The Universe of Keith Haring (2007)

65% of critics liked it
(20 reviews)
72% of users liked it
(236 ratings)

Artist and designer Keith Haring created work that bridged the gap between high art and pop culture during his short but influential career. Haring's simple outline drawings of characters without features were often loaded with meaning even if they seemed outwardly naïve, and while his canvases hung… More Artist and designer Keith Haring created work that bridged the gap between high art and pop culture during his short but influential career. Haring's simple outline drawings of characters without features were often loaded with meaning even if they seemed outwardly naïve, and while his canvases hung in major art galleries, his work was also embraced by pop musicians such as Grace Jones and Duran Duran, he created murals for public installations, and his illustrations adorned T-shirts and watches. Haring also created images for charitable and political groups, and he was at the peak of his fame when he succumbed to AIDS-related illness in 1990, at the age of 32. The Universe of Keith Haring is a documentary which examines the life and career of this influential figure in contemporary pop art, and features interviews with his friends, family, and colleagues, including Yoko Ono, David LaChapelle, Fab Five Freddy, Hans Meyer, Junior Vasquez, and many more. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 30 min.
Directed By: Christina Clausen
Genres: Musical & Performing Arts, Documentary

In Theaters: Apr 1, 2008 Wide
On DVD: Feb 10, 2009
Studio: Arthouse Films

Critic Reviews

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
It is the passion and commitment we see in the artist himself that makes the most lasting impression.
Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
Utilizing copious film footage of her puckish subject and new interviews with Haring's contemporaries, gallerists and mentors, director Christina Clausen makes her fascinating movie as big-hearted, city-centric and energetic as its subject.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
As directed by Rome-based Christina Clausen, the film is loving but shallow. We learn a lot about minor details of Haring's life (his dad helped him deliver newspapers in Kutztown) but little about what makes his art so popular.
Nathan Lee, New York Times
Keith Haring was not a great artist. He might not even have been a very good one. But he was the right person in the right place at the right time.
Brian Miller, Village Voice
Equally a portrait of the artist and a portrait of a decade, this celebratory documentary makes the short, accelerated life of Keith Haring (1958-1990) inseparable from that short, accelerated period we know as '80s New York.
Sebastian Smee, Boston Globe
Ataut collage of contemporary and archival footage with frank, open-hearted interviews.
Holly Grigg-Spall, Film4
Disappointingly pedestrian take on Keith Haring's radical art.
James Christopher, Times [UK]
The archive footage reveals a deadpan sense of humour and a surreal and marvellous indifference to the ghastly trappings of fame.
Andrew Pulver, Guardian [UK]
An entertaining and informative documentary.
Matt Bochenski, Little White Lies
If this really is the universe of Keith Haring, it's a strangely sterile one. Which is never a word you could apply to his work.
Chris Barsanti, PopMatters
...digs under the artist's pop veneer and goes all the way to the surface, finding some kind of meaning in simplicity.
David Noh, Film Journal International
Christina Clausen's documentary is a briskly paced, affectionate tribute which makes full use of interviews with Haring intimates (although I could have done without that introductory artsy zeroing in on the interviewees' eyeballs).
Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Boxoffice Magazine
It's hard to say Clausen's done anything original here.
Aaron Cutler, Slant Magazine
The Universe of Keith Haring is content to slide on hagiography and shortchange cultural critique.
Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York
Haring's art may be simple, but an homage to him needn't be.
Ted Fry, Seattle Times
An affectionate and absorbing look at the premiere artist of the '80s downtown New York art scene, whose images quickly penetrated popular culture around the world.
Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Although first-time director Christina Clausen presents this era of bad art, bad music and boring celebrities without judging it, we can't help but feel we are witnessing the last party in the mansion of pop art before its imminent collapse.