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From graffiti to sgraffito

Keith Haring's art makes the leap from New York City to Český Krumlov

By Mimi Fronczak Rogers
For The Prague Post
April 4th, 2007 issue

Images courtesy of the Estate of Keith Haring
Haring's distinctive work is the focal point of a "Stop AIDS" project sponsored by the Egon Schiele Center.
Keith Haring, the quintessential street artist cum art superstar, rose to fame making graffiti paintings in the New York City subway in the 1980s. The jewel-box town of Český Krumlov is famous for its winding cobblestone streets and romantic castle that was covered with sgraffito four centuries before. Such a leap across continents and centuries isn’t as great a distance as it might first appear.
This week, the first-ever Haring exhibition in the Czech Republic opens in the south Bohemian town’s Egon Schiele Center. The show of 65 works on paper, on loan from Haring’s estate, is complemented by a group exhibition of five young artists from New York — schoolchildren when Haring (1958–90) was at the height of his meteoric career. The idea of Schiele Center Director Hana Jirmusová was to present viewers with a snapshot of the up-and-coming generation of artists in “Haring’s city.” An exhibition by the well-known Czech artist Petr Kvíčala completes the program.
Keith Haring

Egon Schiele Center
Široká 71
Český Krumlov
Open daily 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Exhibition runs through Oct. 28
For more information, check
www.schieleartcentrum.cz

Even people who have never seen an original work by Haring will almost certainly recognize his painting style. It has become part of the cultural lingua franca. Haring’s work embodies the frenetic pace and jumble of urban street life, pulsing with energy and motion. His heavily outlined figures surrounded by arcs and sunbursts of lines express movement, and his work is imbued with inherent humor and often a political subtext. The puzzlelike way in which his figures interlock remind us how interconnected we all are as human beings.
Almost an exact contemporary of Haring, Kvíčala (born in 1960) is also known for his bright, ornamental paintings and his highly physical manner of creation. The looping geometry and vibrant colors of Kvíčala’s work — whether one of his typically orange-and-white paintings or an arcing, whirling architectural mural — is as instantly recognizable locally as Haring’s visual vocabulary is internationally.
“He was chosen because, like Haring, he does work with an architectural element like wall paintings, although he does abstract art as opposed to Haring’s figurative drawings,” notes Stewart Aitchison of the Egon Schiele Center.
AIDS activists
To honor the legacy of Haring, who died of AIDS at age 31 in 1990, the Schiele Center has also made a “Stop AIDS” week a key part of the exhibition project. In the last years of his life, Haring became an undaunted art activist, parlaying his tremendous popularity to promote AIDS awareness.
The relative isolation and restricted travel imposed by the communist regime before 1989 largely shielded the Czech population from the HIV virus. As a result, the Czech Republic has been relatively spared from the epidemic, with fewer than 1,000 cases of HIV reported in the country (less than 0.1 percent of the population), according to figures from UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. However, heightened awareness is vital in keeping these numbers low.
Set to coincide with the beginning of the show, the “Stop AIDS” week will focus on educating teachers of primary- and secondary-school students through a series of seminars so that they can better inform their students about protecting themselves from HIV transmission. There will also be evening lectures in the café at the Schiele Center that will be open to the public. Children will be admitted free to the gallery during “Stop AIDS” week, and an anti-AIDS sticker designed by Haring will be available at the gallery.
Art to the people
Haring’s work grew out of the Pop Art sensibility of the generation of Andy Warhol, who became a friend and mentor to Haring. Traces of this Pop influence can be seen today among the work of the youngest generation on the New York art scene.
Since February, artists Annysa Ng, Vadis Turner, Midori Harima, Cassandra C. Jones and Peter Maslow have been living and making art in Český Krumlov’s former castle brewery.
The young artists came to the attention of the Schiele Center’s Jirmusová when she was in New York with Ingeborg Habereder, the director of the Sabarsky-Sonnberger Foundation, to make arrangements for staging the Haring show. On a walk through the Chelsea gallery district, they chanced upon the Vanina Holasek Gallery and discovered that the gallery owner had a Czech father and an Austrian mother — a nice coincidence, as Jirmusová is Czech and Habereder is Austrian. Eventually Jirmusová asked the New York gallerist to recommend a selection of young artists to complement the Haring show.
Haring would likely be quite pleased that an exhibition of his work is connected with young, up-and-coming New York artists. During his lifetime he involved himself in working with urban youth, urging them to focus their energies on creating public murals to improve the city environment rather than heedlessly defacing it. He understood their need for such an outlet, since that was how he got his start — before going legit and commanding five-figure prices for his paintings.
Haring was not without critics during his lifetime. He was charged with selling out, first when he moved his art indoors from the New York subway system to Tony Shafrazi’s SoHo Gallery, and especially later, when he opened his Pop Shop, which sold his trademark images on posters, T-shirts and jewelry. He opened the retail venture, he said, as a way to continue “bringing art to the people.” It closed in 2005, after almost 20 years in business.
After Haring’s HIV was diagnosed, he turned his abundant energies to spreading awareness about AIDS. As Český Krumlov wakes from its winter slumber and comes alive with visitors from all over the world, the vitality of Haring’s work should add a spark of energy to the town’s cultural life.
As long as AIDS continues to spread on the planet, this part of Haring’s mission lives on.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (4/04/2007):

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