Keith Haring was best known for his graffiti-like painting, initially on the black paper used to cover discontinued billboard advertisements in the New York subway. After a feverish 1980’s style career of surging popular success and grudging critical attention, Haring died of AIDS in 1991 at 31.
Art is for Everyone
Keith Haring
I have been a fan of Keith Haring, the young artist who started making chalk drawings on blank advertising panels in New York subways that helped spark an international street art movement. I was a teenager in the 80s in New York when he had his heyday. I remember his drawing when I travelled on the subway, and it was the first time I realised his mandate, “that art is for everyone.”
Haring communicated primary human events.
Making sense of Haring’s signs was easy; they quickly communicated important human events; birth, love, sex and war. Recalling Star Wars movies of the late 1970s and early 80s, special effects technology joined the mix. Hearts, babies, dancers, TV sets, computers and spaceships symbolically radiant with the mantra “may the force be with you,” summed up the world according to Haring.
Haring’s art was the perfect reflection of its time. Break dancing was central to his imagery. He made many figures that twirled on their heads. A young gay art artist that found his way in New York during the heady days before AIDS awareness, Haring made art that mirrored the era’s kind of free-floating sexuality and homosexuality. He grew up in the clubs. It was all music, dancing and sex.
Art exuding energy
Haring refined his collection of signs with skill and speed. Stilted dogs painted on paper in 1980 and clunky babies marked on a subway map soon evolved into more confident forms. His images, particularly his barking dog and the “radiant child”, were internationally known.
Haring depicted demons as well as angels. He foresaw an apocalyptic catastrophe — his running monsters and whirling yet orderly lines, brilliantly composed, belong in our technological age. He was not a sentimentalist. He wrote of evil and greed.
The Japanese understood his work.
In Japan, his work was understood. The Japanese responded to it; he felt it was tied to their traditions of the ‘sign’ and the gesture and the concept of the ‘spirit of the line’ evident in Sumi painting and calligraphy.
High and Low Art
What American museum curators initially could not see was Haring’s employment of high and low art. Haring understood clearly that the information age and the camera had blurred the boundaries between high and low art.
Commercial Resilience
Since a few seasons ago, the Parisian brand Études has used Haring graphics in its work, just before Watanabe in Japan. The creative directors of Études, Aurélien Arbet and Jérémie Egry dug deeper into New York’s New Wave than just its hip-hop music and Kryolan spray cans found on the street. In the 1980s, Haring was a strong voice because of his work on Aids, apartheid, and crack addiction. Somewhere Downtown, a new show at UCCA in Beijing looks at his place in the chaotic city of New York when he first started making art. Chaos and Hope, Haring’s first show at the Nakamura gallery in Japan, is being shown again to mark the gallery’s 15th anniversary.
Keith Haring was a big part of André Heller’s book Luna Luna, about an art theme park in Hamburg in the 1980s. The New York Public Library has more than 100 books with his work in its collection. He wanted his work seen by many people for as long as possible. His work in fashion was an essential part of his plan. Malcolm McLaren was the first to put Keith Haring’s art on the runway. He used it to package his Duck Rock album. Gil Vazquez is glad that Dijon went back to the early archives. She works with HIV and AIDS charities, and black transwomen are some of the most vulnerable people in the community. Haring’s collection with Dijon is still for sale online at places like Farfetch and resale sites, and Basquiat’s art was used in her most recent collection.
Keith Haring was one of the first artists to make art products that people could wear, collect, and buy for a low price. Haring opened the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street to sell clothes, jewellery, toys, and posters. Many people who came to New York would make a point of going there. Haring worked with Artestar’s founder, David Stark. The Valentine’s Day deals at Primark are different from Honey’s story about the clubland, and Stark has worked with Haring on more than 2,000 projects since 1989. His art is still a language we use today (Have We Reached Peak Keith Haring?, 2023).
Sources
Have we reached peak Keith Haring? (2023, March 6). Have We Reached Peak Keith Haring? | Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/2605aa4c-780f-4dfe-aaf7-48b16d57ba9c
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Keith Haring
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Samuel Yellin (1885 – 1940) Polish American Blacksmith
Samuel Yellin was born in the Russian Empire in 1884 to a Jewish family in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine. He was apprenticed to a master ironsmith when he was eleven years old. He finished his apprenticeship at the age of sixteen in 1900. He left Ukraine shortly after and travelled across Europe. He arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,…
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William Dwiggins (1880-1956) – Typographer and all rounder
Dwiggins was born in Martinsville, Ohio in 1880, he had studied East in Chicago, and then he moved to Boston. Between the years 1917-1918, he became the acting director of the Harvard University Press. He also worked for the Yale Universty Press, designing jackets, endpapers, bindings and posters.Read More →
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Ross Franklin Littell (1924 – 2000) American textile and furniture designer
Ross Franklin Littell (1924 – 2000) was an American textile and furniture designer known forRead More →
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Brooks Stevens (1911 – 1995) American Industrial Designer
Brooks Stevens was an American industrial designer. He was born in Wisconsin and was active in Milwaukee. He studied at Cornell University in Utica, New York.Read More →
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George Sakier (1897 – 1965) American Industrial Designer
George Sakier (1897 – 1965) was a multifaceted artist who worked as an interior designer,Read More →
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Thomas Lamb – Industrial Designer – “The Handle Man”
Thomas Lamb founded his textile design studio at seventeen, specialising in advertising, fashion, and magazine illustration. In the 1920s, his bedspreads, napkins, and draperies were immensely popular. Many New York department stores carried them, including Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue.Read More →
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Anton Grot (1884 – 1974) Polish Art Director
Antoni Franciszek Groszewski was born in Kiebasin, Poland, and passed away in Stanton, California. He majored in interior decoration, illustration, and design at the Krakow art academy and a technical school in Königsberg, Germany. In 1909, he changed his name and moved to the United States.Read More →
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Gere Kavanaugh American textile, industrial & interior designer
Kavanaugh worked for General Motors as a stylist, primarily designing exhibitions to demonstrate autos and creating displays, model kitchens, and interiors. She was one of the company’s first female designers, called the “Damsels of Design” by design director Harley Earl. Read More →
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Eames Chair Review: We Tested the Lounge Chair and Ottoman
First developed by lifelong couple and design partners Charles and Ray Eames in 1956, the lounge chair was the duo’s interpretation of a 19th-century club chair—designed to resemble a worn first baseman’s mitt and made of high-quality materials like supple leather, wood veneer, and cast aluminum.Read More →
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Keith Haring Mural – Collingwood, Australia
Those who have an interest in the art world will instantly recognize this Melbourne wall mural as the work of Keith Haring. Haring was born in 1958 and was known for being one of the main figures who brought street art into the mainstream sphere. His social activism and philanthropic values made Haring an iconic…
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Richard Schultz (1930 – 2021) American sculptor and furniture designer
In 1951, he became a member of Knoll’s design development group. Initially, he collaborated on the wire Diamond sitting collection with Harry Bertoia. Schultz designed the Petal table in 1960, steel-wire lounge chairs in 1961, and outdoor Leisure Collection seating and tables in 1966 for Knoll. He designed a 1981 collection of outdoor furniture while…
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Paul Howard Manship (1885 – 1966) – American Sculptor
Paul Howard Manship was an American Sculptor. He was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist Indian Sculpture. He began his artistic education at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota, and he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before moving onto New York City’s Art Student League. Throughout his subsequent career, he created more…
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Best Amateur Living Space: The Hunter Greenhouse – Catskills Mountains
The winner of the 2018 Remodelista Considered Design Awards Best Amateur Living/Dining space is Ely Franko, for his project The Hunter Greenhouse in the Catskills. His project was chosen as a finalist by guest judge Stephen Alesch , who had this to say: “What a perfect little hideout—full of surprise and compact good energy!Read More…
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Wharton Esherick (1887 – 1970) American Sculptor and Furniture Designer
As a result, his sculptural furniture and furnishings are his most well-known works. For his leadership in designing non-traditional designs and supporting and inspiring artists/craftspeople by example, Esherick was dubbed the “dean of American artisans” by his peers during his lifetime. Esherick’s impact can still be apparent in contemporary artisans’ work, especially in the Studio…
Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) – Moravian decorator and painter – Encyclopedia of Design
Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) was a Moravian decorator, painter, and graphic artist. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Mucha is well known for his Art Nouveau posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha first designed stage sets in Vienna; moved to Munich, in 1885 and Paris in 1887.
Explore 5 popular topics on Google Arts and Culture – Encyclopedia of Design
The following are 5 popular topics that are published on Google and Arts and Culture. It is one of my favourite parts of the Google universe.