Label Text:
Produced the year before Keith Haring’s death in 1990, this rare sculpture features many of the artist’s iconic figures and symbols. Rendered with striking graphic sensibility in golden yellow and teal/turquoise, Haring’s hieroglyphs and recurring characters are found within each metallic panel, including dancing babies and barking dogs, along with outlines of dolphins and birds. The color scheme and form of the pyramid draw upon Haring’s interest in ancient cultures and futuristic fantasies. The pyramid form was a common motif in Haring’s work, simultaneously referencing Pharos’s tombs, queer activism, and the bold forms of graffiti art.
About Keith Haring
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 everywhere, 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. – Loretta Yarlow, former Director, UMCA
Tags:
animals; anthropomorphic; birds; cartoons; circles; couples; creatures; crocodiles; dancers; decoration and ornament; dogs; doodles; eye; faces; figures; fish; heads; hearts; humor; infants; legs; LGBTQ; masks; movement; negative space; people; play; popular culture; skeletons; skulls; structures; stylization; symbolism Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+2021.3 |
