Untitled (Subway Drawing), 1982
Information about the artwork
- Material3 parts; chalk on paper, poster
- Dimensions220 x 111.8 cm
- Year of acquisition2024
- Inventory numberUAB 1362
- On viewOn view
- Copyright© The Keith Haring Foundation. Photo: Dirk Tacke, Museum Brandhorst, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich
More about the artwork
Keith Haring came to New York in 1978 as a scholarship student at the School of Visual Arts, where he lived until his early death from AlDS-related complications in 1990. He developed a distinctive drawing style and a pictorial vocabulary of dancing figures and barking dogs, which he disseminated across a wide range of media and spaces. Haring became famous for his "Subway Drawings": inspired by the graffiti culture of the time, he produced around 5,000 white chalk drawings on unused advertising panels in the New York subway between 1980 and 1985. In "Untitled (Subway Drawing)," Haring did exactly that: two of his quick drawings frame an original advertising poster for a rock 'n' roll Broadway musical at the St. James Theatre in New York. As Haring explained in his book "Art in Transit" (1984): "The drawings...don’t have exact definitions but challenge the viewer to assert his or her own ideas and interpretations... Sometimes the advertisements on the side of the empty panels provide inspiration for the drawings and often create ironic associations." Yet the more famous he became, the greater the commercial value of these drawings grew. Much to Haring's dismay, many "Subway Drawings" were soon removed and transferred from the public realm into a system of commodities. At the same time, however, this process also ensured that these fleeting urban actions—and the poster itself—were preserved as enduring artworks, which can now be presented at Museum Brandhorst.
