A book by Maggie Tunggono
Keith HARING (1958 - 1990)
Published by Rizzoli New York 300 Park Avenue South, 4th Floor New York, NY 10010 Phone : (212) 387-3400 Fax : (212) 387-3535 http://www.rizzoliusa.com Copyright Š Rizzoli New York 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without permission of the copyright holder. While every effort has been made to contact owners of copyright material produced in this book, we have not always been successful. For copyright query, please contact the publisher. 19087510014 ISBN : 978-1234567897 Printed in the U.S.A
Faces of Keith Haring, Polaroids, various years
“ WHATEVER YOU WANTS TO DO, THE ONLY SECRET IS TO BELIEVE IN IT AND SATISFY YOURSELF. DON’T DO IT FOR ANYONE ELSE.
”
CONTENT.
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2.
BIOGRAPHY A brief look into the story of Keith Haring’s life and his journey as an artist. Pg.10
style of art A through explantions of Keith Haring’s style of art and basic element that he tend to use. Pg.18
creations
3.
A look into Keith Haring’s most prominent works, including his famous store, and subway drawings. Pg.32
“In 1979, I started working my Photography Thesis on NYC Downtown Nightlife and because of that I met Keith Haring and then later at SVA. I got to photograph him at an early stage in his life before he became famous. One night while he was working at Danceteria as an usher, I suggested I photograph a series of his work from start to finish. He agreed and I came over to his shabby downtown storefront studio and we smoked a joint and off he went. He was so fast I barely shot a roll.� - Keith Haring
Photo and words by Joseph Szkodzinski
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much like his artistic idol Andy Warhol, used bright colors, bold lines and simple subject matters. He used his muchadored artwork to speak his mind about racism, gay rights and other political subjects. Haring has left an impact on the pop art culture world, and his messages are still clear in his artwork. Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His parents, Allen and Joan Haring, raised Haring and his three sisters in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. As a child, Haring was fascinated by the cartoon art of Walt Disney and Charles Schultz
and the illustrations of Dr. Seuss. After graduating from high school in 1976, Haring briefly attended the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, dropping out after two semesters. Once in New York, Haring took particular curiosity in street graffiti, and he used this form of art to portray his own messages and feelings. Subway stations became his studio, using the black ad boards as his canvas. He made it a point to keep the chalk drawing simple and fast so people riding on the subway could catch a glimpse of it and understand it. His infamous radiant baby
was followed by drawings of dogs barking, dancing figures and flying saucers with lightning bolts. With New York as his home, Haring joined forces with the community by holding projects for inner city kids. His love of children became an inspiration for his artwork. Since the beginning of his career, Haring had been involved with numerous charitable causes profiting needy kids. He painted murals in cwhildren’ hospitals and daycare centers and periodically held children’s drawing workshops. He also painted the carousel
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(Right) Keith Haring with JeanMichel Basquiat n.a Andy Warhol and Keith Haring in 1984
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for a traveling amusement park. His tenderness for kids was acknowledged worldwide when Haring was asked to design the cover and lithograph of the United Nations stamp commemorating as the International Youth Year. In spring of 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDS. His art became a tool to generate action and convey the dangers and effects of the AIDS virus. Haring participated in events such as Art Against Aids and was asked again by the United Nations to design a cover and Lithograph for the commemoration of March 16, 1990 as Stop of page AIDS Worldwide Year His art also spoke about Haring’s personal feelings
and stance on the disease. By April of 1986, Haring opened his first PopShop in New York; the second came two years later in Tokyo. Critics lashed this aspect of his art, claiming it was too mercantile, but these stores were actually part of Haring’s purpose, to deliver his messages to the public. The opening of the Tokyo store was not a way to make money but a way for Haring, a successful and admired American artist, to connect with his non-American admirers. He learned much about Japanese culture that helped him mold his work. In 1989, the Keith Haring Foundation was established.
The mandate of the Foundation was to provide funding and imagery for AIDS organizations as well as children’s organizations. In 1990, Haring died due to complications with AIDS. The pop-culture and his admirers from around the world felt a personal loss because of the connection they felt with Haring through his art.
“Nothing is important...so everything is important.” - Keith Haring
His characteristic and easily recognizable style had already spread all over the world, including to the countries behind the Iron Curtain of the time, more than 20 years ago. Haring’s drawings, paintings and prints became symbols of the new artistic energy of the 1980s.
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Pictograms
Linear style
Spontaneity
Populism
Pictograms Various Collection of Keith Haring’s works
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Haring’s figures were simplified, and easily recognizable as his. They also formed glyphs that could be read, like an urban, tribal language. His dictionary : Dog, Radiating Baby, Pyramid, Figures, Spaceship, and dolphine.
linear style Keith Haring: Fun Gallery New York exhibit poster 1983, 22”x30”
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Everything Haring did was outlined, and not thinly, as in a coloring book or a comic. The outlines were thick and black (or white, if the background was black). His text when present was either thick or had blocky, outlined characters. Haring also frequently dashed in “action� lines to indicate energy, movement, sound, and light.
Spontaneity *No Caption
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Keith Haring did not appear familiar with the practice of preparatory sketches. He simply faced the surface of whatever he would paint, and started painting. The work would emerge whole sometimes surprising even the artist, who wondered if art came from the head or flowed through the hand from some other source.
populism Three Eyed Face by Keith Haring, 1986
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Haring believed that art was meant for all people, not just those who could afford pricey works. Although he could (and did) eventually sell canvases for $300K-plus, he never strayed too far from his early days in New York City, when his art was free. He opened a small store called the Pop Shop, where inexpensive items featuring his work sat side-by-side with more upscale merchandise. This led to criticism that he was “too commercial,” overlooking the fact that, given the opportunity, many people will gladly spend $2 to buy a button with a drawing by an artist they like. Ironically, this also led to criticism that he was cheapening his “brand” by not cutting down on output.
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1. Two humans holding a 2. Dolphins Symbolize peace heart means romantic love and love 3. Three-eyed smiling face 4. Spaceship symbolize means greed or joy energy, glowing power
Haring calculated that at some point he made at least 5,000 of these works in chalk over the subways of New York. It is fair to say that Haring’s style and vocabulary became instantly recognisable and universal. It points to recognisable signs and signifiers that translate across cultures of the world. Using symbols of the radiant baby, barking dog, pyramid and serpent, Haring’s language transcended geographic boundaries. His work was followed with great interest in Asia, Europe and America. Sexuality pervades many Sexuality pervades many of his works, whether they are phallic at a
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5. The barking dog symbol- 6. pyramid is connected to ize power and authority an unknown force. 7. Glowing Baby symbolize life, energy, happiness.
8. Dancing figures symbolize harmony and relation
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macro- or micro-level. The use of the phallus symbolised power and was used to confront sexual prejudices, prevailing at the time. Haring’s work ultimately presents an optimistic vision. The way in which he used the theme of sexuality in his work was always tempered with an understanding to the venue it would be seen by spectators. For Haring, ‘babies represented the possibility of the future, how perfect we could be.’ He didn’t view the works with overt sexual tones as pornography, but understood his role as an artist.
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In the early 80s Keith Haring created hundreds of drawings in the New York Subway system. Since the 1980’s, a new presence has been seen and felt in New York City’s street and subways. The man responsible for all this cheer never signs his work Keith Haring’s gift to the public is generous and heartfelt a celebration of the spirit that is not and cannot be measured in dollars. Keith Haring has developed his own language, which speaks to us with immediacy in a deeply preverbal
sense. Each term in this language can be read as subject, verb, or object: the Dog Barks the Spacecraft or the Spacecraft Zaps the Praying Man. In much the same way as Chinese or Egyptian languages are written pictographically, Keith Haring’s world is made up of symbols that speak urgently to us, both alone and in interchangeable configurations. And as the pictographs or hieroglyphs communicate visually, soundlessly, so too are Haring’s symbols swathed in silence. An eerie quie-
tude surrounds all his work, heightening and animating the dramas they depict. Keith Haring’s work appeals to us on several levels. And through repetition, becomes a leitmotif that sees us through our days - a tuneful celebration of urban commonality. Keith Haring drawing in the New York City subway, 1981
Untitled, 1984, Chalk on black paper, “ I started to realize how powerful the thing was that I had come across, and I started realizing how many people were seeing these things within a week. When I would go back and do another drawing, because I was usually doing these during the daytime on my way to work, people would come up to me and say ‘I saw another drawing [of yours]’.” --Haring, from interviews by John Gruen
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The political line starts and expends onto seven very political and controversial topics referring to events of the time and episodes in his life. The continuum of his brush depicts and questions from a hall to another ‘the individual against the state’, ‘capitalism’, ‘religion’, ‘mass media’, ‘racism’, ‘ecocide, nuclear threat and the apocalypse’, ending with his last works on ‘sex, AIDS and death’ warning the citizen of the excesses of society. Haring never considered art as a propaganda tool but rather as a mean to communicate his art, questions and ideas to a large audience. The timeless meaning of his work guides people to see particular things
and think. Since the age of 18, the pop artist was very politically active and expressed all his preoccupations on societal matter throughout his life and work. His political engagement of the time remains current and important in our society. His graphics in the subway, his paintings, sculptures spoke of social justice and change. Drawing was not only a political act but also an act of resistance against death before he was swept away by AIDS in February 1990. Haring fought against segregation in South Africa, colonisation in Vietnam, condemned atomic war and participated in campaigns against the use of crack. However, his fight against AIDS became his most personal battle.
- Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death, 1989 - Collaborated with 1,000 New York City youths on a w6-story Citykids Speak on Liberty banner, dedicated on July 2 for the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration, 1986 - Organized and curated Rain Dance, a benefit party and exhibition for the US Committee for UNICEF’s African Emergency Relief Fund, 1985 - Created poster for The Great Peace March, 1986 - Stop AIDS, 1989
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The Pop Shop were stores that sold voluminous memorabilia of artist Keith Haring’s designs. Haring originally opened two Pop Shops; one at 292 Lafayette Street in SoHo (which closed in 2005) and one in Tokyo (which closed in 1988). Every area of the store was devoted to Haring’s work including floor-to-ceiling murals, which provided a clubhouse atmosphere. The Tokyo Pop Shop, shipped from Tokyo to Europe was recently restored and exhibited in Saint Tropez, France by art publisher George Mulder of Berlin. Keith Haring’s Pop Shop served to fulfill the artist’s desire to make his iconic and beloved imagery accessible to the widest possible range of
people both during his lifetime and posthumously through the Keith Haring Foundation, Inc. Haring, who viewed the Pop Shop as an extension of his work, stated: “Here’s the philosophy behind the Pop Shop: I wanted to continue the same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people and I wanted it to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx … this was still an art statement.” The store closure took place in an attempt to minimize the increasing expenses associated with operating a retail venture (especially in the
hip urban areas). There are no plans to reopen the Pop Shop. Pop Shop merchandise, however, will continue to be available through international licensing and exhibition related projects. The Keith Haring Foundation offers Haring memorabilia through an on-line Pop Shop. Keith Haring’s Pop Shop t-shirts, jacket, and sweatshirt collection. (Next Page) Keith Haring’s Pop Shop phone cases and skateboards collection.
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Keith haring (american, 1958–1990) mudd club ID
bibliography.
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“Keith Haring.” Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2F wiki%2FKeith_Haring>. “Keith Haring Street Artist Biography.” Stencil Revolution RSS. N.p., 2012. Web. 19 June 2014. <http://www.stencilrevolution.com/profiles/keith-haring/>. Art Gallery of Ontario. “Symbols & Signs.” Harring Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 June 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haringkids.com%2Flesson_plans% 2Flearn%2Fsymbols-signs>. Chin, Andrea. “keith haring: 1978 1982 at the brooklyn museum - designboom | ar chitecture & design magazine.” designboom. N.p., 27 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 June 2014. <http://www.designboom.com/art/keith-haring-1978-1982-at- the-brooklyn-museum/>. Homiski, Collin F. Keith Haring and the Political Line. N.p., 04 May 2013. Web. 17 June 2014. < http://homiski.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/keith-haring-and- the-political-line/> Monroe, Erin, and Realista Rodriguez. “Keith Haring.” Keith Haring. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 June 2014. <http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/events/haring90/ haring.html> Shafrazi, Tony. “Keith Haring. A Great Artist, A True Friend.” The Keith Foundation. N.p., 2005. Web. 17 June 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haring.com%2F!%2F selected_writing%2Fkeith-haring-a-great-artist-a-true-friend%23.U6LGm qi7PfY>. Valles, Yasmine Canga. “Keith Haring’s Political Lines.” The Global Panorama. N.p., 18 Aug. 2013. Web. 14 June 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Ftheglobalpanora ma.com%2Fkeith-harings-political-lines%2F>.
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