The Universe of Keith Haring.

"Christina Clausen's The Universe of Keith Haring will please those who are familiar with the artist and moderately enlighten those who wonder who painted the mural that temporarily stands on Houston and Bowery," writes Nick McCarthy in the L Magazine. "It's a nicely packaged, if not completely inspired, hagiography of 80s East Village artist-turned-tragic international art-star Keith Haring."

"Like Andy Warhol, whom he revered and later befriended, Haring was the visual artist as social phenomenon, connecting the gay scene to hip-hop, Madonna to museum culture, the democratic street to the rarefied art world." Nathan Lee in the New York Times: "If his story is only marginal to the history of art, it looms large in the cultural history of our time, which Haring (who died of AIDS in 1990, at 31) saw far too little of."

Updated through 10/31.

"[T]he film looks to Haring as an artistic role model for his preternatural talent, of course, but also for his infectious lust for life that had him as committed to social activism and teaching children as to his latest painting," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "What made Haring a visionary was not his marketing savvy (though that was a bonus gift picked up from the 'King' himself, Andy Warhol), but his work's demonstration that art could be daring, fun, and accessible, all at once. Which makes it all the more tragic that Haring died of AIDS at the age of 31 in 1990. There's not a lot of drama in Universe, but when the end comes it's devastating, leaving only the memory and muse of Haring to keep alive the monumental body of work that was only just begun."

"I lived in Manhattan during those years, and his youthful energy surely made the city a better place," writes Brian Miller in the Voice. "Today, his art holds up less well on museum walls than as cheerful hospital murals - instruments of healing, Haring believed. Maybe that's ironic, or maybe we just live in unhealthier times."

At Slant, Aaron Cutler argues that Universe "is content to slide on hagiography and shortchange cultural critique.... Though the film does a decent job of conveying Haring's Manhattan lifestyle, a scene dominated by young, bohemian queers and bisexuals, and one in which he hung out with figures like Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol and Madonna, it turns grating when the filmmaking style tries to compete with its content."

"Christina Clausen offers a profile as quickly and easily consumed as any of the bright, plastic merchandise at the Pop Shop," writes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York. "Haring's art may be simple, but an homage to him needn't be."

Update, 10/28: Mary Lyn Maiscott talks with Clausen for VF Daily.

Update, 10/31: "Recent documentaries about New York avant-garde artists Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson and Jack Smith have emphasized their otherness, and how they struggled to find a social niche even in a city as nurturing to weirdoes as NYC," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "But Warhol and company were in many ways products of the 50s and 60s; The Universe Of Keith Haring looks at one of the quintessential 80s artists, and how the scene changed by the time he emerged. Unlike his forerunners, Haring was fully engaged with the world around him."

Posted by dwhudson at October 27, 2008 1:47 AM