Disappointingly pedestrian take on Keith Haring's radical art.
Comment
02/27/09
Universe of Keith Haring (2008)
61
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:18
Fresh:11
Rotten:7
Average Rating:5.8/10
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Theatrical Release:28-02-2009
Synopsis: No New York painter has bridged the gap between the city's vibrant street culture and its downtown galleries as brilliantly as the iconic ‘80s art-star Keith Haring. THE UNIVERSE OF KEITH HARING is... [More]
Starring: Madonna, Yoko Ono, David LaChapelle, Andy Warhol
Director: Christina Clausen
Reviews for Universe of Keith Haring
1 - 19 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top CriticThe archive footage reveals a deadpan sense of humour and a surreal and marvellous indifference to the ghastly trappings of fame.
02/27/09
Top CriticAn entertaining and informative documentary.
02/27/09
Top CriticIf 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.
02/27/09
Click to read the article
02/27/09
Top Critic...digs under the artist's pop veneer and goes all the way to the surface, finding some kind of meaning in simplicity.
11/07/08
It is the passion and commitment we see in the artist himself that makes the most lasting impression.
10/31/08
Top CriticChristina 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).
10/27/08
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.
10/24/08
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.
10/24/08
It's hard to say Clausen's done anything original here.
10/24/08
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.
10/24/08
Top CriticHaring’s art may be simple, but an homage to him needn’t be.
10/22/08
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.
10/22/08
Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow.
10/18/08
Top CriticAtaut collage of contemporary and archival footage with frank, open-hearted interviews.
10/18/08
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.
09/19/08
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.
09/18/08
In its filmic conventionality and reliance on driving musical soundtrack, The Universe of Keith Haring actually makes too little of his gift for thinking out loud in images.
09/12/08
1 - 19 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
Fresh Links
Featured
RT on YouTube 
Subscribe to RT's YouTube channel and don't miss a second of our cracking video content.
RT on Twitter
Follow Rotten Tomatoes and join us as we tweet about the week's releases.
IGN RSS Feeds