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Feature [published November 1996]
Keith Haring: Artist Or Radiant Baby?
Nick Clapson looks at the man behind the spray can with the publication
of Keith Haring’s journals
At the close of the 20th century, trying to find a stable
definition for the term ‘art’ has become increasingly
difficult. The traditional notion of art as the privilege
of the educated and wealthy, preserved within galleries
and private collections, has continually come under attack
by popular culture, from Dada and the Surrealists
all the way through to Warhol.
One of the few artists that actually acknowledged this
new, precarious, nature of ‘the artist’ as it emerged was
Keith Haring. Keith was born in Kutztown, Pennsylvania
in 1958, and from an early age expressed an interest
in art. After a period studying commercial art in Pittsburgh,
Haring realised this was not the right direction
for him. He left in 1976 and hitchhiked cross-country,
before returning to sit in on classes at the University of
Pittsburgh. It was here that central elements of his later
style started to emerge. That style had a self-confessed
similarity to the work of the French Modernist Leger,
and the later work of Jean Dubuffet. However, no artist
is just the sum the of their stylistic influences. By the
time of his first one-man show at the Shafraz Gallery,
New York in 1982, Haring’s individual approach to art
BUY Keith Haring books online from and
was fully developed.
Haring’s recently published journals, first begun in
1977, offer a great insight into his artistic development.
These fragments of Haring’s life provide not only a
glimpse of his private life, but also go some of the way
to outlining Haring’s artistic manifesto. The density
and complexity of his thoughts and aims act as a shocking
foil to the apparent lightness of Haring’s iconic
‘cartoony’ style. This was a man for whom art, though
disposable by nature, was not to be underestimated in
power. One of Haring’s major ambitions, which he
stated at an early stage, was to return art to the public.
This at first appears to be a simple task: however, as
Haring was to later prove, it was somewhat more daring
than first imagined. Haring did not want to produce
art that was simply physically accessible, available
from the street to the high street store, but art that was
also freed from the delimiting vision of the traditional
institutions, be it gallery or critic. It would seem, if we
follow Haring’s lead, that an Art that is easy to read
has far more power than an Art that is simply obtuse or
high-brow.
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