Two of Keith Haring’s Painted Cars Roll Into New York for the First Time

Graffiti is a game. Artists win by getting the most eyes on their tags. That’s why New York’s subway made such a great canvas. Keith Haring’s signature was his recognizable style, not his name—rendering him a forebear in street art’s evolution from graffiti. Haring drew thousands of works throughout subway stations between 1980 and 1985, as New York started pulling painted trains. By then, he had chosen a different moving target anyways: cars.

Now, two of the four vehicles that Haring painted in the decade before his untimely death are making their New York debut together at Free Parking, a new West Village gallery by CART Dept., a platform dedicated to spotlighting the automobile as an art object, founded by noted collector Larry Warsh. Its upcoming exhibition, “Keith Haring: In The Street,” will celebrate the release of the book , out on Phaidon April 22.

Warsh owns both the bright 1963 Buick Special and the imposing 1971 Series III Land Rover going on display April 9–19. He typically stores them both in a warehouse just outside the city, a representative told me over email.

Haring, however, never owned either. He painted the Land Rover in 1983 for Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival. Warsh acquired the car directly from its producers. The event’s name features amid the vehicle’s dense tangle of symbols from Haring’s semiotics-driven lexicon.

That all-terrain artwork made its first public appearance at Los Angeles’s Peterson Automotive Museum 10 years ago alongside the Buick joining it in New York this week. That Buick is actually the first car that Haring ever painted, as a gift for the architect of his iconic Soho Pop Shop, who Warsh believes was Moore & Pennoyer.

New York is enjoying a bit of Haring-mania this spring, courtesy of the Brant Foundation, which is hosting a show of Haring’s foundational works through May 31. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will open “Keith Haring in 3D” in June, coinciding with the Phaidon book, edited by Warsh. The Buick will leave for the Bentonville museum on April 14, but the Land Rover will remain on view throughout the exhibition.

To mark the New York debut of these cars, CART Dept. is bringing together some of street art’s greatest living names for a series of panels. Choreographer and longtime New Yorker Muna Tseng will share “Stories from the Street” with downtown cultural critic Carlo McCormick on April 11. Powerhouse Arts leader Eric Shiner will link with muralist Marka27 on April 14 to discuss “When Street Art Becomes Sculpture.” Warsh will explore Haring’s time in New York with the artist’s definitive biographer Brad Gooch on April 18.