Keith Haring's Line: Race and the Performance of Desire

ISBN: 1478009535

Author: Montez, Ricardo

Condition: New

In the thirty years since his death, Keith Haring-a central presence on the New York downtown scene of the 1980s-has remained one of the most popular figures in contemporary American art. In one of the first book-length treatments of Harings artistry, Ricardo Montez traces the drawn and painted line that was at the center of Harings artistic practice and with which the artist marked canvases, subway walls, and even human flesh. Keith Harings Line unites performance studies, critical race studies, and queer theory in an exploration of cross-racial desire in Harings life and art. Examining Harings engagements with artists such as dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, graffiti artist LA II, and iconic superstar Grace Jones, Montez confronts Harings messy relationships to race-making and racial imaginaries, highlighting scenes of complicity in order to trouble both the positive connotations of inter-racial artistic collaboration and the limited framework of appropriation.