SOUTHAMPTON, NY.- Through July 17th, visit
Zeit Contemporary Art's curated booth focusing on Andy Warhol and Keith Haring at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton, NY. A preview of the presentation is available online.
The presentation includes paintings, screenprints and photographs. Amongst the work on display is the complete portfolio Icons created by Keith Haring in 1990, his final masterpiece in printmaking just before his untimely passing. Harings Icons is a series of five screenprints with embossing depicting seemingly unrelated characters reflecting on issues related to life, death, greed, and innocence. While the images each tell their own story individually, together they reflect on the entirety of the human experience, reading as a reflective farewell from Haring himself. Pop Shop IV (1989) is another one of Harings complete suites on display by Zeit Contemporary Art, featuring some of the same icons as the former work that have become emblematic of the artist after his death, such as the barking dog and the radiant baby.
As for Warhol, in addition to his famous renditions of the cow that made their debut in the form of wallpaper in 1966 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, there will be on display two of his paintings from the 1980s, Candy Box (1980) and Valentines Hearts Ad (Heart Fund) (1983), which reflect on the experience of friendship and love in a key moment in the artists life. A number of his Polaroids will also be featured, including his iconic Bananas (1978,) as well screenprints such as Birmingham Race Riot (1964), a black and white work related to his Death and Disasters series which features newsworthy images of violence such as car and plane crashes, and nuclear bombs, commenting on the publics desensitization to the reality of violence in the world.
While Andy Warhol was one of the artists that established Pop Art as a disruptive movement in the 1960s, Keith Haring is of a second Pop generation, whose work arose from the underground street art scene in the late 1970s. The art of both Warhol and Haring is driven by a determination to undertake a journey of progress, which has made their work hold up in the zeitgeist of each new decade. Warhol set the stage for artists to embark on their own radical journey and paved the way for Harings graffiti style to be recognized as legitimate art. The two met in 1982 when photographer Christopher Makos brought Haring to Warhols studio, the Factory. While the artists oeuvre differ in style, they share many similarities, such as their dedication to connect with people through art, expand the realm for what high art could look like, reflect on the iconic status of images in a world populated by mass media, and last but not least, they introduced art as a form of business. The convergences and divergences in Warhol and Harings overlapping careers depict the evolution of Pop Art throughout the late 20th century and the way in which the two artists mutually influence and learn from one anothers ar