Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines Exhibition
Dec 30, 2019
LifeWear
Now On at the National Gallery of Victoria
Exclusive to Melbourne, the Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines exhibition offers new and fascinating insights into their unique visual languages and reveals, for the first time, the many intersections between their lives, practices and ideas.
Keith Haring (American 1958–90) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (American 1960–88) changed the art world of the 1980s through their idiosyncratic imagery, radical ideas and complex socio-political commentary, creating an indelible legacy that continues to influence contemporary visual and popular culture today. Each artist is acclaimed for his distinctive visual language, employing signs, symbols and words to convey strong social and political messages in unconventional ways.
The exhibition surveys each artist’s tragically short, yet prolific career through more than 200 artworks, including works created in public spaces, painting, sculpture, objects, works on paper, photographs and more. Crossing Lines provides local and international audiences with a comprehensive insight into these influential artists’ careers.
UNIQLO will launch a UT collection similarly titled Crossing Lines, and in collaboration with Artestar, a global licensing agency and creative consultancy representing photographers, designers, creatives as well as high-profile artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The line of T-shirts featuring key works of both artists will be made available across 24 markets and over 2,200 stores globally this December, and reach Australia in January 2020. Each of these UT items will also carry a NGV-branded swing tag, generating international visibility for the Melbourne gallery’s world-first exhibition, and placing the NGV brand on an international stage, alongside other UNIQLO collaborations with major art galleries globally.
Works translated into the UT collection include Haring’s A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1988. Following the passing of Basquiat, Haring painted Basquiat’s signature, the crown, in homage to his friend, bringing together the unique visual language of both artists.
Keith Haring’s iconic logo–the crawling baby that, according to Haring himself, ‘represents the purest and most positive experience of human existence’–also features in the range.
And Basquiat’s distinctive scrawled text in Untitled (World Famous) 1983, and Exu 1988, featuring a figure with horns and pitchfork, are both included in the collection.
The complete Crossing Lines UT collection is available to shop online and in-stores now.
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