Keith Haring

Keith Allen Haring.

Keith Haring was born on may 4 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, close to the hometown of his parents, Joan and Allen, Kutztown, Pennsylvania. For some reason, Keith told everyone he was born in Kutztown, but according to his mother, Joan, there were no hospitals in Kutztown, the reason behind his birthplace.

From when he was a very young child, Keith had a pen in his hand. From the age of less than 12 months, Keith was drawing doodles with crayons, and as time progressed, Keith’s father, Allen, who was adept at drawing cartoons, would sit down with his son and show him how to make his drawings take form. For example, turning a circle into a balloon, ice cream cone etc.

This is where Keith’s love of art blossomed, in his infancy, I think it is ironic that a talent and desire shone through at an early age, because his life was to be confined to a 31 year period, Where he achieved much fame and admiration through his unique and engaging graffiti art.

Keith had 3 younger sisters, Kay, Karen, and Kristen. So Four K’s. However, he was only really close to Kristen, who was 10 years younger than he.

In his childhood years, Haring was drawn to such comics as Dick Tracey and Batman, and was really obsessed with Walt Disney Cartoons, and with Dr. Seuss. What attracted him to Dr. Seuss cartoons we’re their weirdness and absurdity. He started drawing more and more cartoons, but when he started high school, he became less interested in this, and declared that he wanted to be an artist. He started doing pen and ink drawings consisting of combining little shapes together to fill whole areas of a page. It opened him up to using a consistent line that would go on and on.

Keith grew up in a protestant household, and when he was a child, he would go to a church camp every summer. He enjoyed it because it meant being with kids from all walks of life. He found it very easy to meet new friends and would write his new pals the rest of the year. It was here that Keith first had feelings for another boy. A councillor, his name was Dave. He didn’t know much about sex at the time, but he thought Dave was really handsome. It took him several years before he acknowledged his sexuality, not because he was ashamed, but he was yet to really discover the way he felt about the same sex.

His first love, however, was a girl named Suzy. Keith always thought he’d be with a girl, and he enjoyed it. But his increasing appetite for men eventually drove the two apart.

Keith later had male partners, such as Juan Dubose, a deejay, and Juan Rivera, a carpenter/limo driver. Of all the long term partners that he had, he was unfaithful to all of them. He used to cruise the streets and attend a local baths to seek sex with men.

Keith’s obsession with sex rubbed off on his art, he would draw hundreds of penises in pattern form and such scenes as men having sex with dogs or masturbation.

Through his good friend, Kermit Osewald, he became aware of what was happening in the art world and started studying books and magazines, such as ‘life and look’. This gave him an insight into the New York art scene.

Around this time, Keith was on a church trip to Washington DC, where he visited the Hirshhorn museum. Here he saw his first Warhol pieces, a series of Marylins. This inspired Keith to study art more thoroughly, because he was more convinced he was going to become an artist.

He was always interested in reading everything he could. His youngest sister, Kristen, recalled a moment where Keith and her were walking to their grandmother’s house and he stopped to pick up a slip of paper. He started reading what it had written on it. Kristen said, “Keith, its just trash”. To which he replied, “You should always be reading something, no matter what it is”.

Keith was always obsessive about the things that he started, he was a self proclaimed “Jesus Freak” in his younger years, but by the time he was in his early teens, he was no longer into Jesus, and started smoking copious amounts of pot whilst listening to the grateful dead. He also started on pills and acid, and whatever was available. He took drugs like they were going out of fashion.

Keith and his new hip, cool, far out solid and right on friends would get together and have wild orgies of sex drugs and rock & roll every weekend.

No that Haring was spiralling out of control, but in this stage his schooling suffered, and so did the conscience of his parents. However his art started taking prevalence over school work and this was, in essence, the start of Keith Haring, the Artist.

In 1976 Keith graduated from Kutztown high school, and went on to study at the Ivy School, in Pittsburgh. A definite style was emerging for Keith. He however left the Ivy School after his second semester, after reading and being inspired by a book called “The Art Spirit”, by Robert Henri.

He started selling silk screen T-shirts of his own design. And then after hitchhiking across the country selling them, he had a string of short term. Unfulfilling jobs including a cooking job in the cafeteria at Fischer-Scientific Corporation, where there was also a large wall devoted to changing art exhibitions, Where Keith was able to display some of his work. After this he got a maintenance job at an art and craft centre in Pittsburgh. Despite not being enrolled there, Keith took full advantage of the facilities, and would often sit in on classes.

The director of the arts centre, Audrey Bethel, invited haring to exhibit his work there. This was Keith’s first real art show, his larger works hung in one room, where as in another room, hung 30 or more black and white pen and ink drawings, dealing with positive and negative space. These pieces were very exact, and precise.

In 1978, Keith made a fresh start, when he moved to New York. He joined the school of Visual Arts, and found the intensity in life that he had always strived for. For Haring this was the first time since high school that he had studied full time, and he began working obsessively. He became more and more obsessed with sex, and it became the biggest feature of his work for some time. Even in his video studies course, his projects revolved around sex.

Keith started noticing and being intrigued by the graffiti he saw in the streets and in the subway. Being the late 70’s, the war on graffiti had not yet begun so it’s fair to say the art form was at its peak. He also became involved with a club called “Club 57”, where he used to hang out, help run, and was a curator for art shows and performances.

Haring mad a top to bottom installation of his drawings and had them on display at a space called P.S. 122, and had this space for 2 months, on exchange for working there on occasion. During this time her obtained another job, as assistant to a gallery run by Tony Shafrazi, who once caused a scandal by spray painting over Picasso’s Guernica.

In 1980, Keith started drawing graffiti in the streets. He developed a style of graffiti drawing that was made up of lines and pictographs, and using a big, black magic marker.

The way one of Keith’s graffiti pieces would begin was by drawing his tag (signature of a graffiti artist). Haring’s tag started to look like a dog. Then he started drawing a person on all fours. As he drew this figure more and more, it became the radiant baby. Keith started to draw more and more configurations of these two figures, and they became a massive feature of his work, and he became synonymous for producing graffiti art with these sorts of themes. He became tight with other prominent Graf artists like Lee Quinones, and ‘Fab 5 Fred’, whose name is mentioned in the Blondie song ‘Rapture’. Fred was good friends with Deborah Harry.

Keith found various places in the New York subways to decorate with his rows of babies. He then began to draw flying saucers zapping these babies with rays of glowing energy. Keith started noticing panels covered in matte black paper, and knew immediately he must go above ground to buy chalk. Drawing these panels with chalk gave herring the sharp crisp white line that he wanted. There were also white markers available, but Keith knew they wouldn’t sink into the paper, and it wouldn’t be so vibrant. This was also a way for Keith to participate with other New York graffiti artists, without having to sneak around and draw on trains. In fact, doing his artwork on these panels made herring more vulnerable to be caught by the police. Amazingly, if Keith did a drawing in chalk, no one would touch or smudge it for weeks, and he said it seemed to have this protective power that prevented people from destroying them. Keith realised how many people were being exposed to his graffiti and realised the power and potential of what he was doing. People would often see him drawing on a panel and say, ‘So you’re the guy who did all these drawings’.

Eventually, for Haring it wasn’t a question of doing a mural in the course of his daily travelling, he developed a route, where he went station to station, just to do these drawings.

One particular theme of Keith’s was a picture of a man, with a hole in his stomach, after having being shot by a flying saucer. He associated this series with the death of John Lennon.

Keith got together with his good friend Tseng Kwang Chi, who was a photographer. They travelled around together and Kwang Chi would take photos of Keith’s murals.

In 19983, Keith’s work on the streets was declining as he started to become well known. He started having shows in Europe, traded works with Andy Warhol, and started hanging out with luminaries such as Madonna. He started working on surfaces such as leather, metal, and plaster cast.

In 1984, Keith Haring was invited by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Gallery of NSW to do some on site projects in Australia. The NGV commissioned Keith to paint a huge glass wall with water cascading down the front. The painting of the mural was documented by students of the Australian film school. Shortly after Keith completed the wall, he was slammed in the Melbourne press for ripping off original art. In fact, to that day, Keith had not yet seen aboriginal art. Two months later, some idiot took a gun, and shot a hole through the main panel of the painting. The whole thing had to be removed.

Whilst in Melbourne, Keith was asked by the Collingwood technical school, to do a mural on a wall there. Haring visited the site and agreed to it. The mural consisted of Haring’s trademark line drawings, of little humans, (coloured red), emitting rays of green energy. At the top of the mural, there was a caterpillar with the head of a computer with a human brain on the screen. There are a couple of little green humans riding the caterpillar. They emitted rays of red energy, and one of them held a red stick, with red rays.

It possessed all the dynamics and qualities of a typical Haring mural and compared with the wall at the NGV, has stood the test of time, becoming a permanent site, and a local landmark. I visited the mural a couple of weekends ago, and it was a thrill to see some Haring work first hand. Although, it is kind of hidden and it took a while to find, as the old Collingwood tech (or at least this section of it), is abandoned. I had to climb a cyclone fence behind the tote hotel (and tie up Roxy) to get to the mural. I guess not many people get to admire it anymore, but I took advantage of it, taking some photographs and standing in the rain just to respect the mural, the man and his work.

The word on the street is that there has been talk of restoring the mural to its former glory. This would be great to see; after all it is a wonderful and engaging piece of contemporary art that should be preserved so future generations of Melbournians can see it.

In 1985, Haring started to get into large outdoor sculpture. His first large sculpture installation was at the Dag Haeemerskjold Plaza NY and it landed him a write up on the front cover of the New York Times.

Keith also started using acrylic and oil on canvas because it was more affordable to him now. He could afford to buy canvases like sheets of paper. Also, he painted his designs on a lady called Grace Jones, and dressed her up in an elaborate outfit of Haring’s designs. With Grace, this happened more than once, and he painted his designs on other people too.

It got to the point where Keith’s trademark style was so recognisable that it was being reproduced all over the world, becoming kind of an international language of art. People became so familiar with Haring’s work, that they were copying it whether he liked it or not. But first Keith was uncomfortable with this but soon endorsed it and participated in producing a series of fakes. He wanted the people to see the difference between a fake Keith Haring and the real Keith Haring. In his words: ‘You don’t need an artistic eye to tell the difference, 20 different people can draw the same character, but each one will be endowed with its own power and spirit.’

In 1985 Keith had an amazing show at the Bordeaux Museum in France. He was given the entire museum to have his exhibition in. With the first floor, Keith decided to devote to a huge exhibitions of his drawings, some of which dated back to 1980. The upstairs of the museum was decked out with a selection of Haring’s paintings, and some sculptural and totem items. The lower section was a huge space with 5 enormous arches on each side. Keith asked the museum to build and stretch 10 huge arch shaped canvases, which he would paint on site. After some deliberation about what to paint, Keith finally settled on an idea that was to become ‘The Ten Commandments’. He commanded a bible and then went to work. Each of the canvases was devoted to a certain commandment, and executed in typical Keith Haring flair and style. The use of colour in these pieces was brilliant, and almost gave them a psychedelic quality. The standard Haring pattern and energy was evident, and if you look at the paintings in a sequence, they have an amazing flowing nature. Who could ever have thought that a colourful Keith Haring twist on a theme that was so biblical could work so effectively. Well it did, and it earned the great man much acclaim. I think it would be fair to say at this pint, Keith haring was at the peak of his career, and this is the era when Keith work started developing into something monstrous and enchanting.

In the mid 80’s Keith was beginning to work on a lot more commercial projects, such as a range of designs for Swatch (swatch watches), a label design for a heart pill and a centrefold for the scholastic news. He collaborated with Richard Avedon on a poster of Brooke Shields. In 1986, Keith had stopped drawing in the subway completely as felt that these drawings had run their course. The other reason being the subway drawings were disappearing, because word had gotten out of the value of Keith’s work, people were consistently cutting them out of their panel and selling them.

1986, and Keith opens his famous retail store, the pop shop where you could find a range of Haring merchandise, such as clothing, inflatable babies and toy radio’s. The philosophy behind the pop shop was to keep the same sort of communication with the public as did the subway graffiti by keeping it available to all walks of life. The pop shop was a subject of heavy scrutiny. People accused Keith of selling out, but it didn’t affect him, and the stores popularity flourished.

In the same year, Keith was asked by the Checkpoint Charlie Museum of West Berlin to paint a section of the Berlin wall. It became a phenomenal media event. The subject was a continuous interlocking chain of human figures. Keith’s goal was to pain about 350 feet of the wall. He painted it in the colours of the German flag, red black and yellow. It became a very popular painting to obliterate, and most of Haring’s section of the wall gets covered over. However, small fragments of the mural remain, in testimony of its former existence.

In 1988 Keith learned that his former lover, Juan Dubose was suffering from aids. He also noticed that many of his former sexual partners were ill with the disease. He got tested but the results came back negative. However, just a few short months later, it was discovered that Keith was a victim of aids too. He was not astonished, for some time he had known it was inevitable. He was devastated, rightly so, but Keith had to face this tragic situation and go on.

Keith ended his relationship with lover Juan Rivera, and began a non sexual relationship with 18 year old, Gil Vazquez. The two share an intellectual relationship, and Gil turns out to be very compassionate about Keith’s health situation. He becomes an important companion for herring in the last years of his life. Keith also was delighted to discover that Gil was a fantastic travel companion. And the two travelled to Europe together many times.

Amazingly Keith remained active throughout his illness, and became more and more fond of large outdoor sculptures. He collaborated with his old friend Kermit Osewald, on some models and maquettes which was sent to Germany.

He designs a huge banner which was mounted on a blimp, celebrating the bi centennial of the French revolution.

He painted a huge mural on the church of Sant, Antonio, Pisa.

Its 1989and Keith’s illness becomes a revelation to his friends and to the public, but he continues to work. He was commissioned by Bavarian motor works, to paint a 1990 BMW convertible. To that point, he and Andy Warhol were the only 2 artists to hand paint cars for commercial purposes.

Keith was taking good care of himself and was on the drug AZT but by 1990, Keith health was deteriorating. He was suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma, and lymphoma, both forms of cancer. He didn’t stand a chance. On the 12^th of February, Keith became violently ill. He was in his bed, surrounded by his nurse, Gil Vazquez and his mother Joan. He was very agitated and uncomfortable. He’d gotten alarmingly thin, and his eyes were sunken deep into their sockets.

He began pulling at his intravenous tubes and tried to raise himself out of bed. Keith whispered to Gil ‘pad, pad, pen’. A friend of Keith’s Lysa cooper bought Keith his materials and glasses and helped him to sit up.

He began making lines but he was finding it difficult but he persisted in trying to draw. He kept grabbing a fresh page and starting over. He couldn’t make the lines come together as he wanted to. Eventually, the lines started coming out more confidently. Little legs appeared and the beginnings of a little body. It became evident that the drawing was taking shape, of Keith’s most famous symbol, the radiant baby, a potent tag that was many ways responsible for launching his career.

On February 16^th 1990, at 4.40am, Keith Allen Haring, was pronounced dead. His official cause of death was cardiac arrest. Keith was just 31. Haring left behind a legacy that was profound. He was the most popular artist of his time, and was the cornerstone of contemporary American art. I was enthralled in researching Keith Haring. His art and his attitude have left, I’m sure, a lasting impression on me.

It is clear to see that Keith Haring has a big impact on the illustration industry. His style is uniquely clever and arresting; qualities that we all know are often attributed to good illustration. Even if you haven’t heard of the name Keith Haring, you will have seen his work. That’s simply how globally popular the man was. I heard someone in our class utter just recently, ‘did that bloke do Mambo’? No, he’s Just Keith Haring, the most Influential Contemporary artist of the 20^th century.