Artist and designer Keith Haring created work that bridged the gap between high art and pop culture during his short but influential career. Haring's simple outline drawings of characters without features were often loaded with meaning even if they seemed outwardly naïve, and while his canvases hung in major art galleries, his work was also embraced by pop musicians such as Grace Jones and Duran Duran, he created murals for public installations, and his illustrations adorned T-shirts and
watches. Haring also created images for charitable and political groups, and he was at the peak of his fame when he succumbed to AIDS-related illness in 1990, at the age of 32. The Universe of Keith Haring is a documentary which examines the life and career of this influential figure in contemporary pop art, and features interviews with his friends, family, and colleagues, including Yoko Ono, David LaChapelle, Fab Five Freddy, Hans Meyer, Junior Vasquez, and many more. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Utilizing copious film footage of her puckish subject and new interviews with Haring's contemporaries, gallerists and mentors, director Christina Clausen makes her fascinating movie as big-hearted, city-centric and energetic as its subject.
As directed by Rome-based Christina Clausen, the film is loving but shallow. We learn a lot about minor details of Haring's life (his dad helped him deliver newspapers in Kutztown) but little about what makes his art so popular.
Equally a portrait of the artist and a portrait of a decade, this celebratory documentary makes the short, accelerated life of Keith Haring (1958-1990) inseparable from that short, accelerated period we know as '80s New York.
Christina Clausen's documentary is a briskly paced, affectionate tribute which makes full use of interviews with Haring intimates (although I could have done without that introductory artsy zeroing in on the interviewees' eyeballs).
An affectionate and absorbing look at the premiere artist of the '80s downtown New York art scene, whose images quickly penetrated popular culture around the world.
Although first-time director Christina Clausen presents this era of bad art, bad music and boring celebrities without judging it, we can't help but feel we are witnessing the last party in the mansion of pop art before its imminent collapse.
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