|
Keith Haring: Deitch Gallery: January 07- January 30
Mural for St Patrick's Daycare Center
Currently on view at the Deitch Gallery in Tribeca is Keith Haring's 70 foot long mural painted in 1985 for the South Market Childcare Centre in San Francisco. The mural features restrained simple black figures painted onto a yellow background in Haring's signature style. As always with Haring and his artwork, the value of his work does not lie in the uplifting childlike images of comical 2-headed monsters or dancing men but in its social importance. The impact of Haring and his art work which he specifically put to use for social and humanitarian good during his short career as an artist is epic. The Mural which was one if 16 public pieces of art painted in hospitals and children's centres internationally. The SOMACC which is a non-profit childcare centre, was one of the lucky institutions to be granted one of these charming murals.
In 1978, Haring wrote in a journal entry that: "The public has a right to art... The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realise the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses... I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached"
So what is this piece of public art doing in a New York gallery with a price tag of around $1.7 million? It was revealed that the SOMACC, millions of dollars in debt, has been forced to sell the mural to save itself from its financial situation which in the current economic climate does not bode well for the non-profit organisation. In Haring's journal entry he describes how no final meaning should be attached when exploring and experiencing his art. Regarding the situation in which the mural has been moved from a childcare centre gymnasium to high class gallery, the art work translates well. Whether being admired by children or analysed within the white cube, the social impact remains the same. The mural is helping the community it was originally painted for and that is exactly what Haring would have wanted.
Tania Dolvers
|
