RON HENGGELER

Keith Haring: The Political Line has its US premiere at the de Young and is the first major Haring show on the West Coast in nearly two decades.

Many of the works are on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation, New York, with supplemental loans from public and private collections.
Several pieces have not been published or on public view since the artist’s death, in 1990.

A bit about Keith Haring
Keith Haring (1958–90) was preeminent among the downtown New York City community of young artists, performers, and musicians whose work responded to urban street culture.

Haring also devoted much of his time to public works. He produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, in dozens of cities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals, children’s day care centers and orphanages.

“Haring understood that art was for everybody—he fought for the individual and against dictatorship, racism and capitalism.
He was no utopian, but he had a dream that ‘nothing is an end, because it always can be the basis for something new and different.’”

Keith Haring: The Political Line features more than 130 works of art including large scale paintings (on tarpaulins and canvases), sculptures and a number of the artist’s subway drawings, among other works.

The exhibition creates a narrative that explores the artist’s responses to nuclear disarmament, racial inequality, the excesses of capitalism, environmental degradation and others issues of deep personal concern to the artist.

Haring was always extremely thoughtful about what he could accomplish, and the work here, displayed alongside entries from his diaries and other archival material, illuminates how deeply Haring was engaged in the political realm.

The de Young is proud to bring this exhibition to San Francisco, where Haring’s work has long been a part of the city’s visual culture.

Haring created works for diverse venues in San Francisco during his lifetime, including murals for DV8, an underground club once located in the South of Market neighborhood and a huge, multipanel painting for the South of Market Childcare Center. Haring’s outdoor sculpture “Untitled (Three Dancing Figures)” (1989), located at Third Street and Howard, is a prominent feature of the Moscone Center; and his triptych altarpiece “The Life of Christ” (1990) is installed in the AIDS Chapel at Grace Cathedral.

One of many consistent ideas, sexuality, was a predominant theme throughout Haring's work. Haring was openly gay and was a strong advocate of safe sex; however, in 1988, he was diagnosed with AIDS. He established the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989, its mandate being to provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children's programs, and to expand the audience for Haring's work through exhibitions, publications and the licensing of his images. Haring enlisted his imagery during the last years of his life to speak about his own illness and generate activism and awareness about AIDS.

Haring fought tirelessly to end the AIDS epidemic in his work and personal life.
By the time of his death, at age 31, he had achieved international fame.
His influence on his own generation and those that have followed is a testament to his enduring vision.

In 1987 he had his own exhibitions in Helsinki and Antwerp, among others.
He also designed the cover for the benefit album A Very Special Christmas, on which Madonna was included.
In 1988 he joined a select group of artists whose work has appeared on the label of Chateau Mouton Rothschild wine.

Haring's work very clearly demonstrates many important political and personal influences.
Ideas about his sexual orientation are apparent throughout his work and his journals clearly confirm its impact on his work.

Heavy symbolism speaking about the AIDS epidemic is vivid in his later pieces.
In some of his works the symbolism is subtle, but Haring also produced some blatantly activist works.
Silence=Death is almost universally agreed upon as a work of HIV/AIDS activism.

Keith Haring died in New York on February 16, 1990, of AIDS-related complications.
He was 31 years old. As a celebration of his life, Madonna declared the first New York date of her Blond Ambition World Tour a benefit concert for Haring's memory and donated all proceeds from her ticket sales to AIDS charities including AIDS Project Los Angeles and amfAR; the act was documented in her film Truth or Dare.

His art is still exhibited worldwide, and many of his works are owned by prestigious museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France. Haring's art, with its deceptively simple style and its deeper themes of love, death, war and social harmony, continues to appeal strongly to viewers.
The Keith Haring Foundation