No. 18 / 20 · Movements, by Gastón Solís
Subway Ritual
downtown street drawings
The New Museum · New York · 1984

The first time I saw a Haring drawing on an actual subway wall was at the West 4th Street station in October 1983. I was twenty-two, in the city for a long weekend, on my way uptown to see a girl who turned out to be busy.
Every city has two undergrounds. The first is the one the engineers built: tunnels, platforms, tiled walls, the scheduled darkness beneath the sidewalk. The second is the one the body carries with it everywhere, the private tunnel that opens only behind a locked door and closes again when the locked door opens. The platform and the chamber share a tile, a posture, a hurry, a relief; scuffed by bodies that had somewhere else to be and briefly did not.
The girl, when I finally reached her apartment, was on the toilet. I waited in the kitchen.
Provenance
The artist’s studio, New York; private collection, New York, by 1983; lent by the above to The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, for Subway Ritual, 1984; thence by descent; sale, Phillips New York, New Now, 4 March 2009, lot 72; the present collection.



















