work one finds it hard tO foresee the stark cartoon-like pictures that came tO be identified with his name, and that New Yorkers expected tO find each morning as they waited fO 「 the train on the subway platforms. Haringls early works, especially those in his "student po 市 0 ⅱ 0 " , include elegant, succinct painterly abstractions, nuanced collages, and delicate figurations not unlike Paul Klee's. On the Other hand, his ventures i 猷 0 Performance and ConceptuaI art ー especially, his permutations Of word order, and later, his altered newspaper headlines foreshadow, if not the style, at least the attitude behind his subway pieces where Haring ・ s images either comment on or confound the messages Of the adjacent ads. A note on form might be relevant here. Conventional urban graffiti ()n modern New York just as in ancient Rome) tends tO be scrawled across whOIe stretches Of wall, or else squeezed within snippets Of surface, like those found in bathrooms or telephone bOOths. But Haring favored self-contained, clearly delimited surfaces, such as the ready-made frame Of subway ads. (Even when he painted on three-dimensional forms, he chose clear, unambiguous objects n01 only optically but conceptually: the frame Of his glasses, a kitchen toaster, a cast Of MichelangeIoIs David. ) HaringIs style was visually inescapable. Typically, he drew with white chalk on the black sheets normally used tO block the advertising spaces between campaigns. orderto compete with the full-color, glossy poster ads, he used thick, continuous lines, virtually free from gesturalincident, and terse, simple compositions that couldnlt be farther from the impulsive, erratic nature Of urban graffiti. Sometimes (and increasingly SO in later years), the structure Of the pictures became quite intricate. They registered at first as abstract fields where figures and symbols merged in a percussive tangle. け one style captured the eye Of someone sitting inside a subway car in motion, the Other seemed tO suit the attitude Of someone standing on the platform, waiting for the train tO arrive. These conditions, and HaringIs continual competition with, and usurpation Of, the ro Of the existing ads, remained the essence Of his style, which is why he would eventually become a wildly successful graphic designer in his own right ー the only graphic designerl can think Of whose style could be readily recognized by the public ー in countless posters, stickers, and public ads calling for nuclear disarmament, indicting Apartheid, or fighting for gay rights. As it has been observed many times, the subway poster resembles the most significant visual vehicles Of Haringls generation: the television screen and the cartoon frame. However, it SO calls up the most common format in the history Of art-making since the Renaissance: the canvas. That might explain in part why Haring made such an easy transition intO the established art market Of the eighties, which was, largely, a market for pictures. A comparison with Jean-Michel Basquiat might be relevant in this context. 旧 Basquiatls painting style, one can still feel the gestural tenor Of a personal calligraphy and the character Of a "vandalist" working in secret and quickly. TO the end, Basquiat was embattled with the canvas, which he covered with erratic marks and organized in wilfully arbitrary ways, just like graffiti scrawled over a schOOl ー yard w 訓 . But Haringls images in the subways already IOOked like formally constructed pictures. HaringIs language doesnlt come from graffiti, but from comic bOOks. From that vernacular idiom, he adopted the idea Of constructing narratives, Often in a sequence Of "frames", tO 旧 through a succinct repertoire Of "heroes" and symbols ー the barking dog, the "radiant child", the flying saucer, the talking TV-screen. From cartoons a 0 come some important visual conventions, for example, the motion lines one finds around hiS figures in action, and, most distinctive Of all, the "rays" that identify the key characters in his stories. But these conventions donlt always conform 10 the code. The comic bOOk idiom didnlt come intO Haringls work in its pure vernacular form. は came via POP Art, and thus, his works retain a key expressive quality in Modernist art: they are conspicuously ambiguous. They are like the images in a Rorschach test ー they mean whatever we wantthem to mean. UnIike what happens with conventional cartoons, one is Often at a IOSS trying tO identify the "bad guys" in HaringIs stories. AS in Paleolithic cave painting, where the formidable beast could stand in turn for predator and prey, SO dO HaringIs barking dogs, monumental snakes, and pregnant giantesses. Thus, symbols that seem clearly sympathetic in one context may turn sinister in another, as it happens with the

Keith Haring: A One-Man Art History by Amelia Arenas The history of art can be reduced tO three key episodes: later work. Haring didnltlive long enough to have arrived at a mature style: 訓 the same, looking at his student When judging an artistls development, it is customary to search his formative years for premonitions of his HaringIs versatile role-playing. LetIs take a closer look: brought graffiti artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat into the mainstream market, but 引 so what allowed Keith fix Of avant-garde vitality, would capture the most sophisticated among these "street artists", t00. ThatIs what sanction Of the grant system. 旧 due time, however, the voracious art market of the eighties, badly in need of a museum, such as Happenings or Earthworks, which eventually traded the collectorls support fo 「 the official first, "street art" promised to be more effective than earlier attempts to operate outside the gallery and the alternatives tO the current definition of the artistls ro and a rich arena Of action outside the art world proper. At more than the abundance Of stylistic options opened up by the collapse of Modernist ideals: it proposed publicls response 10 the messages in the urban space. "Street art", as the trend has been called, capitalized on public art ー false advertisements, sophisticated graffiti, altered public signs, and 訓 sorts Of disruptions Of the Just outside the galleries, on the streets Of SOhO and the East ViIIage, one encountered an intriguing form Of historical tension and artistic insight. Except, of course, if one ventured to look outside the art world proper. something that lOOked different. For, as a whole, the eighties turned out to be a rather "soft" period wanting in sure tO find there something for every taste, and the next season, something entirely different. Or rather, early eighties left one feeling like having been tO a department store on a "Big Sale Day" since one could be t00 neat an ideologicalframe for the art Of the time. 旧 fact, doing the rounds of the New York galleries in the These two examples llve chosen, however, might paint a distorted picture of the period, since they suggest sexualrights. Modernist concerns with class struggle, and focused rather narrowly on such issues as multiculturalism and hand, Postmodernism so calls up the rise of a particular kind of political art visibly disengaged from the earlier traditional craft ー that is, a demand for "good" pictures to decorate the homes of the newly rich. On the other boom Of the art market during the financial mirage of the Reagan era, which stimulated a return to painting and tO someone living in New York in the eighties, Postmodernism conjures up, among other things, the dramatic usefulness is obviously limited, since it offers no hint Of a distinctive feature in the period it frames. But, atleast begins sometime in the te seventies and that has come tO be called the Postmodern era. The term ・ s HaringIs work emerged just as the modernist impulse tO reinvent art began to run out of fuel, a period which his short career, a career shorter still than van GoghIs, Keith Haring managed tO replay the whole history. express ideas that can't be put intO words, tO influence public opinion, 0 「 , simply, tO make a place IOOk good. 旧 sum up not only the transformation Of the artistls socialrole, but 引 SO all that art has been used for, namely, to the pyramids Of Egypt, 0 「 Titian had never existed. FO 「 , these key episodes tO which llve reduced art history fact that it will be forever remembered as a period when artists tried 10 reinvent art from scratch, as if Lascaux, and, Of course, exceptions tO the 「 u llve just made. But modern art is not one of the exceptions, in spite of the The rest is anecdote: a very long list of artists, patrons, period styles, technicalinnovations, localtraditions paintings, statues, 0 切 s d ・ art that could be turned intO cash at the slightest turn of a collectorls fortune 0 「 taste. free-lance artists supplied the members Of the merchant class with beautiful objects to embellish their palaces ー public monuments tO promote faith in their gods and obedience tO their kings. And, sometime along the way, scrawls resembling writing. Later, with the rise Of monarchic societies, teams of craftsmen built formidable began tO cover the walls Of caves with images Of magnificent beasts, their own hand prints, and mysterious About thirty thousand years ago, and for reasons that no one has been able to explain, nomadic people

ever-present penis, WhiCh can be as cute as a Disney character or as menacing as a missile. Haring's signature "scrawls" could take over the wall Of an entire apartment and, as his fame boomed, anything from the faqade Of a hospitalto a large stretch Of the Berlin wall. For, eventually, Haring added tO his roles as graffiti artist, propagandist, and "fine artist", that Of an artist volunteering tO work with museums, universities, and government agencies. But these apparent contradictions are precisely what's most interesting about HaringIs ro . Though Haring came 10 be known mainly for his signature black-and-white style, he proved tO be an exuberant, masterful colorist ー one clearly situated in the "high-art" tradition. Some Of his figure compositions have the graceful expansiveness Of MatisseIs cut-outs; his work for the Höpital Necker ( 1987 ) , the forceful urban elegance Of LegerIs murals. And Often, especially in his later work, the universe Of the radiant child, TV screens, and flying saucers is displaced by the imagery Of old-master art ー by the agony Of St. Sebastian, Moses and the Burning Bush, or the Fires Of Hell. his muralfor the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in New York ( 1989 ) , the raunchiness Of bathroom graffiti merges with the Arcadia Of CIassical art, as Haring recreates a lOSt Golden Age Of anonymous sex in bath houses and menls 「 ooms cut short by AIDS. Keith Haring, the typical AII American BOY, escaped suburban PennsyIvania in the late seventies and delved intO the underground culture Of New York. Barely a decade later, at the height Of his fame, he succumbed tO AIDS. His memorial service would have suited an artist of the stature of Peter-PauI Rubens. は was a major social event, attended by the rich and famous ー rock stars, art-world divas, financial tycoons, fashion models and the Mayor Of New York. 旧 different ways, BasquiatIs and HaringIs careers lay bare the shifting, unresolved place Of the artist within the eighties artworld. Basquiat, the "real" graffiti artist, ended up fitting the ro 厄 Of the painter more neatly than Haring ー a SO Of Postmodern version Of the van Gogh myth. He died young but rich, a victim not Of failure but, possibly, Of fame, after a drug overdose. Haring was a IOt harder tO pin down. He brought the territoriality Of cave painting and the self-consciousness Of ads tO the New York subways. His political posters offered an ideological update tO the tradition Of propaganda art, hinting at its transformation in the hands Of alternative institutions, such as ACT UP. His paintings, collected by the major museums in the world ー and perhaps even more SO, the wide catalogue Of Keith Haring T-shirts, buttons, stickers, toys, watches and calendars SO 旧 by the "POP Shop ー both revived and gave an unexpected twist tO the cult Of the 0 切 d ・ art. And yet, from these seemingly incongruous arenas ー graffiti and propaganda, "fine arts" and me ℃ handise ー Haring managed tO voice concerns that couldnit have been more historically relevant: the threat Of nuclear destruction, the race struggle, and the devastation Of AIDS. AII the same, one wonders how HaringIs art will be remembered. His work puts one in mind of a maxim attributed tO Horace twenty centuries ago and which one can still read on the faqades Of art schools: ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS ( life is short, but art is eternal). HoraceIs words remind us that art outlives the people whO make it, which is not surprising, when an artistls life is as brief as Haring ・ s ー but which is complicated when his death is as historically specific as his a . But therels more, fO 「 HaringIs multi-faceted career so calls into question 訓 traditional means used in the West to measure artls value, atleast since Horace. The point is not whether his art wi 旧 ast, but rather, which aspect will turn out tO be the most important. Will it be the Haring in a museum collection, the memory Of his subway graffiti or his posters in our consciousness, or, simply, a "radiant child" sticker on the walls Of a junior high? Haringls main contribution tO art history might well be to make us ponder that.