Keith Haring's life

Today, I will introduce to you Keith haring. He was an American artist who became famous in the 1980s for his unique Graffiti-like Pop Art. Although his career was tragically cut short, he left his mark as both an artist and an activist.

Biography of Keith Haring

Born in Pennsylvania in 1958, he began by learning basic drawing skills from his father. After graduating, he developed his own artistic skills and moved to New York. It was here that he got involved with communities of artists who enjoyed creating art outside of conventional practices. He met musicians and graffiti writers and fellow artists that would deeply influence his work such as Jean-Michel Basquiat. This led Haring to begin work on his own style. He established himself as a respected "rebel" artist of the street 

The 1980s were Haring’s successful decade. He started exhibiting his work across cities in America. He opened his Pop Shop, a store where he sold everything all using his own images; an attempt to make his work widely accessible that many criticized, accusing him of commercializing his work.

In the 1980s, he created over 50 artworks in the form of street art and graffiti art in several cities around the world.

In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDS and died of AIDS-related complications in 1990 at the young age of 31.

Artistic Style & Themes

Keith Haring’s art style is super recognizable: it’s bold, vibrant, graphic and full of energy. He mainly used thick black lines to create simple, cartoon-like figures, very symbolic, often in bright colors.

He developed an unmistakable aesthetic, in the intersection between Pop and Street Art, contrasting with the more abstract and conceptual approaches of the previous generation.

Haring's style is also very accessible — it looks almost childlike at first glance, but it carries deeper messages. He often painted in public spaces (like subways).

Radiant baby became his most recognized symbol. He used it as his tag to sign his work while being a subway artist. Symbols and images (such as barking dogs) became common in his work. As a result, his works spread quickly and he became more recognizable.

Themes

“The public has a right to art … Art is for everybody”: that was haring’s perception of art.

Believing in the idea that art is for all to enjoy and represents a means to convey political messages to the public, he pioneered the use of public sites for artistic purposes and his works of public art can still be seen around the streets of many cities in the world.  

Convinced of the public nature of art as something for everyone to enjoy – not simply those attending galleries and museums – he found his laboratory in the subway and his audience in the New York commuters. As both an artist and an activist he established that depicting serious issues could be fun or at least lively when communicated through highly cartoony images and fresh and vivid choices of colors. He wanted to raise awareness about themes such as AIDS, drug abuse, sexuality, religion, war, nuclear threat.

Famous works by Keith Haring

Here is a selection of Keith Haring’s most popular works and most symbolic images from his short, but impressive career. 

Crack is Wack

Crack is Wack is a public mural painted in Harlem, New York City. It is a monochromatic piece in orange with Haring's signature black lines outlining the lettering and characters. It is particularly notable for its originally illicit execution (though the City of New York quickly adopted it) and for the direct address to a social issue. The "Crack" in the mural refers to a cheaper form of cocaine, and "Wack" is a slang term meaning "not good." A crack pipe at the bottom that set the central message within a smoke cloud. Skull and money burns away/is wasted as crackheads are consumed by personal demons and addiction. Haring keeps the text-based message in the center with the goal of raising awareness of the increasing number of crack addicts.  The crack epidemic lasted from the 1980s into the early 1990s in cities across the USA. African American urban communities were especially hard hit, perhaps underlying Haring's decision to do this anti-crack mural in Harlem.

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