Untitled Series (with Sean Kalish) | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Artist |
| ||||||
Year |
| ||||||
Catalogue | Littmann 155-157 | ||||||
Medium | 11 Etchings (soft-ground and hard-ground) in black ink on handmade cotton paper | ||||||
Subject | |||||||
Dimensions |
| ||||||
Location | ≥2 public collections | ||||||
Collaborators | |||||||
| |||||||
Website | Untitled at haring.com |
Untitled Series (with Sean Kalish) is an untitled and unordered series of eleven untitled etchings, drawn between 1989 and 1990 by Keith Haring in collaboration with Sean Kalish, [1] [2] a 9-year-old patron of the Pop Shop. [3] Also referred to as Untitled (w Sean Kalish) or Untitled, 1989. [4]
This anti-adultist artistic collaboration was a form of youth-adult partnership undertaken at Haring's studio in New York City and coincided with the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) at the United Nations General Assembly, also in New York City. The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention and opened it for signature on 20 November 1989 (the 30th anniversary of its Declaration of the Rights of the Child). [5]
This was one of the final projects undertaken by Haring, and the last to involve etching, before his death on 16 February 1990, age 31. [6] The United States of America did not sign the convention until 16 February 1995, exactly five years later, and remains to the present day the only country in the world not to have ratified the UNCRC. [5]
Philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes Émile, or On Education (1762) which rejects the doctrine of Original Sin, and asserts that children are innately innocent, only becoming corrupted through experience of the world. [7]
The unique perspective of children has influenced Art history since Rousseau.
Romantics such as painter Caspar David Friedrich along with writers including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge promoted the idea that children could see the 'truth of nature' thanks to their "naive" perspective on the world.
John Ruskin in his The Elements of Drawing (1857) encouraged artists to maintain an 'innocence of the eye', a freshness of vision that he called the 'condition of childhood'.
Children's Art has been admired by artists and used as inspiration recurrently, including:
From the late 19th century, Primitivists viewed childhood as the 'primitive' prehistory of the adult. [3]
In the 20th century, artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Jean Dubuffet avidly collected, studied and in some instances took quite specific cues from children's art. [3]
A recurring theme throughout Haring's career is the value and engagement of youth voice and youth participation. Demonstrated by numerous murals assisted by local young people, such as Tuttomondo and We the Youth, or extensive collaborations with young people such as LA II.
"Children know something that most people have forgotten". — Keith Haring [8]
"What I like about children is their imagination. It's a combination of honesty and freedom they seem to have in expressing whatever is on their minds-and the fact that they have a really sophisticated sense of humor." — Keith Haring [9]
An exhibition of children's art from the classes of artist Franz Cižek was included in the Kunstschau Wien 1908.
Roger Fry exhibited children's art at the Omega Workshops, London in 1917 and 1919.
The International Museum of Children's Art in Oslo, Norway is established in 1986, by the Foundation of Children's History, Art and Culture, which itself was established in 1980. The museum is a member of the Association of Norwegian Museums of Art and Social History, and UNESCO's International Council of Museums. The museum receives an annual grant from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. [10]
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 20 November 1989) formally enshrines the rights of children and young people to participate in matters that affect them:
Article 12.1 provides: "States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."
The UNCRC protects the right of a child to participate in matters that affect them, including, for example, creative expression. However, Haring's collaboration was intended to champion the artistic value of children's creative expression and so actively counter adultism within the art world, especially within high art, by offering equal artistic credit and status to Kalish, whilst Haring was at the height of his career.
"[Art] should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further". — Keith Haring [8]
Produced and financed by Keith Haring in New York City in 1989, coinciding with the UN General Assembly's adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
Drawn by Haring and Kalish in New York City between 1989 and 1990. The two would pass preliminary works back and forth as they made progress, importantly with Haring offering as much credit to Kalish as to himself.
"Keith was someone who was able to see beyond the usual criteria most of us use to define others. He was open to communication with the essential being regardless of their gender, race, age, etc... I listened to conversations he had with Sean on art ... and the creative process. Frankly, sometimes I was lost. I was thankful that Sean had found someone who he could have these conversations with.
Part of the reason Keith chose etching as a medium for their collaboration was because Sean was not interested in color.
Keith took the time to teach Sean about etching and then to teach him to etch. As part of this process, Keith gave Sean tools to do the etching. Sean was extremely excited after doing the etchings. We got to look at proofs with Keith on a visit to his studio. A lot of people were there that day. It was before the holidays, and I remember that visit as one of the longest and happiest times we spent with Keith. No one wanted the visit to end. I think it was the last time we saw him ..."
— Marta Kalish, mother of Sean. Interviewed November 2004. [4]
"When I was doing etchings with Keith, he let me draw anything I wanted to, and he made me feel that my drawings were very special. He made other children feel that way about their art. It was always fun to be with Keith because he knew how to have fun, just like a kid.
I was about six years old when I met Keith. I was acting at the time, and there was a casting studio a block or so away from the Pop Shop. Every time I had an audition at that studio, my mother would take me into the Pop Shop. Typically, we would stay there for over an hour. After I had been visiting the store for a few months, the manager suggested that I meet Keith.
I first met Keith in his studio. What I remember most about that meeting is that he did not talk down to or patronize me in any way, as adults always do with children. Rather, he spoke to me in perhaps the most honest way anyone ever had at the time.
We always made art during our meetings. We would collaborate, or just work separately and share our art with one another."
— Sean Kalish. Interviewed December 2004. [4]
"Keith and I worked together on some etchings. There were these big metal plates. I would be working on one, and he would be working on one. Then we would switch and keep on drawing. I like drawing, because it's something you can do with someone else. I liked to draw with Keith, because he drew just like a kid. Now there won't be any more Keith Haring drawings. I wanted him to keep drawing for his whole life!" — Sean Kalish [11]
"Children are bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form" — Keith Haring [12]
Proofed and printed in an edition of 33, by Master printmaker Richard Spare at his Wellington Studios in London, England. [1] [2]
Each print is stamped by the artist's estate, signed and dated verso (on the back) by Sean Kalish and Julia Gruen, Executor of the Keith Haring Estate [13] and Executive director of The Keith Haring Foundation. [13]
Title | View | Object number | Medium | Notes | Ref. | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.1 | soft-ground and hard-ground | Includes Haring's rhythmic motion lines to express the movement and energy of the dancing figure. Includes sonorous or energetic lines for flatulence humour. | [14] | [2] |
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/851 | [15] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.2 | [16] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/859 | [17] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.3 | [18] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/857 | [19] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.4 | [20] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/850 | [21] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.5 | Stylised female figure with Haring's motifs Lucky Strike and Lightning Bolt, alongside Haring's use of his recently deceased friend Basquiat's (1960–88) Crown motif. Echoing Haring's 1988 painting A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat . | [22] | ||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/858 | [23] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.6 | [24] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/852 | [25] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.7 | [26] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/855 | [27] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.8 | Satire, an obese male figure with small genitalia wearing a mitre. Opposition to US ratification of the UNCRC comes from the 'religious right'. [28] | [29] | ||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/856 | [30] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.9 | Includes Haring's rhythmic motion lines to express movement and energy. | [31] | ||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/854 | [32] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.10 | [33] | |||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/853 | [34] | ||||
Untitled | MoMA | 105.1991.11 | Includes Haring's rhythmic motion lines to express movement and energy. Includes Kalish's drawing of Basquiat's (1960–88) Crown motif, encircled by Haring's radiant lines (lines radiating from the motif). | [35] | ||
The Keith Haring Foundation | art-work/860 | [36] |
The complete series of eleven etchings is held in the permanent collections of:
The complete series of eleven etchings have featured in the following exhibitions:
"The results have surprisingly loose, refreshing edges and subjects." — William Jaeger, Times Union [37]
"This series struck me. Like all people I'm familiar with his more iconic work, his pictograms. I like this because it also shows the influences of artists like Paul Klee, who Haring said was a great influence. So besides contemporaries such as Kenny Scharf, Andy Warhol and Walt Disney — Haring found inspiration in the Modern masters". [Verpoorten recalled a magazine interview with Haring on the subject]. "He talked about how liberating he found the art of Pierre Alechinsky, Jean Dubuffet and Pablo Picasso, and how he united that free form in his work." — Frank Verpoorten, Executive Director, Naples Art Institute [41]
(2019–) Young Artists' Summer Show, a free annual open submission exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, for young artists aged 4–19 years studying in the UK. Modelled on the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, it is a platform for children's art that advocates the importance of access to art, and the benefits of encouraging the arts, for children and young people. [3]
Haring artworks about youth empowerment
Themes
Related movements
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The institution was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. Initially located in the Heckscher Building on Fifth Avenue, it opened just days after the Wall Street Crash. The museum, America's first devoted exclusively to modern art, was led by A. Conger Goodyear as president and Abby Rockefeller as treasurer, with Alfred H. Barr Jr. as its first director. Under Barr's leadership, the museum's collection rapidly expanded, beginning with an inaugural exhibition of works by European modernists. Despite financial challenges, including opposition from John D. Rockefeller Jr., the museum moved to several temporary locations in its early years, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually donated the land for its permanent site.
Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness. In addition to solo gallery exhibitions, he participated in renowned national and international group shows such as documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum held a retrospective of his art in 1997.
William Eggleston is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition of color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include William Eggleston's Guide (1976) and The Democratic Forest (1989).
Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Félix González-Torres or Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a Cuban-born American visual artist. He lived and worked primarily in New York City between 1979 and 1995 after attending university in Puerto Rico. González-Torres’s practice incorporates a minimalist visual vocabulary and certain artworks that are composed of everyday materials such as strings of light bulbs, paired wall clocks, stacks of paper, and individually wrapped candies. González-Torres is known for having made significant contributions to the field of conceptual art in the 1980s and 1990s. His practice continues to influence and be influenced by present-day cultural discourses. González-Torres died in Miami in 1996 from AIDS-related illness.
Vija Celmins is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks. Her earlier work included pop sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings. Based in New York City, she has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 22-01 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the Warm Up summer music series, and the Young Architects Program with the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since January 2000 and, as of 2013, attracts about 200,000 visitors a year.
Robert Gober is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs.
Rene Ricard was an American poet, actor, art critic, and painter.
Frank Holliday is an American painter who became known in the New York City art world in the 1970s and 1980s. He is often associated with the East Village scene and associated with Club 57. His early career as an artist included working with Andy Warhol and close associations with artists such as Keith Haring Ann Magnuson and Kenny Scharf.
Lorna Simpson is an American photographer and multimedia artist whose works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 1990, she became one of the first African-American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with photo-text installations such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal that questioned the nature of identity, gender, race, history and representation. Simpson continues to explore these themes in relation to memory and history using photography, film, video, painting, drawing, audio, and sculpture.
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.
Glenn David Lowry is an American art historian and director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City since 1995. His initiatives there include strengthening MoMA's contemporary art program, significantly developing the collection holdings in all media, and guiding two major campaigns for the renovation, expansion, and endowment of the museum. He has lectured and written extensively in support of contemporary art and artists and the role of museums in society, among other topics.
The United States has signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC); however, it remains the only United Nations member state to have not ratified it after Somalia ratified it in 2015.
Richard John Spare is a British artist and Master Printmaker known primarily for his drypoints, etchings and oil paintings. He is based in London.
The Blue Guitar is a suite of twenty etchings with aquatint by David Hockney, drawn in 1976–77 and published in 1977 in London and New York by Petersburg Press.
Tower is a mural by American artist Keith Haring executed in 1987. The mural covers the exterior of a preserved stairwell from the now demolished building of the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris, France. It is one of two public murals in France by the artist.
The Valley is a suite of etchings by Keith Haring, illustrating the eponymous final chapter from The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs, drawn in 1989 and published in 1990. It is an ominous allegorical depiction of the horror and chaos of the AIDS Crisis.
Haring
Collaborators