Acid fun

Clean and unpolluted solid colors are not synonymous with plain. Far from it—one single solid color can be as powerful and complex as one of Tintoretto’s monumental paintings.

Depth comes from the concept that it is a codex ready to be entered by whoever is willing to do so. But sometimes, one—or several—pure lines and colors are confused with banality. That can be true and used for the benefit of snake charmers; they are the best promoters of such confusion.

Best Buddies, silkscreen, Keith Haring, 1987

As I wrote in one of my last notes about Lucio Fontana, the line is thin. The same thing happens with Keith Haring’s pop art. It’s so easy to get lost between the realms of the plain and the synthesis of a complex idea. Haring’s work walks in the latter, but he reminds us that one line can become a whole labyrinth.

When I think about his vision and the pop art proposal, I can’t avoid questioning myself: where do a cartoon, an ad design, and an artwork start—and where do they end? Where do they touch each other, and can they belong to one, or all three systems at once?

These are rhetorical questions—not to be answered, or at least not easily. They require some effort, and the answers are yours to keep. Anyway, when you find them, please dance and enjoy with the same acid fun as Haring’s characters.