Keith Haring
The subway draughtsman.
Keith Haring began drawing in chalk in the New York subway. His dancing figures and radiant babies became a popular visual language.
Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the small town of Kutztown. His father drew cartoons as a hobby, and Haring drew a great deal even as a child. After studying commercial art in Pittsburgh, he moved to New York in 1978 and studied at the School of Visual Arts. He quickly became part of the city’s lively cultural scene around clubs such as Club 57, where art, music and performance mingled.
From 1980 he began drawing in white chalk on the black paper panels that covered empty advertising spaces in the subway. He made hundreds of drawings, often in a few minutes, and was arrested several times for vandalism. Commuters saw his figures every day: the radiant baby, the barking dog, flying saucers and dancing people. The subway became his studio and his audience.
He was soon exhibiting in galleries and became internationally famous. He was friends with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna. In 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in SoHo, a shop selling posters, T-shirts and badges with his motifs, so that everyone could afford his art. That same year he painted the mural Crack Is Wack in Harlem and a section of the Berlin Wall. His last major public painting, Tuttomondo of 1989, is on the wall of a church in Pisa.
Haring’s style is built on thick, confident outlines, strong flat colours and figures in motion. It recalls comics, graffiti and hieroglyphs. Behind the cheerful surface there was often a serious purpose: he took a stand against apartheid, nuclear weapons and drugs, and for safer sex. In 1988 he was diagnosed with AIDS. In 1989 he founded the Keith Haring Foundation, which supports children’s programmes and AIDS organisations.
Haring died in 1990, aged just 31. His images live on in clothing, posters and museums all over the world. He is a symbol of 1980s New York and of the idea that art should belong to everyone, and he is an important name in the history of the LGBTQ movement.