Keith Haring

KEITH HARING

Characteristic of the era are two artists whose work incorporates the aesthetics of subcultures and popular culture: Keith Haring and Jeff Koons. Haring succeeded in combining elements of graffiti art, comics, computer sign language, children's drawing and ancient painting to form a highly poetic languages of signs that is comprehensible to people of many cultures. In the early 1990s, Jeff Koons attracted attention by virtue of the provocative banality of his subjects. Although he often used high-quality material in his works, their surface design alludes to the world of cheap ornaments and kitsch, as in the example of his life-sized, partially gold-plated porcelain figure of Michael Jackson with his chimpanzee Bubbles.

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Keith Haring was an American artist and social activist responding to New York City’s street culture of the 1980s. His work is about birth, death, sex and war – very fitting for the period in which he lived and worked. Keith Haring was openly gay at a time when most non-heterosexuals kept their sexual proclivities behind closed doors. Part of Haring’s importance as an artist was how his art raised awareness of AIDS. Many of his works were featured in the Red Hot Organization’s efforts to raise money for AIDS research and AIDS awareness. Keith Haring himself died of AIDS in 1990 at age 32.

Haring had an almost cartoon like style to his artwork and his use of bold colour and lines gave his art a uniqueness that can be instantly recognisable. His art around the postmodern era showed expression especially as Haring was gay and so many of his paintings showed these signs of his personality. 

– Adam Reid