Keith Haring: The Master of Pop Art

By Sherine Chrispeels 

1. Early Life And Education 

Keith Haring was born the 4th May 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. In his early age, he developed a love for drawing and learned basic cartooning skills, from his father and the emergent pop culture around him such as Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss. 

After his high school graduation in 1976, Keith joined the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, which was a commercial art school. Soon after his entrance there, he discovered that he had little to no interest in commercial art. Thus, he dropped out after two semesters. He then continued to work on his own and in 1978, he had a solo exhibition of his artistic work in Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center. 

Later that year, Keith moved to NYC and joined the School of Visual Art (SVA). In New York, he found a flourishing art community outside of galleries and museums, in the downtown streets, subways, clubs and more. There, he became friends with many other artists such as Kenny Scharf or Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

2. Early Work 

With his influences and other artistic inspirations, Keith Haring was able to push himself towards an independent career path and a unique style. From Christo’s work “Running Fence” to Andy Warhol’s unique style, Keith was determined to devote his career to creating public art. 

Since he was studying at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Keith was able to experiment other kinds of art such as performance, video, installation and collage, while still remaining devoted to drawing. One day in 1980, he saw a matte black paper in a subway station. He began drawing in white chalk over these papers throughout different subway stations. From 1980 until 1985, Keith produced hundreds of these public drawings. Sometimes, he created 40 “subway drawings” in one day. Those artworks became familiar to the New York communities, who often recognised and encouraged Keith whenever he was working on a new drawing. As he said, the subway became his “laboratory” for working out his ideas using simple lines. 

3. Rise To Fame 

It was between 1980 and 1989 that Keith achieved international recognition as he participated in many group and solo exhibitions. In 1981, he did his first solo exhibition which was held at the Westbeth Painters Space, in NYC. In 1982, he made his debut in his Soho gallery with an exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. During that time, he also participated in international survey exhibitions such as the Sao Paulo Biennial, Documenta 7 in Kassel and the Whitney Biennial. Overall, he completed many public projects in the first half of the 80’s, from an animation for the Spectacolor billboard in Times Square (NYC) to creating designs and sets for theaters and clubs to creating worldwide murals. 

4. Pop Shop 

In April 1986, Keith opened the Pop Shop in Soho. That store sold shirts, toys, posters, magnets, … with his art works on it. As he was considering the store an extension of his work, he decided to paint the whole interior with black and white designs. The shop’s goal was to provide people a greater access to his art works and selling products at low costs. Due to that shop, he received a lot of criticism. But his goal to make his work available to a greater audience supported him, as well as his fans, friends and mentors including Andy Warhol. 

Between 1982 and 1989, Keith produced more than 50 public art works in dozens of cities around the world. They often gave social messages. They were created for hospitals, charities, orphanages, children’s care centers, … Among his famous projects, there’s a mural he created for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. He worked with 900 children for this work. In 1987, in Paris (France), he did a mural on the exterior of Necker Children’s Hospital. And he also painted a mural on the western side of the Berlin wall, 3 years before its fall. Keith also held workshops for children in schools and museums in NYC, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Bordeaux. 

5. Final Years 

In 1988, Keith Haring was diagnosed with AIDS. In 1989, he created the Keith Haring Foundation. His goal was to provide fundings to AIDS organizations and children’s programmes. During his last years of life, he dedicated his time to speak out about his own illness in order to generate activism and awareness about AIDS. Additionally, as an openly gay artist, Keith decided to represent the hardships of the LGBT community in his work, including gay rights. 

Only in 1986, he was the subject of over 40 newspapers and magazine articles. He then decided to work with artists and performers such as Madonna, Grace Jones, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Bill T. Jones, Jenny Holzer and more. 

Haring was able to attract a wider audience and ensure the accessibility of his work by expressing worldwide known concepts such as birth, death, love, sex and war. Since then, his imagery has become universally recognized as a visual language of the 20th century. 

On February 16 1990, at the young age of 31, Keith Haring died of AIDS related complications. With over 1,000 people attending, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, a memorial was held for him on May 4th 1990. 

Nowadays, Keith Haring’s work can be seen all around the world in art museums and galleries. He was and still remains the true representation of pop art.