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Keith Haring:"I wason the subway platform when I saw my first empty black panels . I knew I had to draw on them, so I ran up to buy chalk. I started drawing and it felt incredible!"

-Keith Haring

eith Haring's art career began in an unusual place. Itdidn't start in a gallery, or a

museum, or at a school. Haring got his start in the New York City subway!

During the early 1980s, the New York subways in were covered with graffiti. No one seemed able to control it. In the midst of all the spray paint and only on the black paper panels used to cover up old ads-scores ofwhite chalk drawings began appearing. These drawings were filled with mysterious images like the ones on these pages.

New drawings appeared week after week and no one erased or covered them up. If anyone happened to catch a thin young man wearing glasses working on one of thesedrawings, he smiled

and handed them a button. Soon people a

ll over the city were wearing buttons with babies and barking

dogs on them. And they were becoming familiar with the name Keith Haring.

Haring's work had become known throughout the world by the time of his death in 1990. The symbols he used appealed to people on the most basic level.

The images he developed-hearts, halos, crosses, babies, dancing figures-can be read in a number of ways. They can be seen as sincere, or as an

© Estate of Keith Haring.

"I developed my own language of pictograms and

K

Art for the People

"I wanted people to be affected and challenged and inspired by a work of art."

-Keith Haring

I I I -© Estate of Keith Haring.

ironic comment on modem society. Haring's figures can be cruel and tragic, as well as playful and happy.

eith Haring was born in 1958 in Pennsylvania, and grew up on Saturday

morning cartoons. Known as "the artist" in his high school, Haring graduated in 1976. After taking a

few commercial art classes, in 1978 he

While Haring worked tire

lessly, herarely attended classes. He left SVA in 1980. He then worked as a bicycle messenger and a busboywhile making his art and organizing shows outside the gallery system.

Haring had always wanted to bring h is art to

the people. In the early 1980s, he did his first subway drawings. Most of the images he was to use later were invented here-thedancing figures, the flying saucers, the lines radiat ing from figures. Soon, people started coming to his loft to buy his

arrived at the School of Visual Arts in drawings, and KeithNew York City. Haring's career had begun.

I drew them with a piece of chalk."

© Eslale ol Tseng Kwong Chi and Eslale ol Keith Haring. Pholo:Tseng Kwong Chi.

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A Languageof his Own

"Iam obsessed with lines."-Keith Haring

eith Haring had never liked oil paint and canvas. They were too formal. And they

intimidated him. One day he saw>'

workers in the streets covering their! equipment with vinyl tarps. So he"' ordered a number of wall-size plastic en tarps in bright reds and yellows and o started painting on them.E.

Everything refers to everything else. Flying saucers zap things with energy rays. They look like Mexican sombreros, but that's my vision of aflying saucer. Rays of power come from zapped people."

Many of the artist's workssuggest a struggle betweengood and evil. In the work

In his drawings and early paintings,

t Haring invented a whole vocabulary ofer:

on the left, a triangular being with a computer head is surrounded by

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graphic signs. And he repeated thesame imagesover and over. Each object stands for a quality or an abstract idea. Lines radiating from figures mean the figure has been empowered. The "radiant" baby (page

smaller creatures. Gadgets-robots, computers, and other monsters attack the human figures. Haring said , "Flying saucers are God forces." Perhaps the saucers are giving the figures the power to resist evil

{'.! 3), a symbol of threatened childhood,2l.

consumerism.

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has the power to protect itself.Dolphins are symbols of peace and

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love; pyramids mean eternity. Holes in

By the mid 1980s, Keith Haringand his symbols were world

famous. In response to his fame, he opened a store:

"' figures symbolize their souls. Three-,: eyes in a smiling face (above) stand

for greed or joy. Computers, robots, TVs

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the Pop Shop (cover). He designed watches, made ads, gave perfonnances. When he wasn't working, he was at aparty, or club. A friend said, "Keith

:::, symbolize techdnology. I- Haring sai ,"My signs 1ave

different meanings at different times.

kept moving. Ifothers didn't movewith him, he got bored with them."

SCHOLASTIC ART 5

T

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A Larger Vis

"I knew there had to be awhole other reason for making art besides looking for success within the art world."-Keith Haring

hough the symbols he used seem simple, Keith Haring's art deals with universal themes

love, war, birth, and death. And although his art was always optimistic, many of his messages became more serious at the end of his life.

The artist had always supported

Sculpture installation. 1985. Dag Hammarskjold Plaza sculpture garden NY, NY. 173 1/4' x 94" x 48".

© Estate of Keith Haring.

social causes. Right after he came to New York, he did antinuclear leaflets and designed Free South Africa posters. Later, he worked on anti smok ing and literacy campaigns. In1987, he did a number of murals in this country and Europe for hospitals and schools. He also began making large public sculptures like this one (left) next to the United Nations build ing in New York City.

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·•onne of Haring's best-known projects, done in 1986, was a mural painted on an

abandoned handball court beside a New York highway. He made Crack is\Xlac k (below ) after seeing what had happened to a young assistant who had become add icted to drugs. "He desperately wanted to stop but wasn't able to. So I became aware of the dangers of this killer drug," the artist

said. In the same year, Haring was invited to Germany to pa int a mural on a section of the wa ll that, until a few years ago, divided East and West Berlin . Keith Haring was28 years old, and seemed to be at the beginning of his career.

Early in 1988, the artist began to suspect he mighthave AIDS. Later, when he was sure he had the disease he said, "At first you're completely wrecked. But then you have to get

yourself together and go on. You realize it's not the end then and there. You've got to continue and figure out howyou're going to face it and deal withit." So Haring did what he always did; he worked.

Silence = Death (above) is one of the last paint ings Haring made. In it, he expresses his conviction thatignoring the AIDS epidemic w ill only result in more deaths from the disease.

Silence = Death, 1989. Acrylic on canvas. 39' 1/2'x 39' 1/2'.© Estate of Keith Haring.

figures are interconnected. Here, as in all of Haring's works, the lines in one image blend into another, symbolizing the energy that runs through andconnects all things.

Keith Haring d ied in February of 1990. Thousands of people came to the funeral to celebrate his life and art. At

He sends this message visually by

the service, his sister said, "I learned a

Crack is Wack,June 1986.(mural at 128th Street and 2nd Avenue,NY, NY).© Estate of Tseng Kwong Chi and Estate of Keith Haring. Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi.

combining two of his symbols; the human figure for which he was bestknown and the triangle he always used to symbolize eternity. The weeping

lot from my big brother. That a wall was meant to be drawn on; a Saturday night was meant for partying; that life is meant for celebrating."

"My support network is not made up of museums

and curators but of real people."-Keith Haring

SCHOLASTIC ART 7