Lot 153 D

„Aside from Haring's brilliant sense of content and material, it is the natural motifs that make his oeuvre so extraordinary. On the surface, his drawings appear childishly simple, more like symbols than real drawings. They have to be jotted-down quickly and are intended for a hastily passing audience. Haring can complete a drawing in two minutes and then he runs down the platform to immediately draw the next one. His drawings are conceived to be grasped within a fraction of a second. […] The complete impact of his work results from the combination of the elements: context, material, pictorial language as well as its infiltration of the urban consciousness. Single sections may appear quite innocent but in their entirety, Keith Haring's works develop a rather menacing quality, conveying a feeling of imminent violence and sexual explosion. They are a spectacle of the city's collective unconsciousness, a city which acts carefree but which only just escapes the fate of transforming into the 'dog eat dog'-world of Haring's paintings”. (Elisabeth Sussman (ed.), K. Haring, Cologne 1998, p. 84-88)