All images © Keith Haring Foundation
Untitled
1985
Acrylic and oil on canvas
Courtesy of The Parker Foundation
This large 10’ high by 15’ wide rectangular canvas is in landscape orientation and is mounted directly on the wall with screws and grommets. This bicoloured red and black painting presents a hellish landscape populated with snakes and naked creatures. They consume one another by sucking and licking one anothers penisis and nipples under a blanket of raging flames topped by thick black smoke. A black line outlines the sides and bottom of the painting, and Haring leaves a strip of red all the way around as the border.
In the lower half of the work there are 5 large creatures and dozens of smaller ones. The largest creature at the center of the painting faces left. It is a headless creature with a large, erect penis and testicles. It has strong, stocky legs and a strappy high heeled shoe on its foot. From its torso sprouts a group of 5 snakes that hover upright with their mouths open and forked tongues sticking out. The figure rides atop a multi legged creature which has a collection of dangling teats and much smaller humanoids atop it. This multi legged creature has a pig head shaped head and human tongue. Its body ends in a long appendage, the end of which is in the mouth of another of a third large figure, a humanoid with long breasts and penis. This humanoid stands behind the multi legged creature and penetrates it from behind. The other two large creatures are on either side of the painting and have a frog-like body shape and appear to be eating frogs.
The top half of the work is taken up mostly by swaths of flames.The flames frame the heads of a number of other animal-like creatures. At the top of the work is a pitch black sky. Ten small figures with arms spread and curtain like wings sail and swoop, in and above the fire. Those above it have a syringe needle instead of legs.
Each of the 4 walls of this room display only one large work. The other works in this room are also red and black but with more white and occasional yellow. At the centre of the room are two large sculptures. All of the works recall Haring’s familiar characters.
Exhibition label text:
Haring grew up and came out as a gay man during a time that encouraged increased freedom of sexual expression, largely fuelled by the counterculture, women’s rights, and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. By the early 1980s, a new countermovement emerged that was led by conservative politicians and the religious right. Simultaneously, the AIDS epidemic was growing.
Painted in 1985, this untitled work responds to these realities, showing a fiery hellscape of sexual aggression and torture. The theme of hell—often depicted with scenes of uninhibited sexuality—has been addressed throughout art history, from Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell (1880–1917) to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1500s). Haring’s version remains true to his signature line, while also depicting a cast of human and animal figures as well as Christian symbols such as frogs, serpents, and angels.