Keith Haring

I was looking at a blog I had not read before this morning and came across reference to Keith Haring, a NYC subway artist from 1980 to 1985, who died of AIDS 13 years ago. His images are very familiar. I was especially interested as I spent an afternoon in 1986 walking through an exhibit of his at a museum in Amsterdam, at the time when I was working in the Netherlands at the big cut flower auctions of Aalsmeer. I now see it is referred to as his 1986 solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. One web bio for Haring states:

Haring’s earliest critical acclaim and museum exhibitions took place in Europe, in 1985 at the Musee d’ Art Contemporain in Bordeaux and in 1985-86 at one of Europe’s most prestigious contemporary art venues, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

The display was immense. Room after room of floor-to-ceiling canvasses with bright-coloured cartoony stick people, some with extraordinary privates. I remember not having enough change for both a T-shirt and a bus ride home. I figured the 15 km or so hike was not worth it. [Dumb kid. Same dumb kid who didn’t spend the 25 bucks a few weeks earlier in Paris to drink a botle of wine from the year he was born 23 years before.] I left the museum without catching the artists name, most of all from being overwhelmed with the art. I think I came upon the exhibition after looking and asking directions to the Van Gogh museum. People only kindly but inexplicably told me how to find the “Vin (hork)-aw-(hork)” musuem…so I never found the place.