Nothing is Important/Everything is Important:Keith Haring @ Tate Liverpool.

"Art is nothing if you don't reach every segment of the people" - Keith Haring.

"I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up" - Keith Haring.

"Nothing is important .... so everything is important" - Keith Haring.

It's rare I leave London for my cultural nourishment (walks, visiting family, and visiting friends - often - but culture - rarely) but it was an absolute pleasure to make my second ever visit to Liverpool, and second ever visit to Tate Liverpool, to see a retrospective of the 1980s work of New York's Keith Haring. Not least because I was fortunate to spend the day in such delightful company*.

 

Untitled (1985)

Haring's life, famously, was tragically cut short in February 1990, aged just 31, of AIDS related complications and this fact hangs over you as you take in the work that made his name, first in New York's downtown scene and, later, globally. You can't help but wonder what he might have gone on to do. How his art may have developed. What he'd be doing now. He'd still only be sixty-one years old!

The work he has left us is simple, often even crude, but effective. For me he worked best when he was radical and politicised - which as a gay man living under the Reagan administration was often. Better still, Haring's work is never hectoring. It's colourful, it's humorous, and it's cartoon like. It sometimes looks effortless but that's surely a key talent of truly gifted artists. Making what is difficult appear easy.

Inspired by graffiti, punk, and hip-hop (you can watch an excerpt of 1983's Wild Style near the start of the exhibition), Haring (who'd grown up in small town Pennsylvania but moved to New York as a young man) was determined that his art was not that of stuffy gallerists and, instead, aimed to reach as many people as possible. People, often, who'd never think to visit a gallery. This he did by making murals for public spaces, often in the East Village (where he could regularly be found attending demonstrations) and often all over the city's subway system.

Untitled (1982)

As a kid, the young Haring had developed a love of drawing cartoons from reading Dr Seuss books and watching Disney films. As a teenager he dropped out of a graphic arts school in Pittsburgh because he felt they wanted to constrain his creativity. He'd seen, in the art of Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky, how the energy of a child's creativity could be nurtured into something more powerful in the hands of an adult and he sought to maintain the equilibrium of holding that childlike awe at the world with the knowing sensibility of a grown up who has seen the world to not always be a kind place.

Later on, having been exposed to performance art, video art, and conceptual art, Haring began to see the value of collaboration and worked with  actors, dancers, musicians, and writers while at the same time taking an interest in semiotics. A booklet, or 'visual dictionary', available on entering Tate Liverpool provides a handy guide for interpreting Haring's regular tropes and motifs. His symbolism.

Barking dogs represent both protectors and predators, babies stand for sincerity and honesty, flying saucers do service as emblems of mysterious energies that can awaken and empower people, computers foretold of a technologically enhanced future while robots, on the other hand, warned of the dangers this future may bring. The dude with the hole in his stomach? That was inspired by John Lennon's shooting and was used by Haring as a symbol for human fragility and, ultimately, death.

Elsewhere religion, money, television, and the threat of nuclear annihilation crop up regularly. Haring had been brought up in a conservative Christian environment, and he underwent an Evangelical 'Jesus freak' phase before, eventually, renouncing organised religion as a tool to control and oppress people. He was even more skeptical about capitalism and the neoliberal agenda promoted by Reagan and Thatcher, saying that "money breeds guilt if you have any conscience at all and if you don't have any conscience, then money breeds evil".

Pyramids and three eyed faces gave works a kind of wacky veneer while at the same time suggesting some deeper, hidden, esoteric meeting. One that Haring seemed quite happy to allow people to surmise was intended. It wasn't just his imagery that was unorthodox in the art world. The media he used to create his works could be too. Discarded hoardings and vinyl tarpaulin being among the materials he utilised, often instead of expensive canvas.

Untitled (1978)

Alongside fingerprints (taken following Haring's arrest for graffitiing subway trains), flyers, and sketchbooks we can take in some of Haring's earlier work and recognise both his debt to abstract experessionism and how eager he was to quickly move on from it. The 1978 work above is clearly indebted to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Within four years, and collaborating with LAll (Angel Ortiz), we can see that Haring was now suffusing his paintings with not just the energy of Pollock but the colour of a Matisse or a Bonnard. 

While, all the time, retaining a jazzy, streetwise, feel that sat snugly with the hip-hop music that was revolutionising New York City at that time and would soon take over the world. Despite his street smarts and unorthodox approach, Haring had genned up on art history and was knowledgeable about the philosophical ideas that underpinned that history too.

William Burroughs cut-up techniques were another influence but where Burroughs had cut up words, Haring applied the technique to images. It was, of course, not dissimilar to the way that DJs in the city were cutting up sound in the form of sampling. It wasn't long before the paths of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat crossed. Haring had admired Basquiat's 'literary graffiti' since arriving in New York and once the two had become friends, Haring set about creating at an extraordinarily rapid clip. In the lustrum between 1980 and 1985 it was not uncommon for Haring to make up to forty works a day.

Keith Haring and Angel Ortiz (LAll) - Untitled (1982)

Untitled (Three Men Die in Rescue Attempt Six Months after John Lennon's Death) (1981)

The fame, or infamy, this gave Haring brought with it both opportunities and problems. It got to the point that no sooner had he made a work than it was stolen. They had become desirable, and saleable, objects d'art! This would eventually force a move away from the street and towards the gallery. But, at the same time Haring was enthusiastically decorating subway trains he was also playing around with newspaper headlines, creating anti-Reagan messages, and attaching them directly to lamp posts and rubbish bins around Manhattan.

It was the beginning of an activism that would continue to punctuate, sometimes dominate, his art. He'd grown up to a televised backdrop of moon landings, riots, civil rights demonstrations, and the assassinations of public figures like Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. Believing that "the artist is a spokesman for a society at any given point in history", Haring was determined that his art would be socially conscious and address the big issues of the day:- the threat of nuclear war, racism, capitalism, and religious hypocrisy. He'd not only make posters but print them at his own cost and distribute them personally at demonstrations.

His renown as a politically involved artist was such that in 1986 he was invited the paint the west side of the Berlin Wall. He saw it as a chance to "psychologically destroy the wall" and his mural showed a chain interlinking colours from both the East German and the West German flags. Three years later the wall came down and though most credit it to the fall of the Communist government in Poland and Hungary's dismantling of the electrified fence between its border and Austria's (and some others, including the man himself, claim David Hasselhoff was partly responsible), we can never know how much psychological damage Haring's mural did and how much it paved the way for these events!

Keith Haring and Angel Ortiz (LAll) - Untitled (1981)

Clones Go Home (1980)

Untitled (1983)

I'm joking of course. Art, music, and culture in general can, should, and often does, rail against the powerful, the corrupt, and the rich. But, quite often - and we're seeing this in spades now, the effect it has is a very very slow one. Bastards still get into government. Awful, destructive, racist policies still get passed. But, maybe, just maybe, there are enough people out there, quite often very young people, turned on by both the message and the medium that, when they get older, when they start to have a say in society, things start changing for the better. 

Martin Luther King Jr's words, much beloved of Barack Obama, stated "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" and, right now, we're getting very close to finding out just how true, or not, that is. We better hope King was right because the alternatives are too grim to survive. As long as people like Keith Haring are around (and though he's gone there are still many) we have a chance. Haring took on Apartheid and the church's role in supporting it and, terrified by the ludicrous nuclear proliferation taking place in both the USA and the Soviet Union, he created anti-nuclear posters.

He didn't want to die in a nuclear war or a nuclear accident (Three Mile Island was a recent memory) and he didn't want his government spending money on killing machines when it could be used to help people who were struggling or homeless. It may seem daft to suggest that a painting or a piece of music can change the course of history but history is impacted by groups of people changing their opinions or behaviours and that happens because individuals within those groups change their opinions or behaviours. If I'd not heard the likes of The Specials, Crass, Conflict, Public Enemy, Billy Bragg, and The Redskins growing up maybe I'd be a racist Tory posting pro-Brexit memes to Facebook and raging on about immigrants and gollywogs like half the people I went to school with.

Untitled (1985)

Untitled (Apartheid) (1984)

Raindance:A Benefit for the African Emergency Relief Fund (1985)

Crack Down! (1986)

Untitled (USA 1981) (1981)

Untitled (1986)

Though hopefully not! Sadly, many seem to accept the racism, sexism, and homophobia that is passed down to them from their parents and grandparents without question. By doing this, these outdated, and wrong, ideas fester and refuse to die. I'm glad that, for all my faults, I managed to reject all that bollocks. Keith Haring was explicit in his refutation of such toxic inheritance. A quote reads:- "all stories of white men's 'expansion' and 'colonisation' and 'domination' are filled with horrific details of the abuse of power and the misuse of people. I'm glad I'm different. I'm proud to be gay. I'm proud to have friends and lovers of every colour. I am ashamed of my forefathers. I am NOT like them".

Then, as now, it wasn't enough to simply not be racist, not be a woman hater, and not be a homophobe. You needed, and you still need, to actively question those who are. You could do it angrily but it's more effective if you can do it subtly or with humour. Or with great tunes. Or, as in the case of Haring, with eye catching art. 

1984's anti-Apartheid piece shows a black man with a noose around his neck gripping a crucifix that appears to be fiery hot,  there are works full of violence that somehow manage to look quirky until you investigate them further, and there are works that seem to suggest that mass media and television don't just celebrate violence but actually promote it. On other occasions, art was produced to advertise demonstrations and benefits. But these, too, take an unsparing look at a harsh, violent, and religiously fuelled, hateful America.

Untitled (1981)

Untitled (1982)

Untitled (c.1980)

It's no wonder Haring sometimes liked to kick back with the age old hobby of drawing cocks. Cocks hanging loose, cocks being sucked, and cocks being inserted into men's bums. Kutzown, PA where he'd grown up had been pretty conservative so it's hardly a surprise that immersion into New York's eighties gay culture was such an opener of his eyes. Other orifices too, it seems.

Untitled (c.1980)

Untitled (c.1980)

Untitled (1982)

Untitled (1981)

It seems abundantly clear that when it came to sex, DIY was not Haring's style. Elsewhere in the East Village, though, doing it yourself was fully encouraged. As well as venues like CBGBs there were more than one hundred small artist run galleries that sprang up between '80 and '87. Photocopiers were worked to within an inch of their life as posters and flyers were reproduced and plastered on venue and neighbourhood walls. 

Haring's were of a higher quality than most. He also took to organising exhibitions at Club 57 located in the basement of a Polish church. Performance, poetry, music, film screenings, and art all played out to a background of hedonism and gay abandon. Later on he'd get involved in promoting events at The Mudd Club with Fab 5 Freddy and the graffiti artist Futura 2000.

His work was now calling on the influence of the cubist artist Fernand Leger as well as American Indian, Aztec, and African traditional styles and his media had expanded to incorporate car hoods, furniture, and clothing. Some works seem to contain an element of body shock. Not only are there men with holes in the middle of their bodies like human Polos but some of them have dogs or other men passing through them. There are men falling down stairs, men with televisions and computer screens where their heads should be, men stabbing in each other in the face, and, of course, men jizzing on each other.

Untitled (1981)

Untitled (1983)

Untitled (1983)

Untitled (1983)

There are works, too, that would make great album covers. The spaceship/pyramid affair above would do great service for Parliament/Funkadelic, the ghetto blaster/dog/hybrid below could too. Or that could even work as an early hip-hop sleeve. Afrika Bambaataa or Mantronix perhaps. There's one work that even seems to call back to Herbie Hancock's jazz-funk masterpiece Head Hunters from the previous decade. 

April 1986 saw Haring open his Pop Shop in Lower Manhattan. making his art accessible and affordable in the form of t-shirts, badges, and posters. Some in the art world, predictably, accused him of selling out but Haring had always been about inclusiveness and it seems more likely that he was simply trying to reach more people while still promoting his ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism.

Untitled (Ghetto Blaster) (1984)

New York is Book Country (1985)

It was such a success that Andy Warhol, never one to miss an opportunity to promote himself, got involved and, eventually, a second branch opened in Tokyo where Haring's work had become increasingly popular. It wasn't the only new territory that his work had opened him up to and soon he was travelling from Barcelona to Melbourne to Amsterdam, often creating large murals live in front of an audience.

He'd use these trips as opportunities to create dialogues with local communities and youth groups and talk to them about the dangers of drug addiction, about the growing threat of HIV/AIDS, and to spread his socially conscious ideas. "Every day", he observed was becoming "like a block party" and this certainly applied to his public mural creations which were often made to loud music.

Untitled (1984)

Untitled (1983)

He painted Grace Jones, he designed an LP cover for Malcolm McLaren, and, in the work below, he even seemed to ape the style of his friend and fellow traveller Basquiat (who died in '88 - possibly this work was intended as a tribute). His style, by this time, was globally recognisable. Those with an interest in contemporary art would know his name but even those who weren't would be familiar with the style. I had no real interest in art back then but I remember seeing t-shirts and record sleeves. Both David Bowie and Sylvester had record covers designed by Haring himself. Lesser artists employed others to rip his style off.  

Madonna was another pop artist that Haring collaborated with and it had long been Haring's desire to blur the lines between art, music, and design. His renown was giving him the chance to do this while at the same time campaigning and promoting awareness. It seems obvious now that an artist would do this but at the time it was still a relatively new way of thinking.

Untitled (c.1987-9)

Untitled (1983)

As the decade moved on, HIV/AIDS went from being virtually unheard of decimating New York's gay community. With homophobia not just rife but pretty much the norm (I remember at school many would joke that AIDS stood for 'arse injected death sentence'), Haring doubled down on his commitment to equal rights for all while at the same time trying to promote and spread awareness of what became known as 'safe sex'. Using condoms and getting regular checks, primarily.

AIDS was already very close to Haring's heart as he'd lost close friends ("dropping like flies" as he described the situation) to it but in the summer of 1988 it became permanently inescapable for him. He'd already suspected he had it but when he started experiencing problems with breathing and went to get himself looked over he was no doubt shocked, if not surprised, to find he was HIV-positive.

He saw the virus as a macabre 'devil sperm' and once he knew his time was short he set about painting images that spoke to his fear and horror of the disease and his soon to be death. Described in Tate Liverpool as "a visual whirlwind of imagery erupting from a stricken body" these works that, necessarily, act as a coda for the show just as they did for Haring's art career and, indeed, life are the most powerful he ever made.

Untitled (1987)

Silence = Death (1989)

Safe Sex! (1987)

There's. undoubtedly, something about imminent death that focuses the mind, sharpens the senses, and makes one finally get round to, if physically able, creating that work they've always been meaning to. If Haring had any luck, and dying that young it's inane to say he did, it was that he was well enough to execute these phantasmagorical scenes of jelly tongued monsters, multiple breasted beanpoles, faceless men riding on elongated dicks, and spewed out vortexes of everyday ephemera.

It's as if everything Haring had ever experienced had been stored up and was now being violently released from both his body and mind to ready him for a serene death. The pink triangle that the Nazis had used to identify (and eventually punish and kill) homosexuals had long been repurposed as an LBGQT+ icon and Haring, of course, like Bronski Beat at the same time, incorporated that into his work.

But, at the same time, Haring supported ACT UP (a grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic) and continued to celebrate gay and homoerotic culture. Which is just as he should have done. His life may have been cruelly taken away from him before his 32nd birthday but the art he left us with now means that the message he'd spent his life trying to spread continues his work for him. It's a crying shame that Haring didn't live to see the world move further towards tolerance and it's an even bigger crying shame that, right now, we're taking a backwards step from it once again. 

It'd have been really interesting to see what Keith Haring would think of Donald Trump, what he would think of the alt-right, and what he would think of our new populist world of alternative facts and fake news. But, really, you only have to look at the work Keith Haring made in the 1980s to know, for absolute certain, that he'd fucking hate it and instead of moaning about it he'd be out on the streets protesting and drawing mad fanciful paintings full of colour, joy, and fanciful flights of the imagination to show us that there is, indeed, a much better world than the grey and distrusting one these purveyors of hate, greed, and bullshit are foisting upon us.

*Thanks to Michelle for joining me for this exhibition, tasty Mexican food beforehand, tasty Vietnamese food and drinks after, and to her and Evie for a wonderful weekend spent swimming, lounging in hammocks, eating vegan Chinese food, having a picnic at the top of Dinas Bran, playing Jenga, and dancing to African music.  The Haring exhibition was fab but the company was much better still. I reckon Keith Haring would approve of that sentiment.

Untitled (1984)