“Art is not an elitist activity reserved for the appreciation of a few, but for everyone.”
Keith Haring

A leading figure of street art and the New York underground movement, Keith Haring was doubtless one of the most audacious and charismatic artists of his time. Having achieved the amazing feat of imposing his own unique style on the international art scene in only just ten years, he died just before the age of 32, leaving a void which has never since been filled.

A popular figure, protestor and activist, Keith Haring never withdrew in face of difficulty and managed to become a star of contemporary art whilst never abandoning the street. He has often been reproached for his swift ascension. Yet, it was his celebrity which allowed him to tackle the great political and social issues of his time and to influence generations of artists in a profound and ever-lasting fashion.

Left: Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950.

Right: PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562. MUSÉES ROYAUX DES BEAUX-ARTS DE BELGIQUE, BRUSSELS.

Untitled, 1979 is one of his first works. Haring had just turned 21, the legal age in America and an age of artistic maturity for him. The all-over composition of this impressive drawing which covers the entire surface, is absolutely disturbing. It clashes with the work of other graffiti artists such as Daze or Futura 2000 with whom he tagged the walls of the New York subway that same year. The all-over composition, the choice of palette, the proliferation of the motif, the spontaneity of line all inscribe Untitled 1979 as much within the tradition of great American painting at the turn of the 20th century as within street art. Like Dubuffet with L’Hourloupe or the authors of the mysterious ancestral Nazca geoglyphs whose biomorphic lines are still the subject of numerous theories, Keith Haring developed his expression in unexplored territories.

Keith Haring seems to have taken the opposite path of most of his contemporaries. Rather than questioning the split between high art and low art by bringing the street into the museum, he preferred to disseminate art history in the street, thus creating a radically new art. Keith Haring was in no case self-taught and had been trained at the New York School of Visual Arts. And it is this which makes him a champion of alternative art. In the urban jungle of New York at the end of the 1970s, infested by police violence, racism, homophobia and drugs, Haring succeeded in breathing new life. Untitled, 1979 thus announces the future renaissance of New York, the birthplace of pop art, hip-hop and soon concept art and all that Haring contributed in creating.