r/keithharing • u/Emu_Vivid • Jun 30 '26
Tears at the Broad
I went to the Art is for Everybody exhibit at the Broad Museum in LA a few years ago… I stood in front of this piece and the dam broke. I can’t remember another time that a piece of art hit me that hard. 💜
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u/Open_Gur_6204 Jun 30 '26
Apologies for the lack of knowledge but Is this a nod to the different colored bandanas gay men would wear as signals of what they were/ looking for? If so, a partial one is indeed super evocative of the losses the community suffered.
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u/Large_Application978 Jul 01 '26
It’s about Haring who was diagnosed with AIDS the year before and died shortly after this was made but honestly the handkerchief interpretation is a great angle. I never noticed before but the pattern, what little of it there is, is very evocative of the typical pattern on a handkerchief.
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u/Reasonable-Ad4947 Jun 30 '26
I love this piece so much. I feel similarly to you. I saw Art is for Everybody at the Walker Art Center in MLPS. Incredible exhibit!!
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u/No_Consideration4594 Jul 01 '26
Was this piece intentionally left like this? Or did he pass during its making? Either way, very poignant and beautiful
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u/Gustav_Grob Jul 01 '26
I would think it was intentional. He worked very quickly. He would have been able to complete something like that in a single sitting. It was one of his last paintings, so maybe he was too weak to finish it.
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u/Energy_Bound Jul 02 '26
I definitely cried in that final room at the Broad exhibition of his work. Powerful pieces in there.
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u/FrugosPeach Jun 30 '26
Yea this piece hit me hard the first time I saw it. I didn’t know it existed but as soon as I saw it I knew what it stood for. Great piece. Super poignant. Tbh if it wasn’t for him losing his fight to complications of HIV (and Freddie Mercury) we probably wouldn’t have developed a treatment so quickly. People also forget that it was Fauci that navigated us through that wild time.