Keith Haring

Although invariably, and undeniably, tied to New York graffiti art of the 1980s, Keith Haring's (1958-1990) work represents a much more complex combination of primitive impulses, automatic writing, popular culture, and so-called "high" and "low" art.

Born on May 4, 1958, Keith Haring was raised in a traditional middle-class family in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He would later remember fondly the creative drawing sessions he and his father, an amateur artist, would have together. Haring's early influences were not unlike those of many American children growing up in the 1960s-the cartoons of Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, Charles Schulz, and the Looney Tunes characters he would watch on Saturday morning television's "The Bugs Bunny Show"; television sitcoms such as "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Monkees"; and the powerful images in Life and Look magazines. These influences reflect the dominant role, emphasized by the Pop artists of the period, that mass media and popular culture had on American life.

After graduating high school in 1976, Haring attended the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Feeling stifled by the constraints of a commercial art education, he left school after only two semesters. The catalyst for this decision was the chance reading of Robert Henri's The Art Spirit (1923), which inspired him to concentrate on his own art.

While working in a maintenance job for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (then the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center), Haring explored on his own the art of Jean Dubuffet, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Tobey. His most critical influences at this time were a retrospective of the work of Pierre Alechinsky in 1977 and a lecture by the site sculptor, Christo, in 1978. Alechinsky's work, connected to the international Expressionist group CoBrA, gave Haring the confidence to create larger paintings of calligraphic and automatic writing inspired images. Christo introduced him to the possibilities of involving the public with his art. Pittsburgh was also the host of Haring's first important oneman exhibition, at the Center for the Arts in 1978.

Haring's quest for a more vibrant artistic atmosphere, however, led him that same year to New York's School of Visual Arts where he studied semiotics with Bill Beckley and explored the possibilities of video and performance art. He was profoundly influenced at this time by the writings of William Burroughs, which inspired him to experiment with the cross-referencing and interconnection of images.

The social scene in New York's East Village was of immense importance to Keith Haring and his work. He became a prominent figure in the thriving underground art world, curating informal exhibitions at Club 57 and the Mudd Club. His active involvement with the gay lifestyle was reflected in his art, which often portrayed phallic images or explicit sexual encounters.

Inspired by his interest in language and by artist Jenny Holzer, Haring began to experiment with a more public art in the summer of 1980, pasting collages of fake New York Post headlines on lampposts or newsstands. His interest in automatic writing and semiotics, however, led him to explore the world of graffiti artists such as SAMO (Jean-Michel Basquiat) and Fab Five Fred (Fred Brathwaite). It was here, in the subways and on the streets of New York, that Haring created his own graffiti and developed his future vocabulary of primitive cartoon-like forms. Cryptic and yet accessible, Haring's chalk-drawn "radiant babies" and "barking dogs" became familiar features on the matt black surfaces used to cover the old advertisements in the subways. Striving to make his art even more accessible, Haring passed out buttons illustrated with his drawings and collaborated on a book of his graffiti (Art in Transit: Subway Drawings, 1984) with photographer Tseng Kwong Chi.

Leaving school before the fall semester of 1980, Haring embarked upon a wide distribution of his semiotic forms. He began to disassociate himself from the graffiti scene, painting instead on tarpaulins and other objects, and had a one-man show at Shafrazi Gallery in 1982. His meteoric rise to world prominence after this show was truly remarkable. By the end of 1984 he had gained international recognition, exhibiting in Brazil, Spain, Japan, Italy, and England. Attempting to reach a larger public, he immersed himself in popular American culture, forming friendships with Andy Warhol and with such pop entertainers as Madonna and Grace Jones (whom he would body-paint). He became politically active, designing a Free South Africa poster (1985) and painting a section of the Berlin Wall in 1986. His interest in working with children inspired the enormous project Citykids Speak on Liberty, which involved 1, 000 kids collaborating on a project for the Statue of Liberty centennial.

Ever increasing concern for making his art accessible led to commercial ventures such as the design for Swatch watches (1985); the Absolut Vodka advertisement (1986); and ultimately his Pop Shop (opened 1986) in which he sold T-shirts, posters, and other saleable items. It was these endeavors, as well as the graffiti images, that caused some critics and members of the art world to bemoan Haring's contribution, placing him instead among popular cultural figures. Haring maintained, however, that his intention was to make his art more accessible. Ideologically, he placed himself with Andy Warhol, the conceptual artists, and the earth artists—attempting to reach a broader public.

On February 16, 1990, at age 31, Keith Haring's life was cut short due to an AIDS-related illness. His work remains the most salient example of the diminishing line between consumerism, popular culture, and fine art in the 1980s. Despite their controversial nature, Haring's images reflect the 20th-century tradition of using primitive impulses to communicate the angst of modern times.

Further Reading

Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography by John Gruen (1991) includes interviews with the artist and those closest to him and is an invaluable source for understanding the art and life of Haring. The early work is illustrated in Art in Transit: The Subway Drawings (1984) and Keith Haring (Shafrazi Gallery, 1982). An enlightening interview by David Sheff appeared in Rolling Stone (August 10, 1989). Elizabeth Aubert directed an insightful video entitled Drawing the Line: A Portrait of Keith Haring (Biografilm, 1989). Later an attempt was made to place Haring within a broader art historical context in Keith Haring, edited by Germano Celant (1992). □

HARING, KEITH 1958-1990

Artist

Influences

A lover of cartoons and science-fiction television shows, young Keith Haring responded to encouragement from his artistic father by creating his own vividly original stories and illustrations. He moved to New York in the late 1970s and studied abstract expressionist painting at the School of Visual Arts, where he befriended fellow artist Kenny Scharf. Frustrated with the insistence on artistic tradition at the school, Haring began to work on a different scale, often drawing on giant rolls of paper he spread on studio floors. By 1979 Haring had become captivated by subway graffiti. Its raw energy and sense of color and life pleased his growing pop sensibilities, and its visibility in a public space appealed to his desire to reach everyone with his art. Using chalk instead of the typical graffiti artist's spray paint, Haring began leaving drawings on the rectangles of black paper that covered unused subway advertising space.

Village Days

In 1979 Haring, Scharf, and artist friends such as Ann Magnuson began to organize group shows at Club 57, their new East Village hangout. Their "art parties" were a mixture of performance pieces, comic skits, videos, and visual art, including Haring's graffiti images. Having touched off a vogue for "club art," Scharf and Haring became the leading proponents of "fun art," a form that borrowed freely from the images of popular culture (especially cartoons). Haring arranged an "exhibit" of graffiti art at the Mudd Club in the East Village that turned into a free-for-all; he and hundreds of others covered the club and the surrounding area with colorful tags. In 1981 he began working for gallery owner Tony Shafrazi, who started showing the young artist's work. The following year Haring attracted the attention of critics and the press with a show at the Rotterdam Arts Council and with his contributions to a group exhibition at the trendsetting P.S. 1 Gallery on Long Island. In 1983 he participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. Arrested for "criminal mischief" while decorating a subway space in June 1982, the undaunted Haring continued the practice long after his gallery work began to sell—and sell it did!

Exposure

Haring's distinctive images, which often resembled thickly outlined hieroglyphics or cave drawings, became perhaps the most pervasive, influential, and popular art of the 1980s. While his gallery works sold to collectors for as much as $350,000, the images themselves seemed to belong to the world. While some of his paintings were being displayed at museums, Haring also created murals for schoolyards or on the sides of inner-city buildings. In 1982 one of his drawings was displayed for an entire month on the Spectacolor billboard over Times Square. In 1985 he created a giant canvas of Aztec-inspired figures for the dance floor at the New York club The Palladium and a giant painting to be auctioned off at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia. He painted clothing for Madonna and Grace Jones, sets for a 1985 MTV concert, sets and props in 1984 for dance works by Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, and a curtain for a Roland Petit ballet presented in 1985. That year, in what became an international event, he spent three days creating an epic mural illustrating the Ten Commandments for a French museum. In 1986 three Haring works were placed in the sculpture garden at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Images

Though the media helped to popularize Haring's "radiant" children, winged television sets, and alligator-headed dogs, Haring was his own best publicist. To reach the largest audience possible, he began marketing a line of products featuring his most popular images, and in 1986 he opened his own store, The Pop Shop, to sell his wristwatches, magnets, coffee cups, tote bags, coloring books, and T-shirts. Haring was as committed to charities and social causes as he was to his brilliant self-marketing, and his seemingly naive, childlike images often had a political subtext. Radiant Child carried a warning about the perils of the nuclear age, while Haring's television sets spoke of a technological society out of control. Other seemingly innocuous drawings included messages about social violence or indifference, racism, and approaching apocalypse. "I have strong feelings about the world," he said. "I want my art to make people think." In 1986, as a "humanistic gesture," he painted a giant mural on the Berlin Wall in the colors of the East German and West German flags. He called it "a political and subversive act—an attempt to psychologically destroy the wall by painting it." Haring also enjoyed creating art for children, including a set of permanent murals for the children's division of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in 1986.

Last Years

Several of Haring's most political works dealt with the indifference of the U.S. government to the AIDS crisis. After learning that he himself had the AIDS virus, Haring took the same energetic, life-affirming attitude toward his illness that he had toward his art. He was open about his condition and met with groups of children to help educate them about AIDS. "The hardest thing is just knowing that there's so much more stuff to do," he said. "I'm so scared that one day I'll wake up and I won't be able to do it." Haring continued to work until just a few weeks before his death on 16 February 1990, painting murals, making giant sculptures for public spaces and playgrounds, and teaching art to disadvantaged youths. Major shows of his work were held in Vienna, London, Los Angeles, and Helsinki, at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and at the Spectrum Gallery in New York City. In 1988 the Museum of Modern Art featured works by Haring in an exhibit titled Committed to Print, and in June of that year Haring contributed two giant banners to a seventieth birthday tribute to Nelson Mandela at Wembley Stadium in London; seventy-two thousand people attended the event, and an estimated 500 million worldwide watched it on television—helping to fulfill Haring's desire to reach the largest possible audience. "You can't just stay in your studio and paint," he said. "That's not the most effective way to communicate."

Sources:

Germano Celant, ed., Keith Haring (Munich: Prestel, 1992);

Bruce K. Kurtz, ed., Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Walt Disney (Munich: Prestel / Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1992).

Keith Haring , 1958–90, American artist, b. Kutztown, Pa. He moved to New York City in 1975 and studied at the School of Visual Arts (1978–79). Fascinated with the 1970s graffiti artists, Haring soon joined them in the subways, and his chalked drawings on station advertising boards became underground icons—cheerful, boldly outlined, cartoonlike figures surrounded by kinetic lines suggesting movement or, in the case of his trademark "radiant baby," a kind of holy light. During the 1980s his brand of second-generation pop art , with its exuberantly charming images, reached a broad public as fine art in paintings and prints and commercially on T-shirts, watches, and other products, many of which were sold at his New York Pop Shop. He also created murals, stage sets, and sculpture. When Haring discovered (1988) that he had AIDS he turned much of his artistic attention to educational works about the dangers of the disease.

Bibliography: See biography by J. Gruen (1991); study by E. Sussman et al. (1997).

Haring, Keith. See Graffiti art.

Haring, Keith. See Graffiti Art.

Haring, Keith. See GRAFFITI ART.