Keith Haring: 31 Subway Drawings

by Jeffrey Deitch, Carlo McCormick, Henry Geldzahler

Over a five year period, in one of the most epic conquests of civic space ever ventured, Keith Haring (1958–1990) produced a massive body of work across the New York City subway system that remains to this day, some 30 years after the fact, daunting in its scale and its impact upon public consciousness. Dedicated both the people who might randomly encounter them and to the present tense to which their momentary existence was tethered, Haring’s drawings now exist solely in the posterity of myth. Because they were not meant to last, briefly inhabiting blacked-out advertising boards before being covered up by commerce or torn down by authorities and admirers alike, what little remains of this project is oddly (for this most populist of artists) fugitive. 31 Subway Drawings reproduces all archival materials relating to this magnificent project.

64 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2012