Keith Haring

(Kutztown, Pennsylvania, 1958 - 1990, New York, New York)

Keith Haring’s style is instantly recognizable. His distinctively flowing, nimble, hyperactive lines cover everything from artworks like drawings, paintings, and sculptures; to commercial items like t-shirts, posters, and furniture; to public murals on walls around the world. The height of Haring’s career lasted only from 1980 until his untimely death in 1990 at the age of thirty-one, but in that short time he left a deep and enduring mark on art and culture.

Born in 1958, Haring was raised in the small community of Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He began drawing at an early age and, after graduating from high school, he moved to Pittsburgh to study commercial graphic design. He soon relocated to New York City, where he experimented with video, performance, and abstraction while also immersing himself in the city’s rich creative communities, including graffiti and street art. In 1980, Haring fused these many influences together in bold chalk drawings that he created throughout New York’s subway stations. As he made thousands of these drawings amid crowds of onlookers, the artist perfected his signature style, launched his career, and grew his fame.

Whether drawing on a small sheet of paper or a huge wall, Haring worked tirelessly and without prior planning. Through speed and directness, he hoped to take in the fullness of human experience and immediately broadcast it back out in a social, poetical, and spiritual message for the widest possible audience. As he wrote, “The artist becomes a vessel to let the world pour through him,” creating works that can “liberate the soul, provoke the imagination, and oppose the dehumanization of our culture.”

Haring achieved these goals by sharing his art freely and enthusiastically, and also by addressing specific political issues. Through his work, he stood firmly against war, environmental destruction, racism, and economic exploitation. He was also openly and proudly gay, and he used his art to share his identity, confront homophobia, and raise awareness of AIDS, a disease that emerged in the 1980s, ravaging the gay community and cutting short Haring’s own life. Even while facing these dire issues, the artist never lost hope. This exhibition features one of his very last projects, a series of drawings. In their introduction, he wrote “These drawings are about the Earth we inherited and the dismal task of trying to save it—against all odds.”

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