A.R. Penck
German Painter and Printmaker Ralf Winkler, alias A.R. Penck, was born in 1939. He grew up in the German society, which experienced the Cold War after World War II, the split and reunion of East and West Berlin. As one of the neo-Expressionism artists coming from East Berlin, he had similar internal struggles with leftist ideology as Kimmendorff had. In the 1980s he became known worldwide for paintings with pictographic, neo-primitivist imagery of human figures and other totemic forms. Different from the modernist abstract expressionist, he consciously developed the independence of his subject matter from the abstract concerns of painting. His art turned away from the pure aesthetic experience and consistently referred to German history.



Keith Haring
Keith Haring was born in Pennsylvania in 1958. His art career started with the subway chalk-draw figures. He used simplistic symbols such as barking dog, happy face, flying wings, and glowing baby to tell his stories and communicate with viewers. This underground platform gave his work an extraordinary exposure to public. (Just a cost of token instead of tickets in Museums). Haring’s imagery could be referenced to the everyday American urban life and street culture. His signature symbols became recognized by the public and represented American culture and social values of the society in 1990s.


Similarities
Both A.R. Penck and Haring used symbolic figures and none-esthetic style abstract painting. Their works had a strong linkage to the place of experience, memory, history and culture. A.R. Penck and Haring’s works can be defined as the post-modern art released from the strictures of Modernist painting.
Regarding the viewers and places, both A.R.Penck and Haring wanted to use their work as a clear and simplistic channel to deliver their message to public directly. A.R. Penck wanted his work to communicate with public as the information segues that direct people to escalators and bathrooms. Haring’s work was free for pubic to view in the subway. In 1986, Haring commercialized his work. He opened his own Pop Shop in downtown Manhattan and made his art accessible to everyone.
From the works of A.R.Penck and Haring, viewers could recognize the social and culture metaphors and actively participated in an explicit dialogue between the artist, the artwork, viewers themselves and the works’ cultural context.

Differences
Since A.R. Penck and Haring’s works had a strong external referencing to the culture context the artists lived in, it is difficult to judge their work only with formal stuff of the canvas and the materials. Certainly, they rebelled to the strict modernism criteria, manipulated abstract quality of paintings and developed their unique postmodern vocabulary. However, the culture differences of German and U.S. made their work distinguished from each other. As Jonathan Fineberg described in his book Art Since 1940, A.R. Penck used his painting to “touch the underlying irrationality and emotions behind the apparently rational systems that regulated German life as a whole.” Like other German artists such as Kiefer, Baselitz and Immendorff, his work reflected national consciousness to the political and ideology struggling, as well as the spiritual wounds from War and Nazi period.
On the other hand, American artists did not experienced such a social turbulence between 1950s~1990s. American artists, filmmakers, performers, and musicians freely explored various medias to interpret the pop culture, social issues of everyday life. For instance, Haring used his work to describe the public influence of television, and its relationship with political power. His work, as well as the arts from other American artists of Metro Pictures, weighted heavily on the American democratic and populist tradition. As described by David Frankel in American Beauty , “the way art sprang up like a weed- resourceful, robust, impossible to get rid of, sometimes handsome and sometimes not- in New York subways and streets and in the East Village.”

References:
Jonathan Fineberg, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall.
S. Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, 8th Edition (2005).
http://www.birdfineart.com/g_haring_01.html
http://www.lowegallery.com/ar_penck/index.html
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx?artist_id=648464&page_tab=Artworks_for_sale
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx?artist_id=648464&page_tab=Artworks_for_sale