The art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch is most fascinated by both bookends of an artist’s career — not just the late works, which are typically profound and full of reflection, but the first compositions, too. “In the early periods, you get the exuberance, the promise,” he explains. “Sometimes you don’t get the refinement, yet you feel this sincerity.”
Deitch doesn’t formally offer this as a guiding principle for the exhibition he’s opening this Saturday along with the gallerist Suzanne Geiss, “Keith Haring: Bombs and Dogs” — but it could be one all the same. The painted canvases, paper, found vinyl tarps and marked-up miscellaneous objects created from 1980 to 1984 provide a glimpse into the topics that occupied Haring in his early 20s. The serendipitous assemblage (Deitch noticed that he had a “critical mass” already consigned to him and reached out to complete the collection) features a black tarp that depicts a mushroom cloud surrounded by angelic figures addressed “something central in our society,” Deitch says. “The Cold War was still going on and there was the specter of a nuclear holocaust.” Other pieces are more personal; a Haring character painted in orange Day-Glo acrylic, hanging from a cross by his ankles, alludes to the artist’s time spent as a teen at Jesus camp.
Then, there’s Deitch himself. He first encountered Haring while on assignment for “Art in America” at the famous 1980 Times Square Show, and the two began a dialogue that lasted until Haring’s death in 1990. Deitch likens the artist’s process to that of “a great saxophonist and a jazz solo. He would start in the upper-left corner of a wall or a canvas, and move across in perfect rhythm, never missing a beat. Other artists had to make a sketch, or use a grid or system to cover the canvas.” Not Haring. “He had this remarkable ability to transfer the images that he saw in his mind through his body, through his hand, and onto the surface,” Deitch continues.
Plainly put: Haring’s “not just making art; he’s communicating in a totally contemporary way,” as Deitch wrote to close his 1982 essay “Why the Dogs Are Barking.” More than three decades later, it’s still the perfect wording.
“Keith Haring: Bombs and Dogs” is on view from Nov. 7 - Dec. 21, presented by Jeffrey Deitch and Suzanne Geiss at 76 Grand St., New York, deitch.com.
