Keith Haring - 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Evening Sale Part II New York Tuesday, November 14, 2023 | Phillips
  • Keith Haring’s unique visual language and symbolic sensibility unfurl across the surface of Untitled, 1983. His totemic central figure—nearly the full height of the ten-foot square tarp—crouches in a dynamic squat that bristles with energy, like a freeze-frame of a dancer, with the gravitas and timelessness of prehistoric sculpture. A monumental example of Haring’s witty style, Untitled synthesizes the artist’s enduring ability to imbue his 1980s downtown New York social milieu with an archetypical simplicity of form, in a universal language of freedom of expression.
     

    House of Xtravaganza Legendary Voguers, Luis, Danny, Jose, and David Ian Xtravaganza, at Tracks, New York, 1989. Image: © Chantal Regnault

    Coming out of the downtown New York scene, Haring’s visual work takes on the vibrancy of the music and dance cultures that surrounded him. The rhythmic pose of the figure in Untitled recalls the boisterous physical movements of both break-dancing and voguing, in a dual reference to the underground hip-hop and queer communities that Haring circled within. Both dance styles are explosive, and take pleasure in physical distortion and the angles of the human body, and Haring captures this energy in the central figure of Untitled. “1982 to 1984 was the peak of rap music and breakdancing,” Haring explained, and “graffiti was the visual tie-in” to this style of dance. “A lot of my inspiration was coming out of watching break-dancers, so my drawings started spinning on their heads and twisting and turning all around.”i

     

    After signing with dealer Tony Shafrazi in 1982, Haring sought a new format for his large-scale paintings, that registered the gravitas of gallery representation without sacrificing the grit and edge of his street art origins. While walking the streets of New York, he noticed a Con Edison construction crew who covered their equipment with a large sheet of industrial tarpaulin. The large-scale and machine-made quality of the tarp appealed to Haring, who sought out a tarp manufacturer in Brooklyn and purchased a selection of “canvases” for his inaugural solo show with Tony Shafrazi Gallery later that year. Untitled represented this seminal body of work early the following calendar year, in the group exhibition at Tony Shafrazi, Champions, January 15 – February 19, 1983.

    “I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language.” 
    —Keith Haring
    Untitled is an aggrandizement of Haring’s astute linear sensibilities, as perfected in his practice of graffiti. Through street art, Haring honed an economy of line and energetic expression, which give work like Untitled its striking visual quality. Haring‘s unique ability to create work that popped off city walls is translated into the bright color palette and dynamism of Untitled. The central figure is composed of arching sky-blue lines, confidently brushed against the black vinyl tarp, and filled in with a matrix of scarlet red gridded with rectangular black dots. In purposefully limiting his palette to blue, red, and black, Haring allows the cleverness of his composition to shine through. 

     

    Untitled is not just one figure, but multiple images in one. Haring codes a smiley face into the dancer’s pose: their hands form the eyes, and the blue line of their legs turns into a smile. The negative space of Untitled holds symbolic value as well, most obviously in the feminine symbol, keyholded into the center of the figure. Further, the space under the arms of the figure cleaves into two halves of a broken heart locket, which wait to be reconnected by the feminine symbol “key.” 

     

    Lotus-Headed Fertility Goddess Lajja Gauri, Madhya Pradesh, India, c. 6th century CE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Samuel Eilenberg Collection, Bequest of Samuel Eilenberg, 1998, 2000.284.13

     

    The feminine symbol at the center of the work confirms a connection between the squatting pose of the figure and the forms of historic fertility and mother goddess sculptures, such as the Indian fertility goddess Lajja Gauri; the zig-zagged sides of the figure, too, recall the stylized body of the Ancient Roman she-wolf. These multivalent readings of Untitled, steeped in human history and Haring’s contemporary moment, speak to the universality of his visual idiom.

     

     

    i  Keith Haring, quoted in John Gruen, et al., Keith Haring, New York, 2008, p. 236.

    • Provenance

      Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
      Frederik Roos, Zurich and London (acquired in 1983)
      Frederik Roos Collection, AB Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm, June 2, 1994, lot 7118
      Private Collection, United States
      Christie's, New York, November 16, 2000, lot 41
      Private Collection, Geneva
      Max Lang, New York
      Christie's, New York, November 15, 2017, lot 11B
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Champions, January 15–February 19, 1983, pp. 49, 71 (illustrated, p. 49)
      Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, © K. Haring 1986 ⨁, March 15–May 12, 1986, no. 24, pp. 24, 78 (illustrated, p. 24)
      Fondazione Triennale di Milano, The Keith Haring Show, September 27, 2005–January 29, 2006, no. 12, p. 171 (illustrated)
      London, Barbican Art Gallery, Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years, June 5–September 9, 2007, pp. 58-59, 212 (illustrated, p. 59)
      New York, Phillips, 1970s / GRAFFITI / TODAY, January 13–February 20, 2022

    • Artist Biography

      Keith Haring

      American • 1958 - 1990

      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. 

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Property from an Important American Private Collection

Ο◆50

Untitled

signed and dated '"JANUARY 1983 K. Haring ⨁" on the reverse
vinyl paint on vinyl tarpaulin with metal grommets
120 x 120 in. (304.8 x 304.8 cm)
Executed in 1983, this work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Estate of Keith Haring.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$2,800,000 - 3,500,000 

Sold for $3,206,000

Contact Specialist

Carolyn Kolberg
Associate Specialist, Head of Evening Sale, New York
+1 212 940 1206
CKolberg@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art, Evening Sale Part II

New York Auction 14 November 2023