Spike Magazine

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The measured simplicity of Keith Haring’s work was
the result of much close and detailed study. By reducing
the visual elements of his work to what can best be
described as icons, Haring managed to produce what
amounted to keys which unlocked ideas. However, the
impact of these images rests not only on this process.
What increases their pertinence is their universality.
Haring employed an imagery that seems to connect
with everyone; the more cynical would liken it to
the power of advertising. However, Haring was not
interested in the empty sites of materialism per se. In
place of the usual trite commercial messages, Haring
invested personal introspection and concern into the
public space of advertising, using the directness of the
advertising medium against itself.
Another invigorating aspect to Haring’s work was his
willingness to address and acknowledge the importance
of not only popular culture, but also it more shady son,
subculture. Haring’s work would have been impossible
without the previous impact on the popular conception
of art by both Walt Disney and Andy Warhol. With
Disney opening up the viewer to the joy and pleasure
to be gained from the cartoon figure, not only as an
entertainment, but also as an art form, it was surely
only a matter of time before an artist managed to tap
into this idea. However, to make that step from popular
entertainment to Art, or High Art, would have surely
been impossible without the ground-breaking work of
BUY Keith Haring books online from and
likes of Andy Warhol.
Warhol managed to re-create the artist, to slap the
art-world in the face and say that commerce has a place
in art. With Warhol having broken the mould of what
was acceptably defined as art and what wasn’t the next
generation could now reach out an explore the culture
that they found around them. So, by reflecting the
subcultures that surrounded him, be it skate-boarding,
hip-hop or homosexuality, Haring opened the door and
allowed real, contemporary life into his art. With ‘the
street’ in his work, Haring instantly made connections
with the common viewer – as opposed to the educated
viewer. Such accessibility was also furthered by his
POP SHOP in SoHo, New York, and later in Japan,
which sold pieces of his ‘commercial art’.
Haring’s own sexuality also found a voice in his art,
and hence many of his motifs have homoerotic connotations.
However, to view his work as purely ‘queer’ art
is nothing but limiting. The humour and impassioned
politicking evident in many of his more sexual works
surely increase their palatability to the straighter audience.
As a result, works such as those produced for the
AIDS awareness group ACT UP have now reached the
level where they can almost be considered as classic
images of the 80s.
Another interesting aspect of these journals is the
way in which Haring himself dealt with his fame. For
a man who quickly rose to fame, collected by both
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