The legacy of Keith Haring, one of the most celebrated New York artists of the 1970s and ‘80s, is being marked by a major art event to honor the 50^th anniversary of his birth. Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, who represents the artist's estate, together with the Keith Haring Foundation, hired a team of artists to recreate a mural that briefly flagged the Houston Street margin of the downtown art scene.

Photo: Peggy Roalf

The mural, Haring's first large-scale outdoor project, became an instant landmark after he painted it during the summer of 1982. It was only up for a few months because its neon colors rapidly faded under the blazing sun; Haring painted it out before it further disintegrated. But it remained a mental imprint for many people in the downtown art scene at the time.

In 1989, Keith Haring described the project to his biographer John Gruen. "When I was still living on Broome Street and my studio was in the 611 Broadway building I walked past this wall on the corner of Houston Street and the Bowery almost every day....It used to be a handball court so it was a free-standing concrete wall with an accumulation of about three feet of garbage in front being held in place by a small fence. It was a pretty disgusting, rat infested, almost a garbage dump and an eyesore in a neighborhood where an eyesore wasn't a problem. We're talking about the corner of Houston and the Bowery which was a desolate area to begin with so we decided that we didn't have to ask permission because the wall was covered with garbage and we thought that if we cleaned up the garbage then no one was going to ask us whether we had permission to paint it. So me and Juan together shovel the garbage into the bags and fill, literally, forty or fifty bags full of garbage that are lined up there on the street. We then proceed to use a ladder and paint the wall entirely white with fluorescent Day-Glo enamel on top. I did this mural in two days or something. The first day was spent just putting the color on and then the next day doing the black lines. The fluorescent paint was so bright that when the sun hit the wall it was glowing and it was just this incredible monolith." Excerpted from Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography (1981) by John Gruen.

The mural has been repainted by Gotham Scenic, using the photographic documentation of the original along with paint samples the artists collected by chipping away at the overpainted surface. As New York's contemporary art world continues its migration to the Lower East Side, the mural again proclaims the territory, and recalls Haring's often repeated maxim, "Art is for everyone."

Haring, his influence on pop art, and the downtown art scene are the subject of a documentary, "The Universe of Keith Haring," which will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 30. The film by Christina Clausen combines the music of the era, photo stills, videos and excerpts from interviews conducted with Haring and others. It offers an intimate view of the artist and his circle, which included Madonna, Junior Vasquez, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David LaChapelle and gallery owner Tony Shafrazi. For schedule and tickets, please visit the website. For more about the mural project, read Erica Orden's recent article in The New York Sun.