In the summer of 1982, Keith Haring with the help of friends cleared away bags and bags of garbage from the corner of Houston and Bowery.  As he explained “It was pretty disgusting, rat infested, almost a garbage dump, and an eyesore in a neighborhood where an eyesore wasn’t a problem… so we decided that we didn’t have to ask permission because the wall was covered with garbage and we that if we cleaned up the garbage then no one was going to ask us whether we had permission to paint it.”

Last year on the 50th anniversary of Keith Haring’s birth, Deitch Projects in association with The Keith Haring Foundation and Goldman Properties re-created Haring’s mural.

Experience it…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/contortyourself/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Start on the left with the figure enclosed in the gray tiled room and let the narrative unfold.  (Notice Os Gemeos tag in the upper left and above is the mural’s dedication to NY graffiti artist Dash Snow who died while the mural was being painted.  Snow’s tag appears in the mural on the train station wall.)

Notice the boy on his bed using a peacock as an ear piece while another sits on his back.  He’s near the edge of a large circular waterfall which is filled creatures, one wearing fish mask (look closely at his shirt).  On the bridge crossing the waterfall, a family stands stacked on one another with a whale balanced on top.  A young woman lies on the whale back and her shirt turns into bubbles drifting upward.  The whale’s tail wraps around a floating train track.  Follow the N train with a large boy riding on top past a house with 2 boys (the twins?) squished inside and into a train station that turns into a boat.  A rainbow burst fills the right side of the mural and while a boy sits upside down partially submerged in the vibrant strokes of color, a bike rider and a clock carrier move across it’s surface.  Below stands a trojan horse whose neck opens like a cameo locket to reveal the faces of a boy and girl.