KEITH HARING | Untitled

Galerie 1900-2000, Paris
Private Collection, Los Angeles
Alona Kagan Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in September 2006

This work is in good condition overall. Please contact the Contemporary Department at (212) 606-7254 for a professional condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. Unframed.
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.

Radiating with the energy of the New York art scene in the 1980s, Keith Haring’s Untitled brims with kinetic gesture and confidence. Seeing the role of artist as antagonist, Haring’s art is direct and confrontational, laced with emotion and history. His brief, but intensely productive career synthesized a new populism; like contemporary hieroglyphics, Haring constructed his own visual language to communicate with a wide-stretching audience. Expanding on the legacy of Pop Art as it united street culture and high art, Untitled is a striking example of Keith Haring’s universally recognized style. With his instantly recognizable and highly legible forms, Haring entirely circumnavigated the traditional path from underground culture to mainstream popularity and art-world stardom. The artist’s remarkable application of Pop imagery and tabulated symbolic language succinctly captured the booming social culture of the downtown New York scene in the early eighties, and as such became immensely popular at breakneck speed. His signature lexicon of stick figures, crawling babies and barking dogs became ubiquitous through his subway drawings and public performances. As Haring took his signature hieroglyphic language to the streets, his practice vibrated with enthusiasm for a utopic, populist art form rooted in connection and community. Haring envisaged a universal, anti-elitist language of direct and simplified form rendered in exuberant popping primary colors. This was an art for the people. Delineated in bold, black, cartoonish lines, Haring envisaged a universal language of direct and simplified form and popping primary colors: “A more holistic and basic idea of wanting to incorporate [art] into every part of life,” he explained, “less as an egotistical exercise and more natural somehow. I don’t know how to exactly explain it. Taking it off the pedestal. I’m giving it back to the people, I guess” (the artist in: Daniel Drenger, ‘Art and Life: An Interview with Keith Haring,’ Columbia Art Review, Spring 1988, p. 53).

Haring demonstrated a great propensity for art from a young age. He first learned how to draw cartoons from his father and was influenced by the popular culture that surrounded him from Walt Disney animations to the illustrations of Dr. Seuss. He later became enthralled by avant-garde artists such as Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky as his pictorial style developed and the impact of their liberated, instinctual paintings and freedom of color and form can be noted in his own compositions. During this period in the mid-1980s, however, it was Roy Lichtenstein that most captivated the artist’s imagination. However, unlike Lichtenstein, Haring’s graphic immediacy does not reference mass-media, but is rooted in the instantaneous symbolic codes of 1980s downtown New York, the graffiti of its streets, and the East Village art scene that the artist trail-blazed alongside contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf.

Ever looking to the past in order to understand and critique the present, Haring’s art was as much a celebration of life as it was a wholehearted endeavor to strive for a better, fairer and more beautiful world. His enduring legacy on the art world is testament to his unique and unparalleled vision that recognized the vital significance of art on culture, history and existence itself. “Work is all I have,” he stated, “and art is more important than life” (the artist in: Alexandra Kolossa, Keith Haring, 1958-1990: A Life For Art, Los Angeles 2004, p. 81).



This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Keith Haring and numbered 071791A3.