for the green spots that punctuate and perforate the solid purple lines, the strong interaction of color in Untitled (January 16, 1982) lends the painting a particular intensity characteristic of Abstract Expressionism. While Haring here deploys similar forms as in his formative subway chalk drawings, the expressive joie de vivre of the drips juxtaposed with the hard-edged lines of his archetypal bold shapes exemplify Haring’s mastery over the painterly medium, bridging his Pop language with the critical gravitas of painters like de Kooning, Pollock, and Kline. Just as we can visualize Pollock vigorously taking paint to canvas, exuding his heroic genius with every gestural drip and pour, Untitled (January 16, 1982) analogously conjures Haring’s performance of painting—the ineluctable motion of the image parallels Haring’s own instinctive, primal dance with brush and tarpaulin. 

1982 was an especially formative year for Haring: following his initial taste of public recognition in the now-legendary Times Square Show of 1980, Haring had his first solo show with long-time gallerist Tony Shafrazi, in addition to participating in Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany. The significance of Haring’s work had been recognized as early as 1981 when René Ricard published his seminal essay on the New York art scene, significantly entitled ‘Radiant Child’ after Haring’s iconic illustration of the same name which had adorned an electronic Times Square billboard during the previous year. One of the most celebrated artists working in New York during the 1980s, Haring’s art tapped into the zeitgeist of this vibrant decade: a period in which music and art flourished within a culture of conspicuous consumption, yet which was also overshadowed by the specter of AIDS and drug abuse. For Roy Lichtenstein, the eminence of color, painterly control,and penetrating intelligence in Pop art, Haring’s paintings were deserving of the highest praise: “Keith composes in an amazing way. I mean, it’s as if he dashes the painting off—which in a way he does—but it takes enormous control, ability, talent, and skill to make works that become whole paintings. They’re not just arbitrary writings. He really has a terrific eye! And he doesn’t go back and correct—this is in itself amazing—and his compositions are of a very high level. And he has such wit!” (Roy Lichtenstein quoted in John Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York, 1992, p. 124)