{"id":10453,"date":"2025-04-21T01:37:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=10453"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:21:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T19:21:36","slug":"apocalypse-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2025\/04\/21\/apocalypse-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Apocalypse Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a time of immense social unease, the Apocalypse series is strikingly relevant \u2014 it is complex and chaotic, but that complexity and chaos is the point.<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

by Eman Sadiq<\/h2>\n

In <\/span>December 2024<\/span><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>the art series <\/span>Apocalypse <\/span><\/i>(1988), brain-child of beatnik William S. Burroughs and artist Keith Haring, was donated to the City College of New York (CCNY) by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation. <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> comprises ten works of art by Haring paired with writing by Burroughs. On March 4, 2025, CCNY unveiled all ten pieces and held an event honoring the artists\u2019 uniquely layered and reflective body of work. Five of the pieces are now on permanent display at CCNY\u2019s LGBTQ+ Student Center.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy Brandon Vallejo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just before his work on <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Haring<\/span> <\/a>was diagnosed with AIDS, and it\u2019s clear that this diagnosis played a role in the series\u2019 themes. Certainly, <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> is colored in a darker hue than Haring\u2019s famed <\/span>subway drawings<\/span>. E<\/span><\/a>ven if Haring\u2019s art style is distinctive, <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> is especially jarring, partly because it is as much of a social critique as it is an ambitious artistic undertaking. The work features existential conflicts between religion and society, life and death, sex and disease, joy and destruction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The very title of the collection seems to despair for a doomed present and lost future; the titular \u201capocalypse\u201d most literally refers to the havoc wreaked by not only AIDS but also a health department and federal government neglecting work on life-saving drug treatment. Yet the term \u201capocalypse,\u201d from the perspective of Haring and Burroughs, was also a dig at the doomsaying narrative so popular at the time \u2014 a narrative infused with vitriol toward the LGBTQ+ community. For Haring, <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> reified into art AIDS patients\u2019 feelings of helplessness, while Burroughs\u2019s accompanying written reflections articulate a singularly man-made apocalypse:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The first \u201cpage\u201d of Apocalypse (courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe final Apocalypse is when every man sees what he sees, feels what he feels, and hears what he hears. The creatures of all your dreams and nightmares are right here, right now, solid as they ever were or ever will be, electric vitality of careening subways faster faster faster stations flash by in a blur.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pan God of Panic, whips screaming crowds, as millions of faces look up at the torn sky:<\/span><\/p>\n

OFF THE TRACK! OFF THE TRACK!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For modern-day viewers of <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>, the value of Haring and Burroughs\u2019s work may not seem immediately explicit. However, inherent to <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> is a clear acknowledgement of both societal and governmental failings, and this awareness offers a potent point of reflection. The last line of Burroughs\u2019s writing for <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>\u2019s tenth and final print invokes the ancient Greek god Pan: \u201cCaught in New York beneath the animals of the village, the Piper pulled down the sky.\u201d Burroughs recognizes Pan principally as \u201cGod of Panic,\u201d though the reference to Pan runs deeper than disorder and chaos. Among other things, the \u201cdeath\u201d of Pan, as popularized by early Roman writers like Plutarch, was regarded as coincident with the rise of a Christian order. Ironically, <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> plays on religious themes in a way that suggests Christianity\u2019s (and religion\u2019s) contradictory coexistence with violence and destruction, making invocations of Pan ironic yet intentional.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 10th print of Apocalypse (courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>\u2019s disturbing imagery is analogous to the instability of today\u2019s world. It seems that we inhabit an increasingly pre-apocalyptic America where both physical and metaphorical storms ravage cities and where government serves as a bulwark protecting not its wider citizenry but the interests of a select few. AIDS activists in 1988 marched with the slogan \u201cSilence = Death.\u201d Today, those words ring just as true, even if the death in question is not necessarily physical. The enduring appeal of <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> lies in its purposeful accentuation of conflict, pain, and division \u2014 in a society unmoored from reason and empathy, Haring\u2019s symbolic prints and Burroughs\u2019s visceral descriptions speak to <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>\u2019s power as not just a moving work of art but also a valuable social commentary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucas Andahl, an Art History graduate student at CCNY who helped organize the <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> exhibit space, hopes that the series pushes students to \u201cchannel any of their emotions during this time into forms of creative expression, pursuit for activism and a drive to continue to learn about the history in hopes to change the future.\u201d For Andahl, the exhibition of <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i> is incredibly timely and mirrors the tumult of our current political discourse, \u201cin which it can feel very apocalyptic every day,\u201d especially when \u201cwitnessing the attack on the LGBTQ+ communities, as well as the attempt to erase programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion.\u201d Through <\/span>Apocalypse<\/span><\/i>, Andahl hopes students understand that \u201cthrough art, activism and collaboration we can project our voices to initiate change,\u201d just as Burroughs and Haring \u2014 in the midst of their fraught political moment \u2014 expressed \u201cscenes of chaos, destruction, and despair\u201d along with \u201cimagery of hope, strength, and perseverance.\u201d Following Haring and Burroughs\u2019s example, employing creativity to propel societally-minded action is certainly a meaningful goal, whether you\u2019re living in 1988 or in 2025. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a time of immense social unease, the Apocalypse series is strikingly relevant \u2014 it is complex and chaotic, but that complexity and chaos is the point. by Eman Sadiq In December 2024, the art series Apocalypse (1988), brain-child of beatnik William S. Burroughs and artist Keith Haring, was donated to the City College of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":10454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-city-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10505,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10453\/revisions\/10505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}