WHY IS KEITH HARING SO IMPORTANT FOR THE LGBTQI COMMUNITY (AND FOR ART IN GENERAL)?

Keith Haring is one of those artists that everyone can immediately recognise when reading his name. Most likely, in fact, you’ve only had to read his name in this title to immediately think of his recognisable work that is inhabited by human figures that are reduced to basic silhouettes circled by kinetic lines in which there’s a certain type of implicit rhythmic movement. And, in fact, it’s also very likely that you’ve thought of Haring as one of the most important figures of the LGBTQI community’s fight in the ‘80s and part of the ‘90s.

It’s normal. We’re in June, which is Pride month. But, precisely in line with this association, we should be asking ourselves: why is Keith Haring so important when it comes to the LGBTQI community’s fight? Why do we so frequently refer to him as the spearhead of this movement when, in fact, it turns out that he never even got to come out to his parents, who always believed the alternative story that his partners were actually his bodyguards?

Let’s start at the beginning: Keith Haring was born in Pennsylvania on May 4, 1958, and it was there where he precisely started to explore the possibilities of art, mainly influenced by his own father. In spite of this, it was his move to New York city that would end up exalting his creativity in multiple ways. For starters, that is where he got in contact with street art and, in fact, he was one of the first voices in stating that that same street art had more of a right to be in contemporary art museums than many of the works of art that are normally seen in these kinds of spaces and that are thought out to die between those four walls and not to be experienced in more popular spaces.

That was, in fact, Keith Haring’s second great revolution: conceiving art as something that belongs to the people in their own right. That is exactly why he stopped doing murals in public spaces. That is exactly why he did doodles for anyone who’d ask him to, even though many of his friends who were a bit wiser than him told him that that would devalue the price of his work. And, for that reason, in 1986, just when his creations started to be listed at astronomical prices, he opened his own Pop Shop, in which anyone could buy his t-shirts and toys and prints at really low prices. Have you heard of a move like this which, definitely, has become a standard in street art in the last few years?

We have to add to all of that that he worked with brands like Swatch or Absolut without even losing face. And, above all, we have to add to this that he did all of his previous work without losing sight of what was most important to him: that his work would send a powerful message that was able to better society at the time. His work advised of the dangers of drugs in excluded areas and, above all, they talked about sex as a wonderful thing instead of the usually taboo subject. His work confronted the threats of crack cocaine and the bright colours at the same time gave visibility to a gay community that, under the looming HIV pandemic, needed to be represented in an optimistic and bright light far from the sordid image that a great part of society had in mind at the time. His work talked about fun, community and sex. Sex in the most natural way possible. In fact, Haring himself enjoyed his exuberant sexuality (even though he never told his parents) and became one of the most eloquent voices when it came to fighting the normalisation of the LGBTQI community.

At the end of the day, that was his secret: taking public spaces to fill them with great murals in an optimistic style with an infectious message of social optimism. That’s why so many years after he died in 1991 from health complications caused by the AIDS virus, Keith Haring continues to be such a valuable artist for the LGBTQI community specifically and the art world in general. And that’s why he continues to be an eternal artist.