Author Description

This catalogue explores the early, vibrant, experimental years that shaped Haring's work. Beginning with the years when, having first enrolled in the school of Visual Arts in New York City, he started a diligent and vigorous studio practice, and began making public and political art on the city streets, joining an art community outside the institutionalised art system. This catalogue includes drawings and sketchbooks, videos, flyers, posters, photographs and subway drawings, as well as word collages, texts, and diaries. It offers an impression of the artist's manifold maturing process and shows Keith Haring as a philosopher and untiring initiator of artistic and political activities, reflecting his collaboration with other artists, his interest in interdisciplinary aesthetic strategies and the pulsating culture of the time. Published to accompany the exhibition at Kunsthalle Vienna, May ndash; 19 September 2010.