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, February 16 1990, 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 subway stations 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 in 1986 Haring subway drawing when I travelled on the trains, and it was the first time I realised his mandate, “that art is for everyone.”
Haring conveyed the Human Condition
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. His art, 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 artist that found his way in New York during the heady days of the aids epidemic, 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. Haring maintained a friendship with Andy Warhol. Haring provided Warhol access to the alternative scene, which Warhol exploited as a source of inspiration. Haring created the figure of Andy Mouse, based on Mickey Mouse, in 1985. The background is reminiscent of the Stars and Stripes, and the motif of Andy Mouse is supplemented by dollar signs in the ears of the mouse. By combining the Walt Disney product with the Andy Warhol product, Haring accords his friend the same iconic status.
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 awareness, 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 awareness 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).
Keith Haring Foundation
The Keith Haring Foundation was set up in 1989 to raise awareness of Keith Haring’s work and ideas alive, grow them, and keep them safe. It gives money to non-profit groups that help children and groups that teach about AIDS, try to stop it and care for people who have it. Haring also asked the Foundation to keep his artistic memory alive and safe after he died. The Foundation keeps a collection of art and records. It helps arts and education organisations by funding exhibitions, programs, and books that put Haring’s work and ideas in context and explain them.
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
Kolossa, A., Haring, K. (2004). Haring. Germany: Taschen.
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Herb Lubalin (1918 – 1981) renowned graphic designer
Renowned American graphic designer, Herb Lubalin, best known for his collaborations with Ralph Ginzburg on the magazines Eros, Fact and Avant Garde, is regarded as one of the seminal designers of the 20th century. The, 17 March 2018, will mark what would have been Lubalin’s 100th birthday.Read More →
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Ray Eames an American Designer
Ray Eames (b. Bernice Alexandra Kaiser 1912-88) was an American designer. She was born in Sacramento, California. She was the wife of Charles Eames. Read More →
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Milton Glaser (1929 – 2020) American Graphic Designer
Co-founder of Push Tin Studios. The colourful posters of designer-illustrator Milton Glaser epitomise an era for the Woodstock generation. His psychedelic ‘American Sixties style’ was a synthesis of various influences ranging from Surrealism to Islamic painting.Read More →
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Mainbocher (1890 – 1976) – Simplicity without Boredom
When designing his 1945 spring collection, Mainbocher – the noted French designer who worked in New York after the fall of Paris in WWII. Declared that he had attempted more than ever to make clothes “that would embody the right amount of novelty, were stimulating for today,Read More →
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Albert Frey (1903 – 1998) and Desert Modernism
Frey was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and obtained his architecture diploma from the Winterthur Institute of Technology in 1924. Frey got technical training in traditional building construction rather than design education in the then-popular Beaux-Arts style. Frey worked in construction during his school vacations and apprenticed with architect A. J. Arter in Zurich before getting…
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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…
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.