Keith Haring

You are currently browsing articles tagged Keith Haring.

“I Went Back Above Ground To A Card Shop And Bought A Box Of White Chalk”

January 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From David Sheff’s 1989 Rolling Stone interview with the late artist Keith Haring, who used spare subway station panels as his canvas:

“How did you begin drawing in the subways?
One day, riding the subway, I saw this empty black panel where an advertisement was supposed to go. I immediately realized that this was the perfect place to draw. I went back above ground to a card shop and bought a box of white chalk, went back down and did a drawing on it. It was perfect – soft black paper; chalk drew on it really easily.

I kept seeing more and more of these black spaces, and I drew on them whenever I saw one. Because they were so fragile, people left them alone and respected them; they didn’t rub them out or try to mess them up. It gave them this other power. It was this chalk-white fragile thing in the middle of all this power and tension and violence that the subway was. People were completely enthralled.

Except the police.
Well, I was arrested, but since it was chalk and could easily be erased, it was like a borderline case. The cops never knew how to deal with it. The other part that was great about it was the whole thing was a performance.

When I did it, there were inevitably people watching – all kinds of people. After the first month or two I started making buttons because I was so interested in what was happening with the people I would meet. I wanted to have something to make some other bonding between them and the work. People were walking around with little badges with the crawling baby with glowing rays around it. The buttons started to become a thing now, too; people with them would talk to each other, there was a connection between people in the subway.

The subway pictures became a media thing, and the images started going out into the rest of the world via magazines and television. I became associated with New York and the hip-hop scene, which was all about graffiti and rap music and break dancing. It had existed for five years or more, but it hadn’t really started to cross over into the general population. It was incredibly interesting to me that it was reaching all kinds of people in different levels from different backgrounds. Then, in 1982, I had my first one-man show in New York at a big gallery, Tony Shafrazi, in SoHo.” (Thanks Longform.)

••••••••••

“You are known as the Michelangelo of the New York subway”:

Tags: David Sheff, Keith Haring

“This Is No Graffito, This Is No Train, This Is A Jean-Michel Basquiat. This Is A Keith Haring.”

March 9, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"I'm always amazed at how people come up with things. Like Jean-Michel." (Image by Michael Halsband.)

From Rene Ricard’s 1981 Artforum article, “The Radiant Child,” which was the first major piece to look at the work of emerging NYC artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring:

“Graffiti refutes the idea of anonymous art where we know everything about a work except who made it: who made it is the whole Tag. Blade, Lady Pink, Pray, Sex, Taki, Cliff 159, Futura 2000, Dondi, Zephyr, Izzy, Haze, Daze, Fred, Kool, Stan 153, SAMO, Crash. (Crash is still bombing.) But trains get buffed (the damnatio memoriae of the Transit Authority), and with the need for identity comes the artist’s need for identification with the work, and to support oneself by the work is the absolute distinction between the amateur and the pro. Therefore, the obvious was to raise oneself by the supreme effort of will from the block, from the subway, to the Mudd, to the relative safety and hygiene of the gallery. Because an artist is somebody. Say what you will about group shows and collaborative enterprise: Das Kapital was written by one man. This is no graffito, this is no train, this is a Jean-Michel Basquiat. This is a Keith Haring.

Both these artists are a success in the street where the most critical evaluation of a graffito takes place. Jean-Michel is proud of his large SAMO Tag in a schoolyard, surrounded by other Tags on top of Tags, yet not marked over. This demonstrates respect for the artist as not just a graffitist but as an individual, the worth of whose Tag is recognized. There’s prestige in not being bombed over. There are also fake SAMOS and Harings as well as a counter-Haring graffitist who goes around erasing him. The ubiquity of Jean-Michel’s SAMO and Haring’s baby Tags has the same effect as advertising; so famous now is that baby button that Haring was mugged by four 13-year-olds for the buttons he was carrying (as well as for his Sony Walkman.) The Radiant Child on the button is Haring’s Tag. It is a slick Madison Avenue colophon. It looks as if it’s always been there. The greatest thing is to come up with something so good it seems as if it’s always been there, like a proverb. Opposite the factory-fresh Keith Haring is Jean-Michel’s abandoned cityscape. His prototype, the spontaneous collage of peeling posters, has been there for everyone’s ripping off. His earlier paintings were the logical extension of what you could do with a city wall. (For the moment he’s stopped the collage.) His is a literal case of bringing something in off the street but with the element of chance removed. I’m always amazed at how people come up with things. Like Jean-Michel. How did he come up with the words he puts all over everything, his way of making a point without overstating the case, using one or two words he reveals a political acuity, gets the viewer going in the direction he wants, the illusion of the bombed-over wall. One or two words containing a full body. One or two words on a Jean-Michel contain the entire history of graffiti. What he incorporates into his pictures, whether found or made, is specific and selective. He has a perfect idea of what he’s getting across, using everything that collates to his vision.”