Keith Haring

Keith Haring New York is Book Country (Keith Haring prints)

1985

Original Mudd Club poster, New York 1979: A must have for any true Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring collector - this piece is featured in the 2017 Jean-Michel Basquiat documentary, 'Boom For Real.' Promotional poster. 1979. Dimensions: 18x24 inches. Very good overall vintage condition condition; some minor fading consistent with age. Provenance: Obtained directly from the original art designer. The Mudd Club was founded by filmmaker Steve Mass, art curator Diego Cortez, and downtown punk scene figure Anya Phillips in 1978. Mudd Club featured an art gallery curated by Keith Haring on the upper floor. Live performances by New York No Wave bands such as, DNA, the Contortions, Talking Heads & Basquiat's band Gray. On the dance floor, DJs, Anita Sarko and Johnny Dynell played an eclectic mix of punk, funk and curiosities. From the start it functioned as an antidote to the uptown disco glitz of Studio 54. Six months after it opened, the Mudd Club was mentioned in People: "New York's fly-by-night crowd of punks, posers and the ultra-hip has discovered new turf on which to flaunt its manic chic. It is the Mudd Club ... . For sheer kinkiness, there has been nothing like it since the cabaret scene in 1920s Berlin". After its first few years, Studio 54 celebrities like Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and David Bowie began to show up. In 1981, the Mudd Club's Steve Mass began showing up at the more informal Club 57 on St. Mark's Place, and began hiring Club 57 regulars including Keith Haring to help attract the downtown art & music scene. The Mudd Club was frequented by many of Manhattan's emerging emerging cultural figures, such as, Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Arto Lindsay, John Lurie, Nico with Jim Tisdall, Lydia Lunch, X, the Cramps...

Raymond Pettibon: Rare early Black Flag punk flyer: Black Flag Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Jun 11, 1983. Santa Monica, CA. Flyer / handbill for gig by Black Flag, Misfits, Vandals featuring artwork by Pettibon. Post-marked 1983 on verso; rare as such given the SST stamp on verso (Black Flag's record label). Offset Print; 8.5 x 11 inches. Features Pettibon printed signure on the lower right. Condition: Minor signs of handling and fading or yellowing; fold-lines and staple marks to upper & lower center (these were originally stapled together and mailed); in otherwise very good overall condition given age & medium. Post-marked 1983 and hand addressed on verso. Rare. Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist once said of Pettibon's Black Flag illustrations and iconic logo: "Before I knew what Black Flag was I remember walking around Hollywood and seeing Raymond's flyers and being like, 'What the fuck is that?'… Those flyers made me feel like something is going on and it's romantic and it's mysterious and it's heavy and I don't know what it is but I wanna know." About Raymond Pettibon (Americanb. 1957) Raymond Pettibon is a contemporary American artist known for his stylized ink drawings combining images and text. His inventive narratives blend historical content with consumer culture to yield incisive critiques of contemporary society. “I was making my work as transparent as possible, without equivocations, without calling attention to itself, without apology,” he explained. “There's a lot of conventions in the art world that are not to be transgressed, but my economy of means doesn't abide by those strictures.” Born Raymond Ginn on June 16, 1957 in Tucson, AZ, the artist is self-taught, but cites drawings by William Blake, Edward Hopper, Francisco Goya, and John Sloan as instructive to his practice. Deriving inspiration from comics, cartoons, and other pop culture iconography, Pettibon began designing album covers and ephemera for his brother’s band Black Flag in the mid-1970s. He went on to produce cover art for Sonic Youth, the Minutemen...

'Keith Haring Painted Man'/Keith Haring Into 84: A set of 2 announcement cards for Keith Haring’s well-documented exhibition, 'Into 84' at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1983. For this series Haring borrowed Jones' body — from head to toe — as the canvas to his work. A bodily canvas defined by much of the bold pictograms characteristic of Haring's artistic signature. Photos by Haring's long-time friend and collaborator Tseng Kwong Chi. Looks fantastic framed as a set. Off-set printed gallery announcements, 1983. Dimensions: 6 x 4 inches (applies to each individual). Good overall condition with well-preserved colors. Some surface creating to red card. Unsigned from an edition of unknown. Further About: In 1983 Keith Haring teamed up with award-winning choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones, founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Keith and Bill met in London in 1983 at a time when the graffiti artist was opening a major show at the Robert Fraser Gallery, and together they produced a series of exceptional collaborations in both performance and drawing. Keith Haring was an American artist and social activist known for his illustrative depictions of figures and symbols. His white chalk drawings could often been found on the blank poster marquees in New York’s public spaces and subways. “I don't think art is propaganda,” he once stated. “It should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.” Born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, PA, he grew up in neighboring Kutztown, where he was inspired to draw from an early age by Walt Disney cartoons and his father who was an amateur cartoonist. After briefly studying commercial art in Pittsburgh, Haring came across a show of the works of Pierre Alechinksy and decided to pursue a career in fine art instead. He moved to New York in the late 1970s to attend the School of Visual Arts, and soon immersed himself in the city’s graffiti culture. By the mid-1980s, he had befriended fellow artists Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and collaborated with celebrities like the singer Grace Jones. Diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988, Haring’s prodigious career was brief, and he died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990 at the age of 31. Before his death, Haring established the Keith Haring Foundation, a non-profit committed to raising awareness of the illness through art programing and community outreach. Throughout his career, Haring made his art widely available through the location of his murals, as well as through the Pop Shop—Haring's own storefront which he used to sell his memorabilia.The artist’s mural Crack is Wack (1986), can still be seen today on a retaining wall along FDR Drive in Manhattan. Haring’s works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Related Categories Modern Dance. Ballet. Keith Haring Figurative Drawings. Keith Haring Into 84 poster. Keith Haring and Tony Shafrazi. Haring Shafrazi.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown 81 / New York Beat: Basquiat created this impossibly rare printed flyer in 1981 to advertise a band performance within his feature acted film: Downtown ...