Keith Haring: Great Art Explained

In the early hours of June 28th, 1969,

the first rock was thrown outside the Stonewall Inn,

in Greenwich Village New York City.

After years of police raids, intimidation, aggression, and arrests, the drag queens, street boys,

gay men and women had had enough,

and they fought back - with protests continuing for several nights.

It would lead to the founding of the Gay Liberation movement.

Around the same time as the Stonewall riots were happening,

ten-year-old Keith Haring was living with his conservative parents in the suburbs of Pennsylvania.

He was passionate about art at a very young age, and his father,

an amateur cartoonist, encouraged his son's ambition to one day work for the Walt

Disney Corporation.

Keith Haring was from a generation of kids born during the Cold War,

who saw the news as it happened - on TV.

He was exposed to a whole new level of sophisticated advertising: pitching products, ideas,

desires, aspirations, and Concepts at Breakneck speed - as he sat on the couch.

This is where he developed his skills in simplifying complex ideas using memorable graphics.

He instinctively knew that a combination of slogans and visuals,

could be a powerful force,

and later he would sell difficult politics in the same way Madison Avenue sold

vacuum cleaners. in 1978 Keith Haring left his perfectly safe Suburban life in Pennsylvania

- because,

as he later said,

he needed intensity for his art but also intensity in his life.

And there was only one place to go - New York City.

TV Presenter: As long

as anyone can remember people have been expressing themselves by writing

or drawing on public walls.

There's a word for this - it's called "graffiti" The city exposed Herring to Graffiti.

Targeted by the authorities and overlooked by the art world,

but valued by Haring

and others for its technical Mastery

and direct connection to the public.

At College he was already experimenting with text and performance,

but was attracted to Graffiti,

which often uses bold expressive lines and simplified forms to create impactful visuals.

And Haring adopted these characteristics in his own work.

He developed a distinct style of fluid continuous lines,

and invented his own visual language.

The Democratic nature of graffiti meant he could create art

that would reach and engage a broad public.

It would be a career-long theme for Haring:

breaking down barriers between "high art" and "low art", bringing in an urban community,

and particularly working-class communities.

He wanted his work accessible to everyone, and not just the elite.

He called the New York subway his "laboratory", experimenting with ideas and form.

Taking on the rectangles of black paper used to cover expired advertisements,

Haring - using chalk - did hundreds of drawings over a five-year period,

and was arrested several times.

The Simplicity of the images was a necessity,

as he had to work quickly to avoid getting caught.

But sometimes the hastily drawn panels,

managed to perfectly capture the frenetic energy of New York City.

The radiant baby became his trademark.

The beauty of Haring's work is its positive life-affirming quality,

and his Subway Works struck a nerve with blasé commuters facing the daily grind.

They'd look forward to seeing what he drew next and where,

and before long mainstream media noticed him too

and almost overnight he became a star.

Interviewer: "How did you manage that?", Haring:

"At the same time

that I was doing things in the Subways I had began showing things in

Galleries and things in the press

and things".

Haring had kept his sexuality strictly under wraps from his conservative parents,

but in New York, he got to finally experience his authentic gay identity,

in an environment that had been fostered by The Stonewall riots.

It was a cliché but it was true,

you could be whatever you wanted in New York City -

and Keith Herring quickly found his tribe.

For a period, the New York club scene became the New York art scene,

and at the iconic Club 57 located in a church basement in the East

Village,

Haring would put on art shows,

and become friends or friendly rivals with fellow painters Jean-Michel Basquiat

and Kenny Scharf,

joining artists creating work outside of the elitist

and restrictive world of the Galleries

and museums.

They weren't producing the austere conceptual art being shown Uptown,

but art that was noisy, dirty, chaotic, liberating, colourful, and fun.

Nightclubs were an important part of what shaped Haring's art.

The music, the energy, and above all the dancing,

are all reflected in the fluidity and rhythm of his figures and his line.

TV reporter: "A mystery disease known

as the gay plague. has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American

Medicine".

The first time the public heard about AIDS was in 1981,

when an article described 41 cases of a rare cancer in young otherwise healthy

gay men in Los Angeles.

It was the very beginning of the AIDS crisis,

and the word soon became synonymous with death.

Haring's development as an artist and as a person,

came at a conservative time in Western politics.

Margaret Thatcher was elected as UK leader in 1979,

Ronald Reagan became the President of the U.S in 1981,

and Helmut Kohl became chancellor of Germany in 1982.

It wasn't until September 1985,

four years after the first cases the Reagan even said the word AIDS.

By that point it was a full-blown epidemic.

Keith Haring: "During the summer I start to notice trouble with my breathing.

With inspecting every day and waiting to see the purple splotch,

and I found a spot on my leg".

Herring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987.

Just over two years later, at the height of his Fame, he was dead.

Haring knew his time was limited,

and in those last two years he traveled all over the world,

creating work and organising shows.

His list of "to-do" projects just got bigger.

Political activism had driven Haring's bright,

brief career - and he truly believed in the power of art to change

the world.

This belief, combined with the immediacy of his cartoon style,

came together spectacularly in the 1980s.

He had made posters against apartheid in South Africa, and for nuclear disarmament groups.

Created works with inner city kids, produced anti-drugs billboards,

and posters that attacked those condemning sexual freedom -

and then he went for the American government,

and it shockingly inadequate response to the AIDS crisis, with a series of posters.

And he also took time to create the Keith Haring Foundation,

to raise money for AIDS organizations and children's programs.

To date it has raised 20 million dollars for charities. it was during this

Maelstrom of activity and one year into his diagnosis

that he produced his most iconic poster.

The modern poster as we know it dates back to the mid-19th century

when the printing industry perfected colour lithography

and made mass production of large

and inexpensive images possible.

Many fine artists worked in the medium.

Jules Chéret, was a French painter

and lithographer who became a master of Belle Epoch poster art.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's posters for the Moulin Rouge,

established him as one of the foremost poster artists of the late 19th century.

Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau artist.

One of the most prominent poster designers.

And the 20th century saw great artists like Ernst Keller and Victor Vasarely,

producing limited edition posters Haring had championed the poster format

as a traditional form of political activism.

He saw in them the immediacy which we now think of,

when we think of his aesthetic.

It was in 1982 that he created one of his first posters.

He printed and paid for 30 000 of them

which he gave out for free during an anti-nuclear protest in New York.

He would use his platform to get us talking about socio-political issues often ignored,

by employing a tradition used by political agitators since printing began.

There is a generosity to Haring often lacking in the art world.

He was a populist who wanted his work "out there" for the world to

see - for free.

The art establishment didn't really understand it,

but Haring really believed that art was for everybody.

The artist saw the potential in posters as a democratizing force.

Affordable, mass-produced, and collectible.

Public accessibility was a consistent concern in Haring's work,

and posters were a way to reach the widest audience possible.

Haring: "I mean it's definitely art for the age of mechanical reproduction".

The artist had used the "wise monkey" figures before in an earlier work

that was inspired by the political organisation "Act Up",

who in 1987, had coined the slogans "Silence = Death"

and "Ignorance = Fear" The painting also has the pink triangle

that Nazis used to identify gay people in concentration camps,

which had been appropriated by Act Up and reclaimed as a badge of Pride,

The poster uses a more paired down graphic than the original painting,

and that was typical of Haring's punchy street posters,

which were designed to catch the eye of casual passers-by.

This work was plastered all over New York City,

and became the most famous and impactful of all the AIDS activists work.

At the time he created this poster,

the numbers of reported AIDS cases in the United States had reached 100 000,

and many couldn't afford the available medication.

The mainstream was unwilling to discuss it openly,

but Keith Haring forced us to talk about AIDS.

Haring: "If you don't have money in this city,

you know it's an expensive disease,

and you can't get enough money to get your AZT (medication),

to get whatever you have, and you just give up".

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine,

he told the world he was HIV positive.

This was so brave at a time that it was considered career suicide.

Haring: "My work, and all art really is about life. um especially um I

mean my life is my work,

my work is my life, and so the two things are completely intertwined,

and are almost one and the same.

This is a man who had no shame in an "Era of Shame".

Who wouldn't be silenced

when no one else was speaking up -

and he spoke loudly

and often against the stigma

and Prejudice associated with the disease.

People still believed you could catch AIDS from a kiss

or even from a toilet seat -

and religious leaders were loud in their condemnation of any form of "Education

as propaganda".

Mainstream Society saw the disease as one that only affected gay men, Haitians,

sex workers, and drug addicts.

But with "Ignorance = Fear", Haring portrays three individuals,

whose race and gender are not obvious.

And by using his trademark "de-individualised", "unisex" figures,

he sends a coded message that everyone is a target.

All three figures have a pink X on their chests, symbolising AIDS patients,

and are covering their ears mouth and eyes,

like the three wise monkeys who "See No Evil, Hear No Evil,

and Speak no Evil".

As with many of his primitive figures,

the three in the poster appear to be jumping or dancing.

A reflection of the hip-hop music he was obsessed with,

and the club scene he hung out at.

If you ignore the text,

the work could be read as a "fun clubbing Scene",

it captures that energy - and that's the point.

It draws you in with its simple lines and primary colours,

and then it hits you with its message - loud and clear.

Somebody had to shout about AIDS, and it might as well be Keith Haring.

He never sketched beforehand or planned anything,

but let it flow spontaneously like "automated writing".

His line was described as "continuous", not because it is uninterrupted,

but because it has a fluidity

that runs through all his Works - through dancing figures,

barking dogs and crawling babies - and through time and space.

These graphic lines and colours,

tap into a body of work that started on the New York subway,

over 10 years before.

In the simple, "visually fun" image,

Haring encapsulates how a generation of gay men were ignored.

Too afraid to stand up and say something, because of fear - because of Shame.

This work - so simplistic on the surface, changed how people thought about AIDS.

And that is both subversive AND deeply profound.

In February 1990, Haring was seriously ill with late stage AIDS-related infections,

including lymphoma.

He was receiving 24-hour care,

when his Studio manager came in with a letter from the Walt Disney Corporation.

They wanted him to work on a Mickey Mouse project.

He had dreamed of this since he was a child -

but - he didn't believe the letter was real,

and thought his friend was lying, to make him feel good.

When he finally realised it was a genuine offer, it was too late.

Haring's death on February the 16th, 1990,

meant he lost his chance to give Mickey Mouse new life.

He was only 32 years old