Untitled (Figure Balancing on Dog)

Material

Red painted steel; 914.4 x 778.8 x 778.8 cm

Datierung

1986

About the artwork

Keith Haring will always be identified first and foremost with his colourful, comic-like figures with which he made his public debut. His matchstick men, dogs, TVs and flying saucers are inspired by Walt Disney’s creations, Dr. Suess and cartoon figures like Bugs Bunny or Duffy Duck, which fascinated the artist throughout his childhood. His icons and symbol-like figures are so easily remembered because of their similarity to a signature. They automatically became symbols, characterizing his drawing. Hence they were predestined as the ideal marketing tool, promoting the artist over and above the classical art market. Interestingly enough, Haring started his road to stardom with graffiti pieces in New York Subway stations, thereby putting the phenomenon of graffiti on the world’s cultural map. Ironically, the artist drew his figures, which he later marketed successfully, on black billboards and referred to them as ‘subvertising’. As time went by, a huge hype developed around these illegal subway figures. Already back then, Haring’s gift for clever marketing became apparent.
In 1985, at an exhibition at Green Street Gallery, Haring showed his impressive sculptural works for the first time. This latest development came as a fundamental step forward for Haring’s own personal sense of his career. He had discovered a new form of expression for his inimitable style, thereby establishing his comic-like figures as fine art. Haring stated: “A painting to a degree, is still an illusion of a material. But once you cut this thing out of steel and put it up, it is a real thing, I mean it could kill you… It has a kind of power that a painting doesn’t have. You can’t burn it. It would survive a nuclear blast probably. It has this permanent, real feeling that will exist much much longer than I will ever exist, so it’s a kind of immortality. All of the things that you make are a kind of quest for immortality.”
His sculptures, which he cut from steel, lacquering them in bright colours, were designed for public interaction. Therefore Haring smoothed off the edges and supported their installation in public spaces. This populism is echoed in the simplicity of his technique and the purity of line that he admired so in the works of artists such as Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky. With his easily accessible sculptures, Haring wanted to give people an understanding of his art and spread the sociocritical message that his works imply. More than anything, sculpture provided him with the opportunity to do so.
The sculpture shown here consists of two figures of which the lower one is particularly interesting. The so-called ‘dog’ belongs, together with Haring’s ‘baby’, to the artist’s downright trademarks. Back in the 80s, when the artist was still drawing on subway billboards, these two symbols reached the highest recall value. Haring called them his ‘tag’, which is an equivalent for signature when it comes to graffiti: “I started to draw these two as my tag: an animal, which started to look like a dog…and a human being on all fours, who, in my opinion, was just a crawling human. The more I drew him and the bigger his head got in proportion to his body, the more others started to call him baby.” The two figures became his most important symbols and paved his way to success.

About the artist

In 1978, during the heyday of graffiti art, Keith Haring moved to New York. Thanks to his quickly recognizable, formulaic pictograms, his simple way of drawing and his fanciful sceneries he soon became one of the most prominent members of the graffiti scene. During the 1980s he realised a couple of projects with Andy Warhol. Haring’s visual world is two-dimensional, even in sculpture. His figures are inspired by TV, and cartoons in particular influenced him a lot. His simple brushwork, the clear-cut outlines and his use of only few but bright, luminous colours facilitate a quick perception, which is important to graffiti art.
Keith Haring displayed at over 100 solo and group exhibitions over the course of his short but successful career. In 1986 he opened the Pop-Shop in Soho, where he sold T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets decorated with his drawings. Haring saw this business as an opportunity to promote his art, which suddenly became available to and affordable for everybody. His idea faced harsh criticism from the art world, but his friends and fans, including Andy Warhol, supported him in every way they could. In 1988 Haring was diagnosed with Aids. Shortly after he established the Haring Foundation, which supported different organisations and especially programs which helped children with Aids.