“I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.”
S tanding over thirteen feet tall, Keith Haring’s Untitled (Totem) is a monumental large-scale sculpture created for his iconic Into ‘84 exhibition at Tony Shafrazi Gallery. Haring produced a sensational body of work in the few short months leading up to the exhibition, which took place at the end of 1983 and into 1984. The artist’s aim was to outdo his last exhibition, lending to the impressive corpus of work that was produced exclusively for this show. In an interview with john Gruen, Haring talked about his collaboration with his friend Kermit Oswald, a fellow artist who was building frames at the time and whose father was a carpenter. This led to a collaboration on a monumental scale: “The wood pieces were partly his suggestion because he wanted to find a way to be involved and make something together. He had told me about this machine called a router, which you could push around and glide through pieces of wood and incise drawings into them. There were several three-dimensional totemic wood pieces in the middle of the room. The rest of the room was covered with other carved wood pieces...We created this incredibly active, floor-to-ceiling, totally encompassing installation” (Keith Haring in John Gruen et al., Keith Haring, New York 2008, p. 266-267). The present work, with its spectacular figuration and scale, stands out among the pieces created for Into ‘84, and embodies Haring’s enthusiasm for innovation and pushing the boundaries of his own oeuvre.
Into ‘84 transformed Tony Shafrazi Gallery into a space for community. Visitors, artists, and friends would gather at the gallery and the satellite space on Houston Street used for the exhibition; breakdancers would perform and Haring’s partner, Juan DuBose, would deejay in the blacklit basement—it was “an active nonstop disco downstairs, and upstairs on Saturday afternoons there would be break-dancers coming and hanging out. They weren’t necessarily invited, but they would just show up because of the show and start entertaining” (Keith Haring in John Gruen et al., Keith Haring, New York 2008, p. 266-267). The exhibition was early confirmation of Haring as a revolutionary artist, dedicated to creating art for everyone. As the artist has said on his position as an artist, “There had to be a reason. That reason, I decided, was for people. The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins in the eyes of the beholder and gains power through imagination, invention, and confrontation” (Keith Haring quoted in Henry Geldzahler, Art In Transit, New York 1984).
Haring was eager for the figures and images that populated his artworks to serve as a comprehensive vernacular. He learned about Semiotics while a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and what resonated with him most was the potential for images to speak as a language. Intimately tied to this was his fascination with Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient symbols, which he expertly blended with modern-day technology and his own iconic and instantly recognizable forms such as the barking dog and radiant baby. Energy lines radiate throughout the work, evoking a sense of movement and excitement within the incised images. The imagery within Untitled (Totem) crafts an ancient narrative conflated with the present, with serpents alongside telephones, a testament to scenes that had already come to define Haring’s oeuvre in this moment of early success in his career.
Further cementing the importance of Untitled (Totem) in Haring’s overarching oeuvre following its debut in Tony Shafrazi’s Into ‘84, it was included in a major exhibition Keith Haring: The Political Line, which included more than 130 works of art deemed as crucial representations of Haring’s life, career, and passion. An iconic sculpture that is a token from one of Haring’s most prolific exhibitions during his too-short career, Untitled (Totem) embodies his expressive talent rooted in inspiration from ancient forms and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Haring aspired to create art for everyone, a motivation clearly behind his work created for Into ‘84. A melange of ancient yet contemporary, universal symbols were a hallmark of his oeuvre, as he found himself able to invest vast meaning into each work of art—meaning that was then up to the viewer to fully create. As the artist has said, “Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.”
