Thursday, February 21, 2019

Keith Haring


Keith Haring has been one of my favorite artists since I had a piece of his work hanging in my room since I was 4 years old. Haring started off as a street artist in New York City, and got arrested numerous times for his vandalism. However, people really enjoyed his work anyways. My mom grew up in New York, and would constantly see his work in the subways, alleys, on billboards, and all over town. His work portrayed social and political themes in colorful and black and white, simple outlined cartoon-like drawings. His artwork started becoming extremely popular, and people started contacting him and asking to buy his work. Long story short, Haring started having his own solo exhibitions and became extremely rich and famous. He was known for being openly gay, something which was more difficult to be in his day and age. He eventually died of AIDS at the young age of 31. However, his work lives on forever. What I really love about Haring and his work is the simplicity of it. It is simply outlines of people, babies, spaceships, and more, but also has a deeper meaning. I love the colors he uses and how they all look good together; I would call it "organized chaos". The people seem to be dancing throughout each other and overall having a good time! Over this winter break, I was lucky enough to get to go to New York and see some of his original work. My family and I saw his work in the MOMA, as well as in a small, independent art store. However, the smallest piece of artwork was priced at $40,000. After this trip, I got one of his dancing figures tattoo'd on my ankle because I love his work so much!
This first website is called the Haring Foundation, and is Keith Haring's official website. It gives information on when and where he grew up, and a more in-depth explanation of how he got started with his artwork, including his schooling. There is also an extensive section that Keith Haring wrote about himself before he died, which is really interesting, called "In His Own Words". There is also a blog section which includes quotes from Keith Haring himself. This website also includes his upcoming exhibitions, as well as all of his past exhibitions. 
This is another informative website about Haring. It gives a good description of the type of artwork he did, as well as a lot of the meaning behind it. It gives really good analysis of several of his most famous pieces, and what they were influenced by according to the time of his life he made them in.
This article is called "10 Facts You Didn't Know about Keith Haring", and it is exactly that! It includes cool facts about him, his life, and his artwork. My favorite fact on here is that the Guinness Book of World Record's biggest puzzle in the world is actually a puzzle of Keith Haring's art called Double Retrospective, which happens to be the piece of his work I had hanging in my room when i was younger!