ART-PRESENTATION: Keith Haring|Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines

Emerging within New York’s art scene at a time of low rents, artists squats, experimentation and 80s capitalist energy, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were among a group of artists (including Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger) who took to public space to find an audience for their distinct vision using walls, pilfered tarps and requisitioned furniture and whitegoods as canvases.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: National Gallery of Victoria Archive

For the first time the exhibition “Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines” offers a new and fascinating insights into their unique visual languages and reveal, for the first time, the many intersections between their lives, practices and ideas. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat changed the art world of the 1980s through their idiosyncratic imagery, radical ideas and complex socio-political commentary, creating an indelible legacy that continues to influence contemporary visual and popular culture today. Each artist is acclaimed for his distinctive visual language, employing signs, symbols and words to convey strong social and political messages in unconventional ways. With 200 works the exhibition surveys each artist’s tragically short, yet prolific career, featuring works created in public space, painting, sculpture, objects, works on paper, photographs, original notebooks and more. Beginning with examples of both artist’s work from the streets and subway stations of New York City, the exhibition presents works from each artist’s first exhibitions, their collaborations with each other, as well as with the likes of Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Madonna. It continues by presenting some of their most acclaimed artworks, including pieces featuring Basquiat’s crown and head motifs and Haring’s iconic “radiant baby” and dancing figures. Haring and Basquiat redefined the role of art in public space and public debate. This exhibition draws out their passionate engagement with social issues, such as racism and the AIDS crisis, revealing the political context underpinning their practices. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artworks combine the explosive visual codes of New York’s streets with universal symbols of humankind, often engaging with political issues, racial criticism, social injustices and consumer capitalism. With their skeleton-like silhouettes, mask-like grimaces and other now renowned visual icons, his compositions drew inspiration from everyday life and popular culture, such as cartoons, children’s drawings and advertising, as well as in Aztec and African Art, and the western art historical canon. An exhibition highlight is Basquiat’s masterpiece, “Untitled” (1982), which depicts a skull, one of the artist’s most acclaimed motifs, against a complex, layered background, the work exemplifies Basquiat’s inimitable use of expressive line, gesture and color. Keith Haring devoted himself to messages of social justice and change in his paintings, drawings and sculptures. Haring insisted that art was for everybody and brought his unique art vocabulary into public spaces to distribute and democratise his art and ideas. Haring engaged with many social and political causes, and actively fought against prejudice and injustice, raising awareness of the destruction of the environment, the AIDS epidemic, children’s health, the battle to end apartheid in South Africa and many other issues facing humankind and the planet. Significant artworks by Haring that featured in the exhibition include his “Untitled” (1983), which, through a complex composition of figures, lines and a computer, offers a salient commentary on the rise and eventual domination of mass media and computer technology. The final section of the exhibition features Haring’s “A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat”, a moving tribute to Basquiat after his friend’s death on 12/8/1988, composed of a pile of Basquiat’s distinctive crowns, made radiant through Haring’s masterful use of line and symbolism. A selection of his signature tarp paintings is on display, including “Untitled (Australia)” (1984), created on his only trip to Australia (during which he also executed his ephemeral water wall mural at NGV International).

Info: National Gallery of Victoria, 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne, Duration: 1/12/19-11/4/20, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, www.ngv.vic.gov.au