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The story of how Keith Haring he came to paint the panel on a quiet, ordinary evening in 1986. His best friend’s wife was pregnant, and the couple had no money to buy a crib for their house in the Greenpoint neighborhood of New York City. “I called my parents to ask if my old bed was still in the attic,” says artist Kermit Oswald, Haring’s childhood friend. “I got it and painted it yellow, then Keith came over, we had a few beers and he painted the rest.”
Haring is known as an enduring, world-renowned figure celebrating Aids, nightlife and the New York bohemian scene of the 1980s. Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Haring’s Oswald work is now on display inside The Haring House: Works from the Kermit Oswald Collectionpublic exhibition at Sotheby’s New York this month, with works going to two auctions on 14 and 15 May. The most amazing thing is the bed. It’s a yellow taxi-cab with pictures of dachshunds (Oswald’s family dog) and two portraits of Oswald and his wife, Lisa.
It is one of 20 works by Haring that will be sold. The marquee is a 1985 painting, one of six the artist ever painted on canvas. Estimates for the sale are $3m-$5m, with a small bed alone estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. With many never-before-seen scenes, it shows the personal side of one of history’s most famous gay artists.
Oswald had known Haring since he was five years old. They met by passing notes at their hometown church in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. As boys, they had an interest in “creating things” and started drawing together. He said: “We rode bikes and played baseball even though we were on different teams. They handed out their paper routes together; the loser of the morning race had to buy ice cream.”
Haring loved “artistic art”, Oswald says. At the high school, a barn belonging to a nearby farm collapsed and was lying in the yard. “Keith said it looked like a blimp,” Oswald recalled, the night he painted the Goodyear logo on its side. “This was farming country. There weren’t any records, and Keith didn’t consider himself a photographer.”
Haring’s early anonymous works on paper from the late 1970s and early 1980s often used newspaper clippings and Xeroxed documents, which are based on William Burroughs‘s cut-up technique. The two met in 1983 and got hitched Apocalypsea series of silkscreen paintings by Burroughs, in 1988, the year Haring was diagnosed with HIV.
In our conversation, Oswald offers insight into Haring’s oeuvre: “You have to remember, Keith was a paper boy.” Oswald says that many of the artist’s untitled pieces should be read together with the date. “The news was always a big part of Keith’s life,” he said. new York Post or New York Times. “
When asked what Haring would be like now, he said: “Back then it was a very analog world.
They both moved to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts. Oswald built the workshop in Haring’s studio, every frame Haring used and staged Haring’s scenes. Oswald’s father was a carpenter, and Oswald taught Haring how to work with wood. The prices of the woodblocks that are being sold, including an anonymous work from the 1980s showing a picture falling down the stairs (it is believed that Haring used the first steps of the “stairs”, used in his work), are estimated between $ 150,000 and $ 200,000 and could not exist without Oswald’s help.
By 1985, Haring was famous and had a Polaroid photograph taken of him, his face on the body of a sphinx. He invited Oswald to the studio and told him to take any job he wanted. Oswald chose that one.
The pair called Haring’s popularity “a tiger”. “You work and work and think you can climb on a tiger and climb,” Oswald says. But once it happens, you just have to hold on to it for dear life, and the best you can do is hope to manage it a little.
Oswald chose not to ride the tiger. “This was not a war, there was no competition. You don’t compete with your friends.” He repeats several times, unexpectedly: “There is no competition.”
Oswald also learned that Haring was gay during their relationship when he was 16 or 17. “When you love someone, you love them all, their heart and their soul, so I never doubted my love for Keith when I learned he was gay.”
She liked Haring’s longtime boyfriend, Juan Dubose, who was a DJ, and told me that Haring was inspired by the house and new music of the time (in particular, Oswald says, Haring was a huge fan of Talking Heads). Oswald has hundreds of mix tapes from Haring during those years. Oswald’s son is also gay and, unfortunately, Haring is his son’s godfather. Oswald believes that Haring “prepared me for something that would be a big part of my life”.
Haring died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 31 on February 16, 1990. “I was with him the other day before he died. Earlier, Oswald had driven Haring’s parents out of the city when it was known that “it was time, that things were going well”.
He said: “I sat their family down and told them that Keith is HIV positive.” Haring was too ill to perform.
As for why he is selling products from such a long-standing relationship, Oswald said: “I realized that my relationship with these works is very recent.
However, many would find it difficult to leave the work of such a famous artist, and friend. But I get that Oswald wants the work to end up in a museum, where other people can see it, even though he didn’t say clearly: “You are not the owner of the art, you are the caretaker of it.” He says the “real purpose” of these jobs is to “be in the world doing what they are supposed to do”.
Haring’s enduring popularity and market importance, even 35 years later, is something Oswald seems reluctant to comment on. Kathleen Hart, Sotheby’s sales specialist, tells me that the Haring market is still “very strong”, with “a premium for new items”.
Oswald laughs. Most of it was wood that we found in the street, it was trash. He also said: “There is nothing precious about art, especially Keith’s, until you make it precious.” Taking something worthless and turning it into something precious is magic, and not many of us can do that. Conversely, Jeffrey Deitch, a long-time art dealer who represents Haring’s estate and co-wrote the 2014 Rizzoli monograph on the artist, hopes that a young family will buy a crib. “I hope it ends up in the nursery!” He says. It is for children, it must be used.
If these things are not exactly revealing new Keith Haringthey at least help give a rounded, human picture of his life. Speaking about New York and modern art, Oswald thinks: “I think New York would be different if they were alive, if they were all alive.
Oswald still paints, mostly watercolors, but his real talent now, he says, is farming and family. “I didn’t want the tiger to interfere with my love for art,” he says. He likes that Haring’s interest endures. “As a group, we don’t often have a close relationship with a great artist. Most of the time, we just have their work, and when you meet them at the end, it’s disappointing. But Haring is different. Knowing him better helps you understand his work. And I can tell you that he was a generous person, a great person and a great friend.”
