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"Luminous Art & Design :: Art & Artists"
Keith Haring :: Biography and Books"
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Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an American artist and social activist whose work can be described as Pop Art or Modern Art. Haring was known for cartoon like figures surrounded by kinetic lines suggesting movement like ‘radiant babies’ and ‘barking dog
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Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an American artist and social activist. He was often called an urban painter, because his unique style was inspired by graffiti, cartoons and comic strips. His trademark was simple, symbol-like drawings of dogs, babies, and dancing figures. These images were drawn in thick black marking pen or white chalk on the black advertising boards of subway stations.
Keith was born on 4 May 1958 in Pennsylvania, the oldest of four siblings. As a child he already loved drawing. His father was an amateur artist and made cartoons. Keith learned the basic cartooning skills from his father. Early influences on Haring were the mass media and popular culture of Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, Charles Schulz, and the Looney Tunes.
In 1976, Haring enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, a commercial arts school. He was told that in order to become an artist he needed some commercial-art background. He soon realized that he did not want to be an illustrator or a graphic designer and he quit the school after only two semesters.
While working at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center, Keith Haring explored on his own by reading a lot and visiting art exhibitions and events. He found confidence in the similarities of his own art works and those of Alechinsky and Dubuffet. That was the time that he started to work on bigger things. Especially Christo, who talked about the event as public art and believed that art was for all kinds of people and not only an elitist thing, had a great effect on Keith Haring.
In 1980, Keith found a medium to make his art available to all kinds of people. He started to create drawings on unused advertising panels of subway stations. In the next five years, he created hundreds of public -subway drawings-. While these efforts made Haring famous, he also was arrested repeatedly for it. Haring's chalk-drawn -radiant babies- and -barking dogs- became familiar features for the New York commuters.
In the same period, Keith Haring started to participate in many exhibitions. His first solo exhibition in New York, held at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1982, was immensely popular. In 1980s, he also created numerous murals worldwide; the Spectracolor billboard in Times Square, Crack is Wack mural in New York (1986), 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, on the exterior of Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, France in 1987, and a mural painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before its fall. He also did commercial projects such as the design for Swatch watches (1985); the Absolut Vodka advertisement (1986).
In 1986, Haring opened Pop Shop in downtown Manhattan, a retail store selling T-shirts, posters, buttons and magnets bearing his images. For nearly twenty years, the shop was a downtown attraction with floor-to-ceiling murals and affordable items featuring Keith Haring’s drawings.
Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. In 1989, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, and during the last years of his life he devoted himself to educating the public about AIDS and drug abuse. Keith Haring died at the age of 31 on February 16, 1990.
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