GREAT FALLS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ART ENRICHMENT KEITH HARING SEPTEMBER 2017 Keith Haring American Street Artist 1958-1990 Keith Haring only lived to be 31 years old, but he was an outsized figure in 20 th century art, much-loved during his lifetime as an artist and a person. His drawings are instantly recognizable and blurred the line between art you would see in a museum and art on the street. He was never stopped seeing the world through a child s eyes and always wanted to brighten the space around himself and others. Keith Haring knew from an early age as we can see from this school essay from about the second grade that he wanted to be an artist. He wasn t much good at school in fact he would get in trouble for doodling down the edges of his tests and papers. He didn t like usual kid activities like Boy Scouts or baseball. He only wanted to make art, all the time. When I grow up, I would like to be an artist in France. The reason is because I like to draw. I would get my money from the pictures I would sell. I hope I will be one. - Keith Haring Cartoons were a big influence on Keith, mostly because it was his father s hobby. From his earliest age, he would work every night with his dad, who would show Keith how to make drawings out of shapes. Sometimes they would draw lines back and forth until they had drawn an entire picture together. He made collages from fan magazines and even built a clubhouse. He won his first prize as a kid, with his contest entry a 2-foot-tall map of the United States, with each state represented by a symbol. Florida was decorated with Mickey Mouse! He loved cartoons on TV, too, with their bright colors and wild action. Keith tried art school in Pittsburgh but although he had some early success, he didn t really fit in there. He decided he needed to move to New York.
In 1978 when Keith was 20 years old, he moved to New York, which was (and some say still is) the center of artistic energy for the U.S. He started art school and began making friends. Young New Yorkers were making art for themselves and their friends, not to hang in museums, and it was an exciting time. Graffiti artists were painting the outside of subway trains (and getting arrested for it), but Keith decided to do something different. When advertisement frames in subway stations weren t being used, they were covered with black construction paper. Keith s white chalk drawings on the black paper became instantly famous. Everyone wanted to know who was making the quirky, happy little drawings that were brightening their commutes. (That s him up there drawing!) He did get arrested for drawing in the subway once, although most policemen were apparently so charmed by his drawings there that they let him get away with it. Besides the graffiti artists, another big influence on Keith s art were the street dancers he saw everywhere breakdancing! He loved the way they moved and all their energy. He drew figures dancing like the guys he saw in the parks of New York City. The squiggly lines he drew around his simple figures gave the impression that they were moving like the breakdancers and hip hop artists he loved. Another motif he used was the heart, often with people dancing around it, and sometimes dancing by itself. He believed in the power of love. The artists he knew in New York were not people who always fit in well, either in their schools or in a job or in the company of normal people. They all had to look after each other so they could be themselves and make the art they wanted to.
Another favorite image was of a barking dog, sometimes on four legs, and sometimes dancing on two. Why? Who knows? He must have thought it was funny! He also liked flying figures. Is this an angel? A vampire? A superhero? There s no way of knowing how many pieces of art Keith Haring made over his lifetime. He probably made tens of thousands of individual drawings, from doodles on a napkin to murals that covered the side of a building. He used the same symbols again and again. Here s Keith freshening up an abandoned building in his own neighborhood. He said that he had to walk past it every day on the way to his apartment. It was in a pretty bad area of New York, in the East Village, so he and his friend didn t ask permission. They just made art in bright, neon colors on a crumbly old concrete wall! The threeeyed face is another graphic that used a lot, and there are more dancing guys. Keith s work quickly became known in the art world, and he got gallery shows and began to make a little money. He knew a lot of famous people in New York, too, including Andy Warhol. Andy s Pop Art of the 1950s and 1960s was a big influence on Keith, as was Andy s friendship and his connections in New York. Remember that Andy Warhol also painted things like simple soup cans, which some people thought didn t belong in a museum. On the left is a photo from one of Keith s first gallery shows. As you can see, he not only hung up his pictures he also drew a whole line of dancing figures along the bottom the wall!
Keith Haring was very much interested in the social issues of his day. As both an artist and an activist, he found you could depict serious issues in a fun or at least lively way when communicated through cartoony images and bright colors. This picture was some of the work he did to support research on AIDS, which was a new disease at that time. In the early 1980s, people were starting to get very sick and the doctors really didn t know what to do. Many people thought the government should stop covering its ears and eyes and start working on the problem. Keith also created artwork for anti-drug campaigns and against the government in South Africa that wasn t fair to black people, among other causes. Keith Haring always enjoyed working with kids and beautifying spaces. He often would paint cheerful murals in the children s wards of hospitals, or get kids to help him paint murals at their schools. One of his coolest projects was created in 1986 with 1,000 New York City kids and Keith. He drew they outline and the kids wrote all over it with whatever they wanted to say, creating the unique and brightly-colored "CityKids Speak on Liberty Banner." The 90 by 30-foot banner commemorates the Statue of Liberty on her 100 th birthday. It was displayed in 2016 in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention. He once said: I can make any kid smile. It s probably from having a funny face and looking and acting like a kid. Kids can relate to my drawings, because of the simple lines. Keith Haring said, Art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity. He spread his art all over the cities where he lived, and in other countries, too. This building in a rundown neighborhood of Philadelphia was painted by Haring with the help of neighborhood children. Even though he got sick and died so young, he had a great legacy. He showed that street artists should be taken seriously and inspired a new generation of street-to-gallery artists such as Shepard Fairey and Banksy. Now in the 21 st century, murals and urban graffiti art are a worldwide phenomenon, giving art to the people where they live.
Here s a bonus: Google honored Keith with this Doodle on May 4, 2012, what would have been his 54 th birthday.