Jenny Holzer (gifted by the artist) Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Catalogue Essay
Originally created as a gift for artist Jenny Holzer, the present lot by Keith Haring from 1984 features the artist’s characteristic iconography in a frenzied composition that reflects the political uncertainties of the 1980s. The work was made immediately following Haring’s collaboration with Holzer on her project Sign on a Truck, a compilation of interviews conducted by Holzer in New York in the lead up to the 1984 presidential election. Haring identified with the sentiments explored in this video project and had been admiring Holzer’s practice since his last year at the School of Visual Arts in 1979, particularly when she put together The Manifest Show in 1980, featuring politically conscious works with image and text expressing various viewpoints. In Sign on a Truck, Holzer utilized new technologies to project live-camera interviews on a mobile screen on wheels, interspersed with visual, graphic and audio statements by artists including Haring and some of his most well-known contemporaries.
In response to this project, Haring created the present lot, illustrating a politically charged narrative. The leftmost figure represents Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, or more symbolically, the Reagan administration; he is depicted with four outstretched arms and a television for a head, towering over a crouching figure in the center. The rightmost figure covers his eyes and appears to be running away in fear, resisting the notoriously effective television advertising from Reagan’s campaign, characterized by Haring’s chosen symbols of a money sign, crucifix and nuclear energy. To make clear this narrative, Haring uses text to spell out “REAGAN” in the upper right corner, perhaps inspired by Holzer’s use of text in many of her works, including Sign on a Truck. The scene is rendered in black ink atop a vividly fluorescent orange paper, enclosed in a hand-drawn smaller box, possibly meant to symbolize the mobile screen from Holzer’s project. As such, the present lot is a personal interpretation of Haring’s own reflection on a meaningful time in his career collaborating with Holzer, rendered in an aesthetic vibrancy that remains true to his unique visual practice.
Haring's art and life typified youthful exuberance and fearlessness. While seemingly playful and transparent, Haring dealt with weighty subjects such as death, sex and war, enabling subtle and multiple interpretations.
Throughout his tragically brief career, Haring refined a visual language of symbols, which he called icons, the origins of which began with his trademark linear style scrawled in white chalk on the black unused advertising spaces in subway stations. Haring developed and disseminated these icons far and wide, in his vibrant and dynamic style, from public murals and paintings to t-shirts and Swatch watches. His art bridged high and low, erasing the distinctions between rarefied art, political activism and popular culture.
signed and dated "K. Haring '84" lower right ink on paper 25 1/8 x 27 5/8 in. (63.8 x 70.2 cm.) Executed in 1984, this work is accompanied by a letter from Jenny Holzer confirming the provenance of this artwork.