You surely know Keith Haring’s work from his effervescent stickish figures decorating everything from floor-to-ceiling walls to T-shirts to coffee mugs to earrings. But inside the second-floor men’s bathroom at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street in downtown Manhattan you’ll find what many consider his most risque work ever.
Alexxa Gotthardt over at Artsy.net recently had a chance to check out the bathroom.
Gotthardt describes:
From just outside the bathroom, the corner of a painting was visible through a frosted glass bathroom door that’d been left ajar. It shows an erect penis emanating Haring’s signature squiggles.
Then you step inside and…
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The installation, which features no shortage of cartoon penises, butts, sperms and scrotums, was painted by Haring over the course of several days in 1989 and is titled Once Upon a Time.
Goddhardt explains:
Haring titled the piece Once Upon a Time, a nod to the gay community’s halcyon days of free love. Over the course of several days, he covered every un-tiled surface of the bathroom with turgid, squirting penises of all sizes. Some are attached to buff male bodies tangled together in pleasure. Others float like happy clouds or hungry dragons. One impressively large specimen hovers over a line of small figures who are either dancing the conga or enjoying an orgy.
The bathroom isn’t actually a functioning lavatory. The sinks and toilets were removed decades ago and it was closed off for many years. It wasn’t until 2012 that the center restored the mural and opened it to the public for viewing.
Today, it serves as a monument to Haring and, as Glennda Testone, the LGBTQ Community Center’s Executive Director, says, his “vision of a world before AIDS—a celebration of gay male sexuality and resiliency at a time when mainstream America was quite terrified of gay male sexuality.”
Related: Evicted Tenants Fear NYC Developers Will Destroy Original Keith Haring Mural
Heywood Jablowme
“old men’s room”
No, I’ve seen young men go in there. 🙂
Rex Huskey
it’s closed. did you even read the article?
Heywood Jablowme
That’s a joke. But yes I saw the room many times before it was closed, I lived in NY at the time he drew it.
am_psi
I think you’re being a bit generous with the term “masterpiece”. And “erotic”. By this metric I had notebooks full of “erotic masterpieces” in junior high.
SFLeatherMan
Too bad it’s not a functioning lavatory. While it’s no Tom of Finland, I wouldn’t mind walking into a Mensroom and seeing that.
RedReady54654
Stay at home mom Kelly Richards from New York after resigning from her full time job managed to average from $6000-$8000 a month from freelancing at home… This is how she done it
4414777
??????O OPEN~JOB~START
Kieran
I doubt gay artists Leornardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would consider this a “masterpiece”, but hey, doodling dirty pictures on bathroom walls has its place too I guess.
paul dorian lord fredine
queerty, please monitor RedReady 54654 and get rid of his spam, please. as for keith’s work, it’s certainly much more creative than the usual ‘here i sit all broken-hearted’.