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The
Mural of Keith Haring: Tuttomondo
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Keith
Haring
Keith
Haring (1958-1990) was a young American
artist
who, starting off with "Subway
Drawings",
became famous all over the world.
These
were quickly executed, ephemeral
drawings
in chalk on temporarily blank
advertising
bill-boards in the metro subways.
Commuters,
wrapped up in their daily,
impersonal
routine of getting on and off the
train,
were drawn to the pictures, pausing to
look
at them and think about them.
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From
that moment on, Haring's
relationship
with the
artistic
movements
which
influenced his
lifestyle,
became
stronger,
as did the need
for
protest to shake up
the
traditional gallery
system:
graffiti artists,
the
new Hip Hop culture
and
the "anti-culture"
of
street artists (the
avant-garde
art
common
in New York
towards
the end of the
1980's,
which later
adopted
the name
'Street
Art'), in 1982, at Tony Shafrazy's famous gallery, Haring exhibited
his series of "tarpaulins": air-brush
painted
designs on panels of plastic sheeting used by builders on scaffolding.
These were exhibited
together
with a series of amphoras and plaster models; Haring paused in his
production of
graphic
works to throw himself into making copies of famous statues, such as
Michelangelo's
David,
and The Milo Venus', as well as copies of ancient Greek and Egyptian
amphoras. Public
commissions
from museums and cities all over the world poured in, especially those
for temporary
murals
where the figures, through their graphic simplicity, communicate to
everyone. The main
aim
of his paintings was communication, his drawings representing a
"visual language", a
living,
visual Esperanto which everyone could readily and easily understand,
with the same ease
and
simplicity with which he created his characters. Haring wanted to get
back in touch with
a
primitive phase of language where the graphic symbol merges with the
verbal one, a sort of
sequence
of ideograms: "My drawings don't try to imitate life, they try to
create life...that's a
much
more so-called primitive idea... I don't use colours and lines to try
to look life-like".
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The
Pisa's Mural (1989)
The
idea of creating a mural in Pisa happened by
chance
when a young Pisan student met Haring in
the
street of New York. The theme is that of peace
and
harmony in the world, which can be read through
the
links and divisions between the 30 figures which,
like
a puzzle, occupy 180 square metres of the south
wall
of the church of St. Anthony.
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Each
figure represents
a
different aspect of peace in the world: the "human"
scissors are the image of solidarity between
Man
in defeating the serpent (that is evil),
which
is already eating the head of the
figure
next to it; the woman with a baby
in
her arms represents maternity, and the
two
men supporting the dolphin refer to
Man's
relationship with nature.
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Choosing
subtle
colours, toning down the violent
colours
which had always been
characteristic
of his work, Haring takes his
inspiration
from the colours of the buildings
in
Pisa and of the town generally, to create
a
work which would be in harmony with
its
social and environmental setting. It is one of the very few outdoor
public
works
created by Haring for permanent
display,
not ephemeral and destined to be
used
only as one in a series of temporary
mass
communications. In fact, he spent
longer
producing it, a full week, than the
one
or two days it took him to paint most
other
murals. On the first day, working on
his
own, and without any preparatory
sketches,
Haring drew the black outline. For
the
rest of the week, he was assisted by
students
and craftsmen from the Caparol
Center,
the suppliers of the acrylic tempera
paint,
selected because it keeps its colour
for
a long time, filling in the outlines. The
mural's
title is 'Tuttomondo" a word which
sums
up the artist's constant pursuit of
interaction
with the public, represented in
this
case by the yellow figure which is
walking
or running in the centre of the
composition
on the same level as a passer-by.
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The
30 figures in the mural evoke Haring's
typical
vitality, and his ceaseless creative
energy
which allowed him to create and
leave
behind this anthem to life only a few
months
before his death from AIDS.
Where
it is:
Witten
by: Roberta Cecchi
Photography
by: Antonio Bardelli and Claudio Pitchen
Keith
Haring Found >
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