Recent
documentaries about New York avant-garde artists Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, and
Jack Smith have emphasized their otherness, and how they struggled to find a social niche
even in a city as nurturing to weirdoes as NYC. But Warhol and company were in
many ways products of the '50s and '60s; The Universe Of Keith Haring looks at one of the quintessential '80s artists, and how the scene changed
by the time he emerged. Unlike his forerunners, Haring was fully engaged with
the world around him, and enjoyed the love and support of his small-town
Pennsylvania family. During his decade in the spotlight—prior to his 1990
death from an AIDS-related illness—Haring traveled the world, making new
friends and drawing on any blank surface set in front of him. Part of Haring's
openness was a byproduct of his knack for self-promotion, but it was also a
function of his idealism. Haring honestly wanted to share the joyous simplicity
of his cartoony figures with as many people as he could.
Because of
Haring's ubiquity, he's often thought of as a commercial artist—or even a
hack. If nothing else, The Universe Of Keith Haring helps put him in his proper
context, following him from his early experiments in graffiti, video
installations, and pop-pornography to his creation of iconic anti-drug and
anti-apartheid images. Like his fellow graffiti artists, Haring considered his
art a gift to the city of New York, making ugly or dull spaces more
interesting. But working in graffiti also trained Haring to be creative at a
moment's notice, and to vary his designs. By the mid-'80s, he was painting
enormous murals in public, working largely off the top of his head, inspired by
the improvisatory freedom of hip-hop culture.
Universe deals extensively
with Haring's personal life—his open homosexuality, his regular visits
with his family, etc.—but it doesn't penetrate too far below the surface.
How, for example, did his parents feel about having to share the funeral for
their son with special guest Yoko Ono? How did Ono feel about Haring's plain,
conservative folks? Director Christina Clausen could've gone a lot further with
the analysis of how Haring's Disney-fed upbringing influenced his work, and how
his work caught on in a decade where simple, bold strokes became paramount
again. By the same token, there's probably a cleverer way to present this
material than Clausen's method, with thick lines and clear messages. Or, given
the subject, perhaps not.