Around 1980, Keith Haring created an iconic figurative art form using a universally accessible visual language. He developed a distinct visual style and distanced himself from the established, elitist concept of art at the time. Today, together with Andy Warhol's legendary works, he is not only seen as the epitome of pop art but also defined the cultural identity of an entire decade.

In 1978, the young Keith Haring moved to New York, where he initially studied at the School of Visual Arts. Inspired by graffiti art, the works he created then were less likely to be found on canvas than in unconventional public places, such as his “Subway Drawings,” which he made on poster boards in New York subway stations starting in 1981. In these years, the artist was part of the alternative New York art and music scene and was close friends with artists like Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and the rising star Jean-Michel Basquiat. The year this piece was made, the legendary Tony Shafrazi Gallery finally showed the artist's first big solo show in New York.

While Keith Haring revamped painting, the music scene also underwent a cultural shift in the early 1980s: electronic music gave rise to house and new wave, among other genres. At the same time, rap and hip hop moved from the underground music scene to New York's clubs and enjoyed their first “golden age.”
Keith Haring was also fascinated with this subculture in the early 1980s. He always listened to music while painting, recalls Gil Vazquez, a former colleague of Keith Haring and current president of the Keith Haring Foundation: “He always painted to music, always.” (quoted from: Gil Vazquez in an interview with Uniqlo, https://www.uniqlo.com/jp/en/contents/feature/ut-magazine/s122/)


"1982 to 1984 was the peak of rap music and breakdancing – breaking and spinning on the floor and doing these athletic, gymnastic dances on the floor. It included spray graffiti because there was a graffiti scene. Part of the hip-hop scene at the time was the visual equivalent, so you had the music – scratching and rapping – and the dance, from breakdancing to electric boogie […]. Graffiti was the visual tie-in. I incorporated things I saw in breakdancing, electric boogie, and deejays into my drawings. In the Fun Gallery, some figures were breakdancing with their arms turning into this electric current. [...] Much of my inspiration came from watching break-dancers, so my drawings started spinning on their heads, twisting and turning all around. The work directly referenced hip-hop culture via the subway and the exhibition at Fun Gallery, so they became the same." (Keith Haring, zit. nach: Jlia Gruen, Jeffrey Deitch u. Suzanne Geiss, Keith Haring, New York 2008, S. 236)

This fascination is reflected in the present work: continuous outlines combine to form a figure that fills the entire picture with wild dance moves emphasized by short cartoon-like brushstrokes. The tilted body and the stretched-out foot suggest a breakdancing move. As is characteristic of his work, Haring chose vibrant fluorescent colors to underline the parallels between his visual language and graffiti and to amplify the image's vitality and positive energy.


Haring dedicated this compact painting to his friend and fellow artist Fred Brathwaite, better known today as Fab 5 Freddy, a rapper, screenwriter, video director, actor, and MTV presenter. Both were part of the same cultural scene in the 1980s, and both got to show their work at the Fun Gallery, which Patti Astor (1950–1924) had just opened. "It was the Fun Gallery at the East Village that gave all of us our first solo shows, myself, Keith Haring, Kenny [Scharf], Jean-Michel [Basquiat], we all did solo shows there, and then that created a sort of movement that the press and the art world then had to really recognize, and things began to happen." (Fab 5 Freddy in an interview with djvlad, May 17, 2019, transcription from: YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCtqoFYBym0)




To this day, the line “Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly” from the 1980 song “Rapture” by Soldier Boy & Blondie is still well known. In the year our work was created, Fab 5 Freddy also made a name for himself as an actor and musician in the cult hip-hop film “Wild Style” (directed by Charlie Ahearn), which was completed and released that same year.


The present work is a fusion of Keith Haring's distinctive visual language, the vibe of New York's club and underground culture at the time, graffiti art, and breakdancing. It provides a compelling glimpse into a fundamentally new art and music scene that transformed New York into a hotspot of creative energy in the 1980s. [CH]