Exuberant, profane, witty, and provocative, the images in this book reveal the political dimension of Keith Haring’s artistic concerns. Through his graffiti-inspired drawings, paintings, sculptures, murals, and other works, Keith Haring created an immediately recognizable visual iconography that spoke to an enormous population―gay and straight, young and old, male and female. His importance in the annals of popular culture is indisputable, but little attention has been paid to his advocacy for social justice. Haring’s political perspective is the focus of this visually arresting selection of works that traces the artist’s development and historical significance and gives new gravitas to his career. Accompanying a major exhibition at the de Young museum in San Francisco, this book features more than 130 works of art, including large-scale paintings on tarpaulin and canvas, sculptures, and subway drawings. Together they create a narrative that explores Haring’s responses to nuclear disarmament, racial inequality, capitalist excess, environmental degradation, and other prevalent social issues. Essays and conversations with writers, critics, and art dealers round out this important analysis of Haring’s life, career, and passion.

Keith Haring: The Political Line

Arts & Photography

Cox, Julian

Thompson, Robert Farris

Buchhart, Dieter

Myers-Szupinska, Julian

History & Criticism

Prestel

Conceived and designed by Sterling Ruby (born 1972) himself, Softwork is generously illustrated with dozens of full-page photographs of works from the artist's last four exhibitions, as well as many images from Ruby's studio that provide insight into the artist's working methods. Ruby makes urethane and bronze sculptures, hallucinatory color-field canvases and handmade ceramics, addressing the conflict between individual desire and social structure, and the influence of institutional architecture, both literal and figurative, on human behavior and psychology. "'Soft Work' is only a didactic term. It's not hard, it's not solid, it's malleable," Ruby told ArtInfo. "In America, there is a domesticity that is not associated with masculinity―or if it is, it's usually associated with a difference, a contradiction." Some of the works in Softwork also point to the influence of the late Mike Kelley, to whom Ruby was both studio assistant and close friend.

Sterling Ruby: Softwork

Individual Artists

Koenig Books

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Books by Myers-Szupinska, Julian