Urban Art Association

Haring, Capitalism and other words too rude to..., by snausages on Jan 13, 2009 3:20:13 GMT 1, www.haring.com/cgi-bin/essays.cgi?essay_id=15

Words like "Capitalist" and others too rude to mention:
As Haring wrote in his journal, "Very few people understand why someone would want to open a shop and not make money."13 In describing that rainy Saturday afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony, Michael Gross of The New York Times missed the point by writing: "Mr. Haring used to offer his art free on subway walls. Now he sells it for five-figure sums. Mr. Haring also used to give away his pins, jigsaw puzzles and comic books, which are now for sale at the shop."14 According to the Times, "That may be why someone spray-painted its threshold with words like 'Capitalist' and others too rude to mention."15 Yet, making money was never Haring's intent.

In his journals, Haring stated that the reason he felt at liberty to create paintings for the gallery, make a Grace Jones video for MTV, create vodka ads, and open his Pop Shop without fear of compromise or contradiction was that all these opportunities had arisen naturally. Haring believed it was simply a question of being honest with yourself and your times. It was less about "purity" and much more an issue of integrity. He wrote in his journal, "There isn't much difference between the people I have to deal with in the art market or in the commercial world."16 The artist continued, "Once the artwork becomes a 'product' or a 'commodity' the compromising position is basically the same."17 As the artist reveals in John Gruen's Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography: "Of course, the Pop Shop was an easy target, and it was attacked from all sides. People could now say, 'What do you mean Haring isn't commercial? He's opened a store!' But I didn't care…it's an art experiment that works."18

With the opening of The Pop Shop, Haring had reason to cease drawing in the subways. "These drawings had run their course, because they had achieved what I wanted them to achieve and that was getting the work out to the public at large."19 The artist continued, "I also stopped because the subway drawings were disappearing. Word had gotten out that my prices were rising more and more and people just cut the drawings out of their panels and sold them."20 In fact, according to one account, a "street artist," disgruntled with Haring's rapid rise to fame and apparent fortune, purchased large sheets of archival paper from New York Central Art Supply to mimic the material glued over old advertisements by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). This artist acquaintance now admits to strategically peppering the subway billboards along Haring's regular path with these deceptive black paper panels cut to fit and installed with double-sided tape (versus the wheat-paste favored by the New York City Transit). Thus, Haring's fresh chalk drawings could be easily removed and collected just minutes after the unsuspecting artist had departed the scene.

Contrary to The New York Times report, except when "liberated" by an act of vandalism (equal to or greater than the artist's own), Haring's subway drawings were never "free." They were never signed, never given monetary value by the artist, nor intended for the art market. Haring thought of these drawings as time-based ephemera. Performance relics? Perhaps, while they lasted. But, most importantly, the subway drawings were a grassroots campaign to reach people--as many and as diverse a group as possible.

Communication, Not Commerce:
According to Haring: "I wanted to continue the same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people, and I wanted it (The Pop Shop) to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx."21 The Pop Shop's philosophy was simple. Haring continued: "The main point was that we didn't want to produce things that would cheapen the art…This was still an art statement. I mean, we could have put my designs on 'anything'…We sold the inflatable baby and the toy radio and, mostly, a wide variety of t-shirts, because they're like a wearable print--they're art objects."22

Two years after Haring opened his Pop Shop, Marcia Tucker wrote in her Preface to the New Museum of Contemporary Art's catalogue, Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave: "According to certain postmodernist theories, the traditional modernist avant-garde no longer exists, having exhausted itself or, in its turn, having been co-opted by the forms of popular culture. Some have even called this process a democratization of culture whereby popular forms replace those of the bourgeois avant-garde. Or perhaps it is more a matter of displacement--that slippery moment when art becomes commerce, shifting back again into the cultural arena as another kind of commodity. The catch is, even today, in 1988, few among us are willing to acknowledge that certain mass cultural forms and practices may comprise the most significant 'culture' of our time, precisely because of their 'popular' character."23

A Combination of Inc. and Ink
In describing a satellite venture in Japan, Haring wrote: "Pop Shop will go up in a temporary building on a temporary location for a temporary time…The whole concept is perfectly in keeping with my aesthetic."24 Like his short-lived Pop Shop in Tokyo and the ephemeral subway drawings, Haring must have realized his New York store would last only so long. Now that The Pop Shop is gone, "Keith Haring: Art & Commerce" pays tribute. Like the artist who created it, The Pop Shop was always infinitely more about art than commerce. Yet, Keith Haring understood his role in helping to merge the two. In his October 7, 1987, journal entry, the artist wrote: "I just boarded the plane to Nice. It's funny to me how many different ways my name gets spelled on boarding passes, but this is the best. I've seen Harding, Harving, etc., but this one says Harinck. [It] looks/sounds like a combination of Inc. and ink; I like that."25