KEITH HARING - At the Albertina Museum - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

Keith Haring
Radiant babies, barking dogs, pyramids, fish, mushroom clouds, smileys and Mickey Mouse: The pictograms, hieroglyphs and logo images of Haring’s repertoire of figures and characters have become icons of popular culture, it is hard to imagine a city dweller not being familiar with this very personal language of images.

The relatively limited basic stock of characters was rearranged by Haring time and again in order to transmit his sociocritical messages. These picture-words were an attempt to create a language that would be understandable across all boundaries of social class.

This is the argument of this exhibition curated by Dieter Buchhart, therefore titled „Keith Haring. The Alphabet“. According to Buchhart the signs acquire their meaning only in a particular context. In the Albertina’s exhibition, these recurring pictorial signs and their historical context are explained in wall texts beside the pictures.

Thousands of pictures were produced between 1980 and 1985 in New York’s subway system. Haring used to go down to the subway stations to place his chalk drawings on unused advertisement spaces, mostly drawing them in a single continuous line.


The temporary place and and ephemeral material, like chalk, distinguished Haring’s art from graffiti art. Above all, his signs are decipherable quickly and clearly by the broad public, especially in such a fleeting environment as the subway system. In these years he created up to 40 pictures a day and the passengers learned to recognize his very personal symbolic universe. Its development is partly due to the short life of its elements, as they got removed or covered practically on a daily basis.

Keith Haring meant to build bridges with his universal visual vocabulary - between boundaries of social class, and between high culture and popular culture. His art should be accessible for everyone, not only to elites. There are videos in the exhibition showing him drawing in the subway. „You do not have to know anything about art to appreciate it or to look at it“ Haring said about his work.

Nevertheless, his seemingly simple characters quickly made their way from the subway to the art fairs and museums of the world. After the documenta 1982, Haring became an international star artist, he earned a lot of money and became friends with Andy Warhol. Already seven years after his death, a big retrospective was dedicated to him in the Whitney Museum of New York.

He dedicated an important part of the large sums he earned to the struggles against Apartheid and AIDS, he advocated disadvantaged youths and fought drug abuse.

On the moving stairs towards the exhibition in the Albertina, the viewer already gets a glimpse into the times of Keith Haring. Along the escalator, photographs of some historical events that inspired the artist are placed on the walls, like the moon landing or the murder of Martin Luther King.

Haring’s work is closely linked to the events of times he lived in, like the Berlin Wall, the murder of John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, nuclear accidents, Apartheid and not to forget the discrimination of homosexuals and AIDS patients.

For the director of the Albertina, Klaus Albracht Schröder, he was „one of the greatest drawing artists in the 20th century“, but „anything but a cheerful artist“. His personal fears and political issues are always noticeably present in his pictures.

After his early death, the Keith Haring Foundation, located in his former studio, still keeps on going with his charitable projects. (written by Cem Angeli)

The exhibition in the Albertina counts with 90 works, most of them loans from private collections. It is open until June 24, 2018.

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