The Nakamura Keith Haring Collection, the only museum in the world dedicated to the collection of Keith Haring’s artwork, celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2017. This exhibition focuses on the footprints Haring left in Japan, exploring his liberating and diverse point of view in works expressing Japanese aesthetics. It also features an important mural made with 500 children at Parthenon Tama, Tokyo in 1987. This work is the culmination of an art that communicates beyond language.
On his first visit to Japan, Haring made drawings on mediums unique to Japan, such as folding screens, scrolls, kites and fans with Sumi ink. Haring had not only been influenced by his early introduction to Zen but also inspired by Eastern philosophy, including both cultural and literary elements. He experienced the height of Tokyo’s economic boom of the 80’s, and the dichotomy of ultra-modern and the traditional was both a source of fascination and inspiration for him. After the success of his revolutionary art project Pop Shop, which inherited the concept of his break out graffiti project Subway Drawings, Haring opened Pop Shop Tokyo in Aoyama, Tokyo in 1988. The shop was a sensation and many people waited in line just to get a glimpse of Haring’s pop-style.
No comments yet