Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Allen Haringwas an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war. Haring's work was often heavily political and his imagery has become a widely recognized visual language of the 20th century...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPop Artist
Date of Birth4 May 1958
CityReading, PA
CountryUnited States of America
Keith Haring quotes about
Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.
I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that.
I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.
People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical.
Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.
Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.
I grew up in Pennsylvania in a small town. Real small, like one high school and one movie theater. Well, there was a state college there, that was the only good thing about it.
There are some images that I will only use once, and not use again because they don't seem to really hit the nail right on the head, but there are some which are so strong they have to be reduced; sometimes just reusing them makes them stronger.
I've always wanted to work for Walt Disney. That's what I thought I was going to do when I grew up.
Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it...
The public has a right to art … Art is for everybody,
Everybody draws when they are little.
I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.
The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, its a natural part in the evolution of the work.