{"id":780507,"date":"2026-05-07T21:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/780507\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T21:36:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:36:22","slug":"keith-haring-before-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/780507\/","title":{"rendered":"Keith Haring Before the End of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Review<\/a><\/p>\n

The artist’s free-handed style, on view in works at the Brant Foundation, feels prescient in light of the upcoming AI cataclysm.<\/p>\n


\n \"Arthur
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Keith
\n Keith Haring, “Untitled” (1981), sumi ink and acrylic on paper (all photos \u00a9 Keith Haring Foundation, courtesy the Brant Foundation)<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, New York was almost the opposite of what it is today. Though the city had mostly pulled back from the brink of breakdown brought on by White Flight, bankruptcy, etc., by the early 1980s, whole neighborhoods still seemed to have collapsed. Little did I know at the time that, as bad as it was, the city had become a kind of canvas. Graffiti \u2014 the art movement of the day \u2014 filled the empty spaces. Walls, subway cars, you name it: Everything was covered with magic marker and spray cans. Most of it was tags, cryptic nicknames, and street numbers done hastily with spray cans and magic marker.<\/p>\n

This was when Keith Haring\u2019s work first appeared. And in this context, it seemed clever, upbeat, and lively. But to consider it art was different \u2014 it seemed to be trite, dashed off, sort of like the doodles that one might find in the margins of an art school notebook: radiant babies, Mickey Mice, and countless cookie-cutter figures. A recent visit to Keith Haring<\/a> at the Brant Foundation, which focuses on his work from between 1980 and 1983, gave me an opportunity to recognize the dismissiveness of my youth. There really is more than meets the eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Keith Haring, “Untitled” (1982), sumi ink on paper <\/p>\n

Included in this exhibition are Haring\u2019s signature glyphic figures on reproductive ancient clay pottery, biblical images of golden calves being worshiped, and human sacrifices (perhaps condemned prisoners?) stretching up to a UFO laser-beaming everything from nuclear power plants and the Pyramids to big-brained dolphins. A pair of laughing dogs sitting back-to-back (dog-to-god?) is a vessel inhabited by multiple humanoids, each on their own mysterious mission. In a later piece, the same dogs are free of their human hosts.<\/p>\n

His work, which once seemed playful and energetic to me, now appears dark and possibly prophetic: images of overcrowdedness, torture, a general lack of human identity, unthinking obedience to higher powers. Overall, the subjects show no expression of empathy or grief, only a solitary image of vacant, wide-eyed glee. On the other hand, perhaps I\u2019ve become prejudiced by an age defined by everything from recently declassified documents indicating the existence of UFOs to the rise of the mindless MAGA cult.<\/p>\n

\"\"Keith Haring, “Untitled (Robot and Airplane)” (1983), chalk on paper with fiberglass frame<\/p>\n

Haring\u2019s free-handed yet perfectly fonted and justified style blows right through desktop publishing; it feels prescient now, in light of the upcoming AI cataclysm, a Nostradamus-by-emojis. Which isn\u2019t to say that Haring is necessarily unique \u2014\u00a0consider the work of people like Mark Kostabi<\/a>, Jeff Koons<\/a>, and so many others, and you can see a hint of the apocalyptic there too.<\/p>\n

One could spend a while searching through Haring\u2019s many meanings or trying to locate his rightful place in the Pop Art-Andy Warhol Universe. But I will forever think of him as a young man in the still-empty landscape of Manhattan in the early 1980s, so removed from what it is today.\u00a0It\u2019s difficult to imagine him arising from any other time or place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Keith Haring, “Untitled (Robot and Airplane)” (1983), chalk on paper with fiberglass frame; right: Keith Haring, “Untitled” (1981), vinyl paint on vinyl tarpaulin<\/p>\n

Keith Haring<\/a> continues at the Brant Foundation (421 East 6th Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through May 31. The exhibition was curated by Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Review The artist’s free-handed style, on view in works at the Brant Foundation, feels prescient in light…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":780508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-780507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116535453719030855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}