PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an artist whose pop art took the world by storm in the 1980s. His work lives on — with much of it right now at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown.
In his brief 10-year career, Haring became One of the most accomplished and prominent American artists of his day. Influenced by artists including Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he took prominent interest in the vibrant graffiti art of cities.
Joshua T. Lessard, director of exhibitions, spoke with KYW Newsradio about Haring’s importance to the art world and the activism that accompanied most of his adult life.
“I think people are probably familiar with many of his dancing figures,” Lessard said, adding that Haring’s ‘radiant baby’ and ‘barking dog’ motifs also are in some of his most iconic and instantly recognizable works.
Included in an exhibition called Keith Haring: A Radiant Legacy, now through July at the Michener, are two rare drawings from the New York City subway, complete suites of many of his Icon print series, and Haring’s largest print, “Medusa Head.”
“But he also deployed a lot of symbolic and visual language to bring attention to social justice issues,” Lessard said.
“Keith was a product of the 1980s art scene, both in Pennsylvania and in New York. He grew up here in Pennsylvania — he was born in Reading and grew up in Kutztown, so he was, for us, a bit of a local hero — then rose to national and international importance through his work in New York City and then also around the globe,” Lessard said, “during a time when things like civil rights and apartheid South Africa, child welfare, and AIDS awareness were really at the fore. And a lot of his work reflects different and changing attitudes and different opinions about that particular series of social events.”
Lessard says the more than 100 unique works on display will take visitors through a loose chronology of the artist’s life and into his more commercial work.
He created more than 50 works of public art in cities around the world — for charities, hospitals, child care centers. Haring did a lot of work with and for children. About 900 kids painted a Haring mural in 1986 commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty.
One such mural is a focal point of South Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood. “We the Youth,” painted on the western face of a private home in 1987, has the distinction of being the only collaborative Haring murals to remain in its original location, according to Mural Arts Philadelphia.
“Keith Haring: A Radiant Legacy” runs through July 31 at the Michener Museum.