Absolut Transforms Charing Cross with Tribute to Keith Haring’s Iconic Art

Absolut Charing Cross Pop-Up Brings Keith Haring’s Iconic Artwork Underground in London

For two days this September, a familiar London commute will take a detour through art history. On 17 and 18 September, Charing Cross Underground station will be transformed into “Haring Cross” — a vivid, temporary installation honouring Keith Haring, the American artist whose bold lines and dancing figures made him one of the most recognisable cultural voices of the 1980s.

The intervention reimagines the ticket hall and escalators of one of London’s busiest stations, part of a global campaign for Absolut Haring, the latest chapter in the Swedish vodka brand’s long-standing relationship with contemporary art.

For the first time in Britain, two of Haring’s original Absolut Vodka paintings from 1986 will be shown publicly, returning the artist’s exuberant energy to the Underground, where his career first took shape in the chalk-drawn images he sketched on blank advertising panels in New York subways.

Deb Dasgupta, VP Global Marketing, Absolut Vodka, says: “Absolut has always believed that art should be open, joyful and for everyone. Keith Haring’s work radiated that belief – full of energy, colour and hope. With Absolut Haring, we’re inviting a new generation to celebrate that spirit in a public space – in an underground station that reflects and connects to the subways that inspired Haring more than forty years ago. It’s a vibrant reminder that creativity can inspire, uplift, unite and open minds.”

Haring believed art belonged to everyone, not just to collectors and galleries. His work — whether in subway stations, nightclubs or on hospital walls — sought to speak directly to the public, often using playful motifs to address issues such as love, community, illness and inequality. At “Haring Cross,” that spirit continues: visitors will be able to collect free posters of one of his Absolut works, its crimson figures in motion set against a radiant yellow field.

Absolut’s connection to Haring stretches back to the mid-1980s, when the brand embarked on a groundbreaking series of artist collaborations. In 1985, Andy Warhol painted the brand’s distinctive apothecary-shaped bottle, initiating what became one of the most ambitious corporate art programmes of its time.

Haring followed a year later, his kinetic imagery transforming the vodka bottle into a totem of downtown New York cool. Over the next two decades, Absolut would commission more than 550 artists — from Kenny Scharf to Louise Bourgeois — producing some 850 works now held in the Absolut Art Collection at Stockholm’s Spritmuseum.

David Stark, founder and CEO of Artestar, the agency representing the Keith Haring Studio, says: “Our mission is to keep Keith Haring’s spirit alive by continuing to expand access to his art and the important messages within it. This project with Absolut revives a moment that meant so much to Keith. It’s a wonderful tribute that allows anyone to engage with this special story that started back in 1986.”

The new Absolut Haring Artist-Edition bottle, already available in global travel retail and rolling out to 40 markets this autumn, extends that legacy. Its design, embossed with Haring’s writhing figures in vivid reds and yellows against the brand’s deep blue, bears his signature and nods to the 1986 paintings now on view in London.

For daily commuters at Charing Cross, the installation promises a brief but striking encounter — a reminder of how Haring’s art, like the Absolut campaigns it helped define, collapsed the boundaries between commerce and culture, the Underground and the mainstream.

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©2025 Absolut, Artestar