An entertaining and informative documentary.
Comment
02/27/09
Universe of Keith Haring (2008)
61
%
Tomatometer
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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 fresh rating; 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 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
Disappointingly pedestrian take on Keith Haring's radical art.
02/27/09
Top CriticClick to read the article
02/27/09
Top CriticEqually 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
...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
Christina 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
It is the passion and commitment we see in the artist himself that makes the most lasting impression.
10/31/08
Top CriticKeith 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 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
Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow.
10/18/08
Top CriticIn 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
Haring’s art may be simple, but an homage to him needn’t be.
10/22/08
It's hard to say Clausen's done anything original here.
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
1 - 19 (sorted by fresh rating; UK critics are listed first)
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