©Jeannette Montgomery Barron, from her forthcoming book, SCENE, powerHouse Books, Spring 2013.

Four years ago I wrote the following piece on the anniversary of what would have been my friend Keith Haring’s 50th birthday. At the time, it was part of something I had been planning to compile and write for ages, which finally seemed appropriate for not only the anniversary which it signified, but also in regard to some of my own perspectives having recently moved back to New York over a decade later after Keith’s passing.

With an exhibition of Keith’s work from 1978 – 1982 at the Brooklyn Museum this month, hopefully this piece, like Keith’s work itself, will continue to be appreciated in the light of history. Below is the original 50th birthday anniversary piece, reposted again in what now also happens to be my 50th year, unedited and untouched from back in March 2008 :

I also wanted to take this occasion to celebrate his life and work here now; I have long been meaning to roll up my sleeves and put together a piece about Keith’s continued significance in the modern landscape, as well as showcase some of the works and artifacts he blessed me with over the years of our friendship. His birthday presented the perfect time and place to put it into context now, so here goes:

I first met Keith at the monday night meetings and workshops that our crew -The Soul Artists – held every week at our manhattan storefront in 1980. The meetings had quickly become notorious throughout the NYC graffiti and alternative art communities, where what was originally a small group of us from the upper west side that included Ali, Futura, Zephyr, Crunch and myself, was soon attracting the likes of Keith, Lee, Fab Five Freddy, Jean Michael Basquiat, Dondi, Blade and countless other artists who would prove influential in reshaping the art world of the times… not to mention the many journalists and curators like Richard Goldstein, Diego Cortez, and Patti Astor, who would also play pivotal roles in the movement gaining exposure and coming of age on many levels.

At that time, Keith was still working as a busboy at the night club Danceteria,while preparing his first major drawing show at White Columns Gallery, and was just starting to get serious local recognition from his saturation of remarkable chalk drawings on the NY subway stations.

Amidst a group of mainly hard core and competitive graffiti artists, Keith’s openness and generosity stood out from the start, inviting us all downtown to his upcoming shows, and also encouraging us to check out Club 57 and the Mudd Club Gallery on White street… (where Fab 5 and Futura then went on to curate another seminal art show called “Beyond Words” ) Keith quickly proved to be the embodiment of the out of towner who brings something new to the table here in NY; with a fresh eye and perspective, combined with an innate ability to understand the bigger picture, he was one of the few outsiders of that era who was clearly influenced by the style and spirit of subway graffiti, without ever confusing his relationship to or co-opting it into anything less than his own natural progression. Where Kieth brought a new academic kind of approach to the immediacy he found here on the streets of New York, I believe we all learned and benefited from some of the conceptual maturity he brought into our community too. Through Keith, we also met the curator Diego Cortez, who invited us to be in our first major gallery show at P.S.1 called “New York, New Wave”, where Dondi, Futura, Lee, Pink, Ali, Zephyr, Fab 5 Freddy and I first all showed our paintings alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith, Jean Micheal, and a host of other emerging names in the New York art world.

So in my mind – though there were certainly a number of other key players - Keith was one if the first and most important links for graffiti to the art world below 14th St, and though he never considered himself a graffiti artist in the traditional sense, he came to embody the bridge between creating illegal artwork while embracing the fine art world, effectively balancing graf’s original ethos of free public minded art while still creating value and significance within the economic structure of the legitimate art market… no less than pretty much completely on his own terms at every step of the way.

And though it would take so much more time and space than just a blog to really do justice to the significance of his life and work, there are a few things I wanted to at least share from my own perspective now, as a friend, as an artist, and as someone who continues to be influenced by and benefit from some of Keith’s contributions:

Keith was the first person who encouraged me to create product, and told me that if I printed t-shirts and stickers and we could sell them in his brand new “Pop Shop” in Soho. I then printed my first “Bat Haze” t-shirts and stickers in 1984, which we sold there throughout the 80’s… Not only was that completely pivotal for me in so many ways, but Keith was really the first of our generation who truly understood and embraced, like Warhol before him, the symbiotic relationship between art and product this way:  artist as icon + recognizable style = a fluid marketable identity.

He was so far ahead of the curve of how we all eventually learned to brand ourselves via distributable product + merchandise, so far ahead of the curve of what is now ingrained in every emerging modern artist’s quest for recognition and market value. To his credit, he was also never afraid of potentially undermining his value to the elite high art world by keeping true to the populist notion of low cost / high access art for the masses… so often putting his money where his mouth was by dedicating so much time and work for free to many worldwide charities and communities. I have always felt that beyond the scope of his actual body of work, perhaps Keith’s greatest contributions were more about challenging these barriers between art, commerce and popular culture, and that he deserves more credit than people realize for paving the way for the modern “artist identity based product” that now saturates the market.

There have been many times along the way since Keith passed that I reflect with mixed feelings on how sorry I am that he didn’t live to see the way the art, design and product worlds exploded internationally along with hip hop from the 90’s to now… knowing how excited he would have been about participating in it, also imaging his indelible stamp on “streetwear” as we now know it. I remember Keith’s excitement when he was opening the pop shop in Tokyo, and his frustration at having to close it down shortly after because the bootlegging got just so out of control so fast… I also remember walking down the street in Tokyo in the early 90’s taking it all in,
being sorry I could no longer compare notes and share my successes and struggles there with him too.

I also remember stopping by Keith’s studio one day coming home from class at the School of Visual Arts - which he had dropped out of the year before I enrolled – and telling him how psyched about my class on “corporate identity” I was… He looked at me like I was totally crazy, since that world seemed to symbolize everything our movement was trying to stand against at the time. And though I was able to share the early successes of creating album cover art and starting my design studio with him, I always felt he never really got to see how the musicians and artists of our generation actually wrestled the essence of corporate identity back from the establishment in the 90’s… utilizing the existing models to empower and redefine ourselves in our own marketplace. again, it was something he would have really been excited about, and I can only imagine his continued contributions over the years.

And for reasons I almost hesitate to put into words now, I find myself influenced even more by the spirit and power of his work these days than ever. After years of focusing primarily on the always so planned out worlds of design and production, I am most drawn again to the quality and immediacy of the kind of line art that can only come from the human hand, where beauty and emotion is held in a single gesture, and where, like the purest outline of a great graffiti masterpiece or throw up, there is no substitute for the speed and confidence of total commitment to the moment. That is Keith’s work all day long, with a personal style and vocabulary that will stand the endless test of time… and it’s a beautiful thing.

Having buried and honored the passing of many good friends and major influences over the years, I have always been conscious of the fact that, at least as an artist, in the end, it often remains very much about what you left behind and the paths you chose along the way. I well remember the clarity and confidence with which Keith first told me that he had been diagnosed HIV+, being sure to tell his friends face to face first before going very public with it, as he planned to embrace his last days as fully, positively and productively as he could, also being as much a force for change and awareness of what was still a relatively new disease as possible. In a way, I saw that this awareness of his own mortality gave him a great sense of peace and accomplishment within his brief and limited journey through all of our lives… and I guess we should all be so lucky as to depart with the sense of fulfillment that I believe Keith truly felt in the end.

So with all these thoughts and sentiments, I want to honor the rare and visionary spirit that Keith was, celebrate the life and work of a great friend, and share a few of the gems from my collection of works and presents from him throughout the golden years of the 80’s…

enjoy:

One of Keith’s first publications, I believe based on the work from his drawing show at White Columns Gallery in 1980. These really give a taste of the initial development of his “radiant” dog, baby, and human forms :

This was the first Japanese magazine I ever saw here in NY, I believe in 1981. (They also produced a limited edition Levi’s style linen jacket with the cover art printed on the back, which I have archived somewhere but just couldn’t manage to find and dig out in time for this post):

Published in 1982 by his art dealer and gallery, Tony Shafrazzi, this book offered one of the first real windows into both Keith’s work and world :

It’s almost hard to recognize without all the current disney neon backgrounds, but this was as big as it got in times square back in the day:

This is one of 10 pieces he gave to friends for X-mas that year, and I believe I am one of the few, if not the only one, who didn’t sell their’s during many of our leaner years in the late ‘80s. It is painted with enamel paint on a 12’x 12″x 3” heat baked enamel coated metal box. The photos really don’t do this piece justice, and yes, I really do need to properly treat the rust on the back one of these days soon too:

Published in in 1984, “Art In Transit” contains the most comprehensive documentation of Keith’s subway station chalk drawings:

This is the invite to the second anniversary of Keith’s annual “party of life” in 1985,  which he held for many years at the old Palladium on 14th St. I bet the puzzle would look really dope put together and framed too:

This is a reproduction of a handmade book he created as a birthday present for Francesco Clemente’s daughter Nina in 1988, which was later published by Prestel in 1994:

I also reproduced a limited edition of this artwork in 2000 on T-shirts and Sweatshirts exclusively for Ships in Japan, with permission from The Keith Haring Foundation….( Thanks, Julia. )

One of my favorite signed pieces, this is the inside cover of a calendar from 1988. Keith did countless installations all over the world and this photo really gives such a great sense of his work on interior spaces:

Finally, a piece that kind of sums up a lot of what I tried to put into context at this point in time, with a good story behind it too :

In 1988, I happened to be in LA working on a project with Vision Street Wear at the same time Keith was also having the opening of a major show at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. The after party for the show was at Timothy Leary’s house up in the hills on Mulholland Drive, where we all rolled to after the show…

Not only was the party exactly how I might have imagined it – complete with Barbara Leary passing out hash brownies on platters - but I remember Dr. Leary showing and explaining something to us all on a computer screen that was just way too over my head at the time…Looking back now, I think it was actually a very early glimpse into the invention of the internet, way before it seemed tangible at all. Anyway, it was a great party, an honor to meet Timothy Leary on these terms too, and Keith presented me with this inscribed copy of Dr. Leary’s autobiography shortly after we got back to NY:

This inscription in part reflects many conversations we had about how we both felt that psychedelic drug use had profoundly opened up our “vision” as artists… plus, I believe, it was also Keith’s way of projecting his understanding of the progression of great things to come, not only for myself, but in the radical paradigm shifts that would soon continue to redefine the street level marriages of art, design, fashion and pop culture… part of an endless timeline in which Keith’s life and work will continue to hold it’s own true meaning, place and value.

Eric / Haze

5/11/2008

Contributor’s note: Eric Haze will be on a panel discussing Keith Haring’s work at Brooklyn Museum on Sunday June 10th. From the moment Eric first shared this thoughtful piece to me, I knew it was something special and that more people should be able to read and enjoy it.  // Aaron Lloyd Barr

Gilbert (right) and George (left) photographed by Douglas Friedman 2012

Gilbert and George are back after six years of trawling the dark seas of the human psyche with hot-off-the-press banners announcing various victims of violent demise. The London Pictures are a compilation of the posters, pinched from local newsagents, that daily titillate passersby with lurid slogans of sex and evil, salacious fodder for a bored public. I caught up with the sartorially prim duo at New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery to explore their fascinations with stabbings, stranglings, rapes and robberies.

“We think it’s extraordinary,” began Gilbert, “We are capable of incredible sins: The headline today is replaced by another tomorrow – to stimulate people, as you say…All our work has a moral dimension – a story to tell. You can like it or dislike it, but it’s not abstract art; we have subjects,” stated Gilbert with gravity, while George interceded, saying, “We even like it when young people say, We don’t know what the fuck to think,” his eye twinkling behind his scholarly-spectacles.

©GILBERT & GEORGE Hanged , 2011 mixed media 118.9 x 100 inches 302 x 254 cm Courtesy the artists and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

George (left) and Gilbert (right) photographed by Douglas Friedman 2012

©GILBERT & GEORGE Man Dies 2011 mixed media 88.98 x 150 inches 226 x 381 cm Courtesy the artists and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

G&G were distraught by the growing stacks of 3000 posters in their studio. As artists they are disciplined and disturbed at the same time; they sensed the ripples left behind by each tragedy through the victims, neighbours and relatives they affected. “If you have a family member in prison, the shame of it lasts generations. If you’re shopping the next day, what do you tell the shop where you buy milk?”

The media mirrors the anxieties of the masses but also feeds its hunger. In more liberal societies, the stories form moral edicts of what not to do, of what could happen, noisome reminders of our primitive failings. “It’s the price we pay for our freedom,” summarizes George. “It happens elsewhere too, Africa, China, though not as much reported… We are all complicit,” concludes Gilbert. The two are in the habit of finishing each other’s thoughts.

So with all the turmoil and mayhem, what karmic price will our species pay? Are we heading towards a successful balance? George responds without hesitation, “The world has never been a better place, especially the western world.” The youth are better informed; there is an acceptance of diversity with nations better connected around the world.

©GILBERT & GEORGE Fingle-Fangle, 2004 mixed media 111.02 x 198.43 inches 282 x 504 cm Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

We digressed briefly into non-western tangents: Whorehouses in Bangladesh and the linguistic absences of words relating to sex there. On their visit to India some twenty years ago, they recalled the English names of these ghettos: “In Mumbai it’s called Falkland Road, and in Delhi, it’s UK Road. In some places you walk by and the prostitutes lift their dresses and clearly you can see they are boys who have had their penis removed. It looks like a cat’s bum…”

G&G claim that they are two people but one artist. But, what about thinking outside that box? Like the Chapman Brothers splitting up to inspire different works. Perhaps a game of exquisite corpses?

“We don’t have a problem with that.” They nod in agreement. “We think we’re in the box, we’re in the world, and the surface of the world comes out under our feet. We accept the two together,” says George.

One brain, is it?

“A double-headed monster. We accept the limitations. And the advantages,” Gilbert chimes in.

There is strength in unity – but isn’t it far braver to be alone against the world? Here I am alone facing the two of you, I say.

“We are alone against the world. Well, there are a lot of lonely artists out there, and we don’t have to be part of that. Don’t you think, George?”

We talk about the frenzy the media stirs up with its headlines, the mob mentalities that override individual morals. “Herd instinct. The media controls the herd instinct…with milk,” jests George, “We have a miniature herd instinct of just two.”

©GILBERT & GEORGE Bloody Naked, 1996 mixed media 89 x 200 inches 226.1 x 508 cm Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

G&G have filled a section of their library with the writings of theosophists. Recently they drew upon the works of Lord Dowding who communicated with dead pilots from WW2 and wrote some fascinating accounts of ‘messages’ he received from his psychic explorations.

Did they believe in an afterlife?

George shakes his head no, “We do believe in the real afterlife. We say my ‘late aunt’ or ‘late uncle’, but nobody says the late Van Gogh, or the late Charles Dickens, because they are not completely dead, and still available to us.”

“We like the spirit of photographs and buildings, of trees,” Gilbert echoed, “The past is there all the time; the brain keeps everything – [We like] a sense of leaving something behind: A living culture. No, we don’t need another life. One’s enough.”

You put yourself in your art, I said. Is that a cult of personality you’ve developed for posterity? Van Gogh didn’t place himself peeking out from his haystacks.

“He did in his own way. His spirit. Every haystack in the country is the same, only his haystack means something,” George clarified.

“It’s his suffering. He was a religious maniac, sexual, twisted in some ways,” Gilbert adds.

But it’s Van Gogh’s hand. And you don’t believe in intervening with your hand, I say. He suffered, but didn’t do it for the public.

“We started out as living sculptures,” Gilbert continued. “It’s us saying that we suffer, we are in love.”

“We are a sex beast, we are leaving ideas behind,” grinned George. “To whatever person you leave a letter to, you always sign your name. These are visual love letters.”

Greek sculptures have no signatures. People might not know the history of your personas two hundred years from now. How will they stand up, I ask.

“[Greek sculptures] are artifacts,” corrected George.

“They will still know how we look like,” said Gilbert optimistically.

They will judge you based on what you look like, I offer with a grin, gesturing at the works around us, their haunting faces peering at us from all sides.

“What a horrible thing to be doing,” said George deadpan.

©GILBERT & GEORGE Brick Lane, 2004 mixed media 99.21 x 147.64 inches 252 x 375 cm Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

They have changed over their 40 years working together. You have had an impact, I say.

“I am sure we did,” said George. “We have evolved,” concurred the double-headed beast.

Did being queer and English strengthen their bond? George answered, “We are not so keen on the common word gay, which is stolen from Eighteenth century prostitutes in London, the gay ladies – because they had a lot of colours.”

“And homosexual is a quasi-medical term from Hungary, used to put people in prison,” claimed Gilbert.

Though they recognize the need for minority groups seeking a platform to express their views, G&G do not feel a need for that syntax in defining their own work. It’s not for them they say.

“Sex is important,” they readily agree. Then, after a pause, Gilbert archly adds, “Even in the art world, we realized art critics are all closet homophobes.”

“Especially the educated ones,” added George with a hint of mischief.

Have they noticed an evolution in that thinking? “Yes, people won’t throw tea at you in cafes now – yes, we remember that…”

©GILBERT & GEORGE Haram, 2004 mixed media 74.41 x 88.58 inches 189 x 225 cm Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

For more information:
Gilbert and George ‘London Pictures’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York