Keith Haring

Keith Haring



Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Pennsylvania. When he studied art at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he learned through the art world of the city and he wanted to blur the boundaries that distinguished art and entertainment. He collaborated with street artists and his friends from art school to create Mural, 1983, a Houston Street mural in New York, because he wanted his art to be more accessible to the public.

Having this idea, he started drawing with white chalk on the black paper that covered expired advertisements in New York subway stations. He became famous by using unique iconography of his own to create images over and over again in the public space. A subway station is where ordinary people’s activities happen every day. His simple drawings engaged with people socially and expressively.

He made his Pop Shop with the idea that you can buy art with a few dollars, the same as Andy Warhol's ideas. The shop had pins, T-shirts, small prints and anybody could buy art with a dollar. He was an anti-capitalist, who was concerned that television could replace the brain in the human head, and he doubted the capitalistic society and the market. However, Paradoxically selling his images could be considered a capitalistic idea or anti-capitalistic idea.

The work of Haring was often heavily political and carried social messages. In Untitled, 1993, he expressed sex and death, pleasure and play with vinyl ink on vinyl tarp. He created his work on a big wall rapidly with lines, bright colors, and people in action with significant symbolism. A barking dog represented a powerful man in a capitalistic world. This became a language of visual form in his art.