«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

In 1978, four years before he would be invited to broadcast his messages on the Times Square Spectacolor screen as part of the Public Art Fund’s “Messages to the Public” (1982–1990), a 20-year-old Haring was already expanding his practice into New York City’s streets and subways. The current exhibition’s “Public Spaces” section begins with an early series of “Cut-Ups” (1980) inspired by William S. Burroughs’s Dadaist literary technique of the same name. Motivated to challenge mainstream mass media, Haring used New York Post headlines to create provocative messages like “Reagan: Ready to Kill” and “Pope Killed for Freed Hostage.” Like Holzer, who began posting anonymous “Truisms” and “Essays” around lower Manhattan in the late 1970s, Haring’s earliest interventions involved plastering lampposts and newsstands with absurd and seditious collaged texts. 


-The Brooklyn Rail
 July 15 2013