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Keith Haring (1958-1990) made his mark on the New York City art world in 1980, when he created hundreds of white-chalk line drawings on sheets of matte black paper that were being used to cover empty advertising spots in the city's subway system....
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Keith Haring (1958-1990) made his mark on the New York City art world in 1980, when he created hundreds of white-chalk line drawings on sheets of matte black paper that were being used to cover empty advertising spots in the city's subway system. Haring's drawings were quick and graphic, producing cartoonish characters that evoked sources as diverse as graffiti art and the work of so-called fine artists such as Jean Dubuffet. In many respects, Haring's iconography was established in the subways of New York. It was there that he worked out his faceless figures, his blocked-headed barking dogs, and his babies, sometimes held in the caressing arms of faceless Madonnas. The motif of a 1950s-style flying saucer zapping these figures and dogs arrived at roughly the same time, as did Haring's three-eyed smiling face. By 1982, the press that had accompanied Haring's subway drawings propelled the artist into shows at alternative exhibition spaces such as Club 57 and P.S. 122. That, of course, caught the eye of the mainstream art world. Eventually, Haring signed up with Tony Shafrazi, whose claim to infamy in 1974, prior to becoming a respected art dealer, had been to spray paint the words "KILL LIES ALL" on the Picasso masterpiece "Guernica" at the Museum of Modern Art. The paintings created for Haring's first one-man show at Shafrazi's gallery, especially the ones in vinyl paint or ink on vinyl tarps, are among the artist's most sought pieces. For a while, Haring played by the rules of the art world, hanging out and collaborating with Andy Warhol while producing countless paintings, prints, and sculptures for art galleries and museums around the world, most notably Leo Castelli Gallery in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He even designed a wristwatch for Swatch. While the money was certainly good, Haring chaffed at the exclusivity of the art world, which is why, in 1986, he opened the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. There, fans who...
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