BROOKLYN COLLEGE–On display in Boylan Hall’s art gallery is “Apocalypse”, a 1988 collaboration between renowned pop artist Keith Haring and author William S. Burroughs. The collection showcases some of Haring’s final works, which was curated by Seung Hee Kim and made possible by the donation of the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation.
“This series is a marriage of art and the written word,” said Elliot Leonard, the founder of the Leonard-Litz Foundation. “It was the context of this art that was very different from his prior work. This was a departure, and it was his [Haring’s] apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse” was created during the height of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, and Haring himself was also diagnosed with this illness, which was viewed as fatal at the time. The series of paintings was Haring’s reflection on his own diagnosis, and on death and destruction.
Each painting by Haring was accompanied by a short poem by William S. Burroughs, an influential postmodern author and one of the key figures of the Beat Generation. The Beat Generation comes from the term “Beatniks,” which rejected the mainstream culture of post-World War II, paving the way for the “counterculture” movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
