Keith Haring

Keith Haring

In addition to being one of the major artists of his generation, Keith HARING is also a prominent figure of his time, his city, and the currents of thought that traversed the 1980s.

This native of Pennsylvania (like Warhol and Lichtenstein) arrived in New York in the late 1970s. A student at the School of Visual Arts, he experimented with all techniques, seeking to enrich his mode of expression, although drawing remained his preferred medium throughout his life, especially due to its simplicity of implementation.

In the East Village, he quickly established a reputation and made many friends, including Basquiat, Scharf, later Warhol, not to mention Madonna... From the famous Club 57 to the subway corridors, Keith Haring left his mark on 1980s New York.

His line, his style (repetitive forms) where childhood coexists with unrestrained sexuality and morbid impulses, made him famous. The "radiant baby" became the emblem of a simple and immediate happiness that does not tolerate compromises of the adult world... His approach to art, in the lineage of Pop Art, is even less elitist than that of his predecessors.

In 1986, in SoHo, he opened his "pop Shop", a store where he sold (directly) his art, where posters and T-shirts were selected pieces of an artistic expression no less noble than that exhibited in museums, as an artist had created them.

He, who had long drawn with white chalk on unused advertising billboards in the New York subway and who was proud of his affiliation with a close and immediate art, chose to give the general public an approach to his work without any constraints.

While critics viewed this approach as too "commercial", he continued to exhibit and sell his work in this manner.

The late 1980s saw New York lose its great painters successively. Warhol in 1987 and Basquiat in 1988 passed away. The same year, Keith Haring discovered his HIV positivity and created a foundation, thus becoming one of the leading figures in the fight against AIDS.

He passed away on February 16, 1990, at the age of 32, leaving behind a prolific, voluble, and universal body of work.

The radiant baby is one of Keith Haring's most iconic symbols. Created in 1983, it even became his signature from then on... On the bronze triptych with white gold patina, presented here in a photo, the baby symbolizes the adult Christ ascending to Heaven. While there are 9 copies of the work, only 3 are in consecrated places. In New York (St. John's Cathedral), in San Francisco (Grace Cathedral), and this copy, in Saint Eustache, in the heart of Les Halles, in Paris.

If the Church has a glorious past since Richelieu and Molière were baptized there, while Louis XIV made his communion there and La Fontaine's funeral took place there, it has welcomed, with this work, a recognition of its modernity and its commitment...
In the early 1980s, Saint Eustache regularly organized masses and collections for AIDS patients, at a time when they were not looked upon with much merciful consideration.

It is for this reason that the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Foundation, owner of Keith Haring's work, offered it to Saint Eustache, a symbol of the Eucharistic community's commitment to the Community to which Keith Haring was proud to belong....

© Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES

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