The Ever Colourful Keith Haring

Despite what you’ve seen on Style Wars or Wildstyle, not all early graffiti came out of a spray can. In the early 80’s Keith Haring was utilising a white piece of chalk and the New York street as his canvas. As his works could simply be wiped off, he was debatably the first legal graffiti artist.

He quickly moved onto murals using paint, and his style adapted accordingly. Harnessing vivid bright colours, Haring’s simple characters began to take on a life of their own, moulding around each other with dynamic movement. His murals began to appear bigger and brighter than ever. Invited to paint all over the World, Haring became an internationally renowned artist with high critical acclaim. However, this did not suppress his love for street art where he continued to paint socially aware pieces such as the infamous ‘crack is wack’ mural in New York 1986, painted in response to the crack cocaine epidemic sweeping the streets.

Haring could debatably be seen as the first commercially successful street artist, paving the way for many others to follow. He was employed to create adverts for both Absolut Vodka and Swatch watches. He also opened the infamous ‘Pop `Shop’ in Soho selling merchandise bearing his iconic images including t-shirts, toys, posters and other objects with reproductions of his art.

Sadly, Haring died in 1990 at the age of just 31. Its amazing to think what he could have achieved had he lived longer.

His influence on modern day artists, designers and advertising is still felt today.
The governments recent exercise campaign ‘Change4Life’, aimed at children is directly lifted from Haring’s characters seen below. Recently Banksy employed Haring’s dog DJ character for one of his street pieces.

We’ve included some of our favourite works below to show the breadth and depth of Haring’s images. So the next time you see a bubbly, flexing 2D character, you’ll know Haring influenced it!