An artist’s radiance redeemed

In the early ‘80s, Stuart Ross, then an aspiring writer-director living in an East Village storefront, emerged from the Astor Place subway stop and was greeted by a young artist passing out buttons. Outlined in white against a black background was a baby surrounded by radiant lines, similar in style to the graffiti then omnipresent on the messy, pulsating streets.

The renegade was Keith Haring, who, in a few short years, would ride that funky street beat to international fame and fortune -- a meteoric rise cut short by the artist’s death from complications of AIDS in 1990 at age 31.

The button found its way into a small blue box of ephemera, where it remained until 1998 when Ross, who by then had a hit, “Forever Plaid,” under his belt, got a call from Debra Barsha, a composer friend. She was working on a musical about Haring’s life. Did Ross know of someone who could write the book -- a musical -- about the short, frenetic life of an artist? At first, Ross was reluctant, uncertain whether a fresh musical hook could be found to match the subject matter. Then he started reading through Haring’s voluminous journals.

“I kept finding voices of longing in them,” Ross recalls, “wants and needs and feelings of neglect. Just as Eliza [in “My Fair Lady”] needed a room somewhere, Keith needed love and respect and space to keep working. The two years between his diagnosis of AIDS and his death, Keith tripled his complete artistic output. I wanted to discover how he made that decision.”

The result is “Radiant Baby,” a new musical opening next Sunday at the Public Theater, directed by George C. Wolfe, in a production that has been enhanced with backing from entertainment mogul David Geffen and DreamWorks. Geffen said he received a CD of music from the show, and based on that and his admiration for Wolfe, decided to provide “a little less than a million dollars.” Geffen has not been involved in creative aspects of “Radiant Baby” and, in fact, has not yet seen the show.

“I have great faith in George and his creative team,” says Geffen, who plans to see the show next week. “I did this [provided backing] because of my admiration for George and his passion for the project.”

“Radiant Baby” traces the spiritual journey of Haring from small-town nerd to Pop art superstar through the 1980s, a decade driven in New York City in part by the feverish rhythms of a burgeoning dance scene and an overheated art market.

At a time when the drug of choice is “more of everything,” Haring (Daniel Reichard) finds a playground for his appetites and ambitions: the pretty boys of the dance clubs and bathhouses, a guerrilla defiance of the city’s anti-graffiti laws, and a social life that soon includes palling around with Pop art czar Andy Warhol and new sensation Madonna.

The story of his life unfolds in a series of art installations, celebrating a manic city at a manic time, with its break-dancing ghetto kids and flamboyant tabloid stars such as Donald Trump and Mayor Ed Koch; and the family Haring carves out for himself: boyfriend Carlos (Aaron Lohr), best friend Kwong (Keong Sim) and long-suffering office manager Amanda (Kate Jennings Grant).

“Musicals are all about rhythm, and there’s a velocity with which Keith lived his life.... Keith was this charming mix of awkwardness with the world and incredible charisma, a combination of play, magic and fearlessness,” Wolfe says. “Keith hit it big when he was in his 20s, a huge dose of instant international fame when there was all this money, and artists could be rock stars.

“I thought it would be fascinating to explore what fame delivers to you, what it means to go from this geek to everybody wanting to sleep with you. What do you do with that power?”

Ross, who has worked extensively in Southern California musical theater and is best known as the director-writer of “Forever Plaid,” says his book for the musical was inspired by Haring’s art and journals, John Gruen’s “Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography” and his own recollection of the ‘80s. In fact, it was the publication of the Gruen biography in 1991 that kicked off the idea of the musical, with Ira Gasman (“The Life”) first tackling the book and writing lyrics. Gasman took the fledgling effort to Barsha at the recommendation of a friend, the late director Joe Layton. Gasman then dropped out “for personal reasons,” Barsha says.

Ross came aboard “The Radiant Baby” project as book writer and lyricist in 1998. A year later, Wolfe offered the team a home at the Public, where he is artistic director.

It was not until this time that the project received the crucial cooperation of the Haring estate, which had been ambivalent about the project. The estate administrators include Haring’s father, Allen, who encouraged his son’s artistic ambitions, as well as Julia Gruen, Haring’s longtime office manager and the biographer’s daughter.

“Keith was like a son to us,” says John Gruen, who became familiar with the artist through his daughter. “While I thought ‘Radiant Baby’ was a great idea when it was proposed to me after a reading I did of my book in Sag Harbor, Julia was not enthusiastic. She’s protective of Keith’s image and his immediate family, who just didn’t want to dredge all this up again.... Once she realized it was going to be as much about Keith the artist as the fellow who loved to dance and had many lovers, then she was finally persuaded.”

Haring’s wild social world is unquestionably celebrated in the show, particularly in scenes set at the Paradise Garage, a 1980s gay haunt that was a sweaty and intemperate temple of sex, drugs and dance. It’s here that Haring, having come to study at Manhattan’s School of Visual Art -- from conservative Kutztown, Pa., via Pittsburgh -- finds acceptance, morphing from awkward wallflower to popular party boy. Barsha’s songs are a retro blend of the hip-hop music of the time.

“I wanted the music to match his drawings,” says the composer, who worked in that milieu as a studio backup singer and whose own songs have been recorded by, among others, funk master George Clinton. “Some people didn’t like the sound coming out of the clubs, but I thought it was fantastic because it was so dance-centered.”

It was at the Paradise Garage that Haring homed in on the populist leitmotif of his one-man art movement. He festooned the club -- as he also did for subway stops and sidewalks -- with the simple cartoon-like sketches brimming with everyday life: dogs barking, phones ringing, people at work and play, eating, drinking, dancing, having sex. His drawings would also convey blunt political messages, such as those assailing apartheid, Ronald Reagan’s politics and the iconic “silence equals death” battle cry of AIDS activists.

“It was at Paradise that Keith discovered the need to bring your art to the dance and the dance to your art,” Ross says. “That was the big theme in his life.... There were no rules, just this joy and innocence and naivete that the party was going to last forever.”

There’s trouble in Paradise, however. In a big production number, “Instant Gratification,” the looming AIDS threat is personified by a campy Bette Midler-like nurse who appears amid the revelers. “There was this incredible sexual freedom, some might say, sexual narcissism -- ‘I want it, I’m going to get it, it’s about me’ -- but floating around the periphery is this bomb that’s going to drop,” says Wolfe. “It’s a terrible irony that this violent change should occur just as the gay world is exploring all these possibilities.”

A life of contradictions

One could hardly expect to find refuge from such a terrible and daunting disease in the cynical, not to mention fickle, elite social worlds that Haring had ascended with such rapidity. And in the musical, he seems ill-prepared to deal with the crisis, as petulant and temperamental as he sometimes is made out to be. But the artist finds salvation through the realization of one of his key goals: reaching as many people as possible through his art. And that always included children. Even when he was at the apex of an elite world of celebrity sex and drugs, he always found time to teach and counsel children. Thus, in the musical, a trio of kids (Anny Jules, Gabriel Enrique Alvarez, Remy Zaken) provides a Greek chorus and contrast to his brittle, self-involved universe.

“No matter how wrong he was about other things in his life -- lovers, career, money, fame -- Keith was always right about giving to kids,” Ross says.

Indeed, there were many other contradictions in Haring’s life. During his teen years, he not only had a girlfriend, but he also went through an obsessive Christian proselytizing period. Later, after he shot to fame as an outlaw, he found himself at the uncomfortable nexus of commerce and art at a time when artists’ works were hawked like commodities on the stock market.

“Keith, like many extreme personalities, was always looking for answers,” says Wolfe. “And looking to reconcile the contradictions within himself when in fact his power was in those contradictions. What he faced was what every artist faces in the conflict between wanting to break the rules and being accepted by the community whose rules you’re breaking.”

Haring’s career crisis was profoundly affected by the AIDS epidemic and his diagnosis, which forced on him -- and many peers -- a painful maturity. Just as the gay community had to evolve from being a “radiant baby” at the start of the decade to “a radiant community” at the end in order to care for its own amid the tragic toll of AIDS, so Haring had to find his own path to redemption. He did so not only by backing charitable causes -- a legacy continued through the Haring Foundation -- but also by his swan song of stunning productivity.

“What he finally realized is the only thing you have power over is to just do your work,” Wolfe says. “When AIDS entered the picture, Keith went through a brief period when he felt a loss of power. And then he was smart enough and evolved enough and had enough supportive people around him to fuel all that self-doubt and sense of finite possibility into his art.

“There is a line in the show that I totally love that came from his journals: ‘I’ve got to make a stand for joy before I disappear.’ That’s what an artist does.”