UNTITLED (HARING)

Art Gallery of Ontario

UNTITLED (HARING) 1997 acrylic on existing advertising poster This large portrait orientation work is a painting done on a black and white poster. The original poster features a photograph of artist Keith Haring. In this framed work the height of an average person and 4 feet wide Haring is captured larger than life from the waist up. He is in profile facing left, drawing on a blank area on the left of a subway ad displayed inside a subway station. Haring is a white man with short curly mid-tone hair. He wears glasses and a leather jacket with the word champion on a patch on his left sleeve. He is drawing with chalk onto a dark background with his right hand. The drawing resembles both a cowboy hat and a UFO, and he is connecting it to a pyramid with a series of vertical dashes. On the right the ad appears to say, “now roast without risk” above a photo of a dark roast turkey. KAWS has painted onto this poster in an uncomplicated cartoonish style. Here he has added a character named “Bendy”. Bendy looms over Haring’s shoulder as he works. Bendy is a yellow creature with a big head with x’s for eyes, commas for nostrils and grey crossbones shaped protrusions. Bendy’s head narrows to a serpentine body which wraps under Haring’s right arm and around his body once and through his open left hand held at waist height as if Haring is grasping onto its tail directly in front of him. KAWS has signed the work with the year “97” and a copyright symbol and written what looks to be Keith Haring’s name but only the Keith is visible. This work is hung in between two other pieces which are existing advertising posters that KAWS painted over.