Paint Fair, Nuts’N’Shirt

Artist Keith Haring takes a break from work in his studio making paintings for an upcoming art exhibit.

Poking around The Broad’s Keith Haring show, which is at the Walker for another week or so, led me to this photo of Haring at work. It was taken in late 1982 by Alan Tannenbaum. I feel like I’d seen images of this moment before, but this time, what caught my attention was Haring’s t-shirt.

Paint Fair, in carnival lettering with a circus tent and a frilly, scalloped, tent-like border.

Cady Noland with Diana Balton, Nuts’N’Shit, 1990, screenprint on metal, 28 3/4 x 42 1/8 in., fabricated by Big Apple Printing, collection: MoMA

I noticed it because it looked very similar to Nuts’N’Shit, a screenprinted metal work by Cady Noland and Diana Balton. The one at MoMA [above] is listed as a screenprinted edition of one, but the one in Frankfurt was enamel, framed, and from the Brants. I will trust the artist to sort that out.

What I wonder is, is there a connection? Balton was an artist and graphic artist who worked with Noland on at least three sign-like works, but it seems unlikely that she and Noland would have referenced an eight-year-0ld t-shirt. Unless? Did Balton design the Paint Fair shirt in the first place?

Probably not. Klenosky Paint Fair was a housepaint and artist supply store on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that opened in 1949.

2017 Google Streetview capture of Wakefield Paint, 4386 White Plains Rd, The Bronx, h/t Lost City

Actually, Paint Fair was a buyers group of several independent paint stores around the city that all had the circus tent and lettering logo; until a few years ago, Wakefield Paint in the Bronx had its own variation of the tent AND a Paint Fair sign. But the one where Haring got his t-shirt was Klenosky’s in Williamsburg.

Keith Haring painting a monochrome mural over his day-glo mural, Summer 1982, Klenosky Paint Fair t-shirt: artist’s own, image via Deitch

Turns out it was printed on the back. Deitch has a photo of Haring in the shirt, as he paints over his Day-Glo mural on the corner of Houston & Bowery. That was the Summer of 1982. Honestly, Haring’s fine and all, bu this monochrome mural-in-progress may be my favorite work of his ever. And he bought so much grey paint for it, he got a free t-shirt.

Meanwhile, whether she or Noland were ever customers, I imagine Balton were familiar with Paint Fair’s sign, which lasted until the 2010s. That’s when the shop was rebranded with Benjamin Moore. It closed in 2021, and is set to host Coffee’N’Condos.