Keith Haring: Bombs and Dogs: Presented by Jeffrey Deitch and Suzanne Geiss

76 Grand Street
New York, NY

Keith Haring thinks in poems
Keith Haring paints poems
Paintings can be read as poems if they are read as words instead of images
Images that represent words.
Egyptian Art/Hieroglyphics/Pictograms/Symbolism

The public has a right to art
The public is being ignored by most of contemporary artists
Art is for everybody

 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.

The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece.

I am moving towards a work of art that encompasses music, performance, movement, concept, craft and a resulting record of the event in the form of a painting. _Journal entry by Keith Haring, 1978

Jeffrey Deitch and Suzanne Geiss presented Bombs and Dogs, an exhibition of large-scale drawings, tarps, and objects that traced the development of Keith Haring’s iconic visual language, focusing on works from 1980 — 1984.

Haring’s work achieved a remarkable fusion of the rhythmic all over structure associated with Abstract Expressionism, the iconic figuration associated with Pop Art, and the energy of the New York City Streets.

Jeffrey Deitch has been involved with Keith Haring’s work since the Times Square Show in 1980. His 1982 essay, “Why the Dogs are Barking,” for the first book on Haring was reprinted in the catalog for the Whitney Museum retrospective in 1997. Suzanne Geiss managed the Deitch Project’s representation of the Estate of Keith Haring for over 13 years and co-authored with Deitch and Julia Gruen the 2008 monograph published by Rizzoli International.