The CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Keith Haring's iconic exhibition during European Heritage Days. The world-renowned American artist, who died in 1990 at just 31 years old, became an icon himself through his lightning-fast artistic trajectory and invention of universal pictograms. Four decades later, the museum reflects on the lasting impact, memories, and legacy Haring left in Bordeaux.
In December 1985, Bordeaux's walls were still blackened with soot, Jacques Chaban-Delmas ruled over the reportedly sleepy city, and the CAPC had just become a contemporary art museum the previous year. Museum director Jean-Louis Froment shocked his community by handing over the Laîné warehouse to a 27-year-old troublemaker who had built his reputation at breakneck speed in New York's subway system: Keith Haring. "It was an incredibly bold gamble," explains Sandra Patron, current CAPC director, who is celebrating this anniversary with a temporary exhibition.
"When the museum was created, there was no audience for contemporary art in Bordeaux," Patron notes. "At that time, Haring was a star in the United States, but less known in France. He was associated with graffiti art, which was heavily criticized here. I think Jean-Louis Froment's goal was both to shake up Bordeaux, which remained conservative, and to send a message to young people by offering forms and experiments they could embrace."
Jean Eimer, a journalist from Sud Ouest newspaper, painted a vivid portrait of the Pennsylvania-born artist at the time. "Keith Haring is a tall young man with a deep, measured voice. He doesn't have much hair left. He wears campus glasses and leather-studded jeans. He looks like Stan Laurel and Platini, and in some ways like McEnroe." Eimer reminded readers that the young man was already a star just four years after his first solo exhibition in 1981.
The journalist's testimony becomes particularly valuable when describing Haring at work, especially on his "Ten Commandments" – enormous, joyful, and blasphemous panels painted in just five days in the museum's great nave. As was his habit, Haring drew to the backdrop of pop music. "And the Yankee Michelangelo got to work. Shaken by mindless music consumed at full volume, he remained perched on his lift for as long as it took for the work to be completed."
"We were coming out of a period where the top of contemporary art featured ultra-conceptual artists. And this guy arrived and threw a huge stone into the pond," recalls one observer. Eimer wrote that this was "an exhibition that disturbs," noting that while he himself was amused and seduced by the power of the imagery, he acknowledged that viewers might leave "shocked, dazed, perhaps scandalized" or "conquered."
Jean Duplantier, known as Jofo, a Bordeaux artist who was a young architecture student at the time, still places himself firmly in the second category. "It marked me enormously. It marked an entire generation," he remembers. The exhibition represented what many called "art of the people" – accessible, vibrant, and revolutionary in its approach to contemporary art in a traditionally conservative city. The impact of Haring's five-day creative explosion in Bordeaux continues to resonate with artists and art lovers four decades later.
