Artist/Maker Keith Haring (American, 1958 – 1990)

Pop Shop Ceiling

1986

Acrylic and latex on drywall with aluminum armature

Overall: 29 ft. × 48 in - 180 in. × 5 in. (8 m 83.9 cm × 4 m 57.2 cm × 12.7 cm)

Gift of the Keith Haring Foundation, Inc.

2011.17a-j

Keith Haring was synonymous with New York's downtown art scene in the 1980s. With encouragement from Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and defying criticism that his work would become overly commercial, Haring opened the Pop Shop at 292 Lafayette Street in SoHo in 1986 with the goal of making his art accessible to a wide range of people. Haring conceived of the Pop Shop as "an extended performance," a place where "collectors could go, but also where kids from the Bronx, visitors from out of town, and whoever" could find T-shirts, stickers, badges, and other products bearing images of his work. Haring covered the interior of the shop - ceiling, walls, even the floor - with a single continuous mural in his signature graffiti-inflected style, boldly executed in black and white. After the artist's death from AIDS in 1990, the Keith Haring Foundation continued to run the Pop Shop until 2005, when rent increases forced it to close. During its nineteen years in operation the floor and walls of the shop required extensive repainting, making the ceiling the only original portion of the mural in existence. Today, a quarter century after it had opened, the historical importance of the Pop Shop in blurring contemporary lines between culture and commerce, high and low art, public and private spaces has only increased.

DescriptionTen of 12 sections.

ClassificationsPAINTINGS