Article
French
ID: <
10.3406/hista.2012.3404>
·
DOI: <
10.3406/hista.2012.3404>
Abstract
Keith Haring’s Isotypes : From Cjraffiti to Communication Graphics The summer of 1980 witnessed the first appearance of the small figures that would become iconic in the work of American artist Keith Haring. With their simple and monochrome outline, their absence of faces, details or perspective, these figures evoke the standardized vocabulary of international official signage. Haring’s figures are thus thought of as instruments of an immediately efficient universal visual communication. This article explores the surprising links between Haring’s signature figures and Isotypes, a series of icons which were created in the 1930s by German economist and philosopher Otto Neurath. While both share the ambition of being a universal picture language, they are not without contradictions : universal in their reception, they were reserved in their articulation for their creators.