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Artist or Maker: Keith Haring (1958-1990)
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Provenance: O'Hara Gallery, New York
Private collection, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner
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Exhibited: New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Keith Haring: Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings, June-July 1997.
Osaka, Kirin Plaza, Basquiat, Haring, Scharf, August-September 1998, p. 33 (illustrated).
Milan, Fondazione Triennale di Milano, The Keith Haring Show, September 2005-January 2006, p. 243, no. 87 (illustrated in color).
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Literature: Keith Haring, exh. cat., Dexia Banque International à Luxembourg, 2007, p. 173 (illustrated).
Keith Haring, exh. cat., Musée art contemporain Lyon, 2008, p. 212 (illustrated).
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Notes: "It's treating him (Warhol) like he was part of American culture, like Mickey Mouse was" (D. Drenegar, "Art and Life: An Interview with Keith Haring," Columbia Art Review, Spring 1988, p. 46).
Executed in 1985, and painted during an extremely fertile time for Keith Haring, Andy Mouse pays tribute to his close friend, hero and mentor, Andy Warhol, to whom Haring was introduced following his second exhibition in New York at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1984. This historic encounter between Warhol and Haring brought together their mutual fascination with an "Art for Everybody," and an admiration for Walt Disney, a man who inspired both artists. A friendship that developed almost immediately, Haring often visited Andy at the Factory and would trade works with him. Drawing on Warhol's legacy, and similar to Disney, Haring created a world for both adults and children, in which art became a visual vocabulary and one that could be shared with everyone, as seen here on the animated canvas of Andy Mouse. Believing that cartoon figures could be an component of fine art, and regarding Andy Warhol and Walt Disney as heroes, Haring's exuberant and enchanting Andy Mouse bonded together the work of these three significant artists.
Adaptating of one the most internationally recognized and celebrated cartoon characters, Haring presents the viewer with his hybrid Andy Mouse cartoon against the backdrop of a New Coke label; the product introduced the same year Andy Mouse was executed. This large-scale piece, evoking his wall drawings and subway posters, skillfully combines three different symbols of commerce -- Coke, Mickey Mouse and Andy Warhol -- with a deceptively simple palette of red, yellow, white and black, reintroducing the commercial colors of 1960s Pop.
Monumental in scale, Andy Mouse originated from a new body of work in which Haring focused on his passion for both drawing and mass production. Sharing with Warhol an understanding of the effect of mass media's visual dynamics, Haring intuitively understood that good mass media imagery could be seen at any size and still make a strong visual impact. The use of scale that typifies mass media imagery is atypical of fine art, yet it runs through most of Haring's art and appears as a common thread amongst his works.
Unlike the black line Haring frequently drew to define space in his work, the caricature of Andy Mouse is framed by the hard-edged white line of the New Coke label. By appropriating this brand logo and combining it with the repetitive use of the dollar sign, Haring brilliantly manipulates the concept of Pop into his own unique hand- drawn style. Both Haring and Warhol liked Coca-Cola. Warhol once described Coca-Cola, often served at Haring's openings, as a highlight of democratic equality. Swept up into the Pop scene himself and endeavoring to present iconic images in a hand-crafted way, Haring blends this classic symbol of American mass culture into his own hand- painted canvas in a playful and energetic way.
Andy Mouse is a brilliant culmination of Haring's entire oeuvre . Its bold graphic quality, complex composition and glorious color are high water marks for the artist. Andy Mouse's large scale and brilliant postmodern referencing of Pop icons such as Coke and Mickey Mouse -- by way of Andy Warhol -- mark this as a seminal Haring work which remains relevant to contemporary art today.
