In the early hours of June 28th, 1969,
the first rock was thrown outside the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village New York City. After years of
police raids, intimidation, aggression, and arrests, the drag queens, street boys, gay men and women
had had enough, and they fought back - with protests continuing for several nights. It would lead
to the founding of the Gay Liberation movement. Around the same time as the Stonewall
riots were happening, ten-year-old Keith Haring was living with his conservative
parents in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. He was passionate about art at a very
young age, and his father, an amateur cartoonist, encouraged his son's ambition to
one day work for the Walt Disney Corporation. Keith Haring was from a generation of
kids born during the Cold War, who saw the news as it happened - on TV. He was exposed to a
whole new level of sophisticated advertising: pitching products, ideas, desires, aspirations,
and Concepts at Breakneck speed - as he sat on the couch. This is where he developed his skills
in simplifying complex ideas using memorable graphics. He instinctively knew that a combination
of slogans and visuals, could be a powerful force, and later he would sell difficult politics in
the same way Madison Avenue sold vacuum cleaners. in 1978 Keith Haring left his perfectly safe
Suburban life in Pennsylvania - because, as he later said, he needed intensity for his art but also intensity
in his life. And there was only one place to go - New York City. TV Presenter: As long as anyone can remember
people have been expressing themselves by writing or drawing on public walls.
There's a word for this - it's called "graffiti" The city exposed Herring to Graffiti. Targeted by the
authorities and overlooked by the art world, but valued by Haring and others for its technical
Mastery and direct connection to the public. At College he was already experimenting with text and
performance, but was attracted to Graffiti, which often uses bold expressive lines and simplified
forms to create impactful visuals. And Haring adopted these characteristics in his own work. He
developed a distinct style of fluid continuous lines, and invented his own visual language.
The Democratic nature of graffiti meant he could create art that would reach and engage
a broad public. It would be a career-long theme for Haring: breaking down barriers between "high
art" and "low art", bringing in an urban community, and particularly working-class communities.
He wanted his work accessible to everyone, and not just the elite. He called the New York subway
his "laboratory", experimenting with ideas and form. Taking on the rectangles of black paper used to
cover expired advertisements, Haring - using chalk - did hundreds of drawings over a five-year period,
and was arrested several times. The Simplicity of the images was a necessity, as he had to work
quickly to avoid getting caught. But sometimes the hastily drawn panels, managed to perfectly
capture the frenetic energy of New York City. The radiant baby became his trademark. The beauty
of Haring's work is its positive life-affirming quality, and his Subway Works struck a nerve with
blasé commuters facing the daily grind. They'd look forward to seeing what he drew next and where, and
before long mainstream media noticed him too and almost overnight he became a star. Interviewer: "How did you
manage that?", Haring: "At the same time that I was doing things in the Subways I had began showing things
in Galleries and things in the press and things". Haring had kept his sexuality strictly under
wraps from his conservative parents, but in New York, he got to finally experience his authentic
gay identity, in an environment that had been fostered by The Stonewall riots. It was a cliché
but it was true, you could be whatever you wanted in New York City - and Keith Herring quickly
found his tribe. For a period, the New York club scene became the New York art scene, and at
the iconic Club 57 located in a church basement in the East Village, Haring would put on art shows,
and become friends or friendly rivals with fellow painters Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf,
joining artists creating work outside of the elitist and restrictive world of the Galleries
and museums. They weren't producing the austere conceptual art being shown Uptown, but art that was
noisy, dirty, chaotic, liberating, colourful, and fun. Nightclubs were an important part of what
shaped Haring's art. The music, the energy, and above all the dancing, are all reflected in the
fluidity and rhythm of his figures and his line. TV reporter: "A mystery disease known as the gay plague. has
become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American Medicine". The first time the public
heard about AIDS was in 1981, when an article described 41 cases of a rare cancer in young
otherwise healthy gay men in Los Angeles. It was the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, and the
word soon became synonymous with death. Haring's development as an artist and as a person, came at
a conservative time in Western politics. Margaret Thatcher was elected as UK leader in 1979, Ronald
Reagan became the President of the U.S in 1981, and Helmut Kohl became chancellor of Germany in 1982.
It wasn't until September 1985, four years after the first cases the Reagan even said the word
AIDS. By that point it was a full-blown epidemic. Keith Haring: "During the summer I start to notice trouble
with my breathing. With inspecting every day and waiting to see the purple splotch, and I
found a spot on my leg". Herring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. Just over two years
later, at the height of his Fame, he was dead. Haring knew his time was limited, and in those
last two years he traveled all over the world, creating work and organising shows. His list
of "to-do" projects just got bigger. Political activism had driven Haring's bright, brief
career - and he truly believed in the power of art to change the world. This belief, combined
with the immediacy of his cartoon style, came together spectacularly in the 1980s. He had made
posters against apartheid in South Africa, and for nuclear disarmament groups. Created works
with inner city kids, produced anti-drugs billboards, and posters that attacked those
condemning sexual freedom - and then he went for the American government, and it shockingly
inadequate response to the AIDS crisis, with a series of posters. And he also took time to create
the Keith Haring Foundation, to raise money for AIDS organizations and children's programs. To date
it has raised 20 million dollars for charities. it was during this Maelstrom of activity and
one year into his diagnosis that he produced his most iconic poster. The modern poster as we
know it dates back to the mid-19th century when the printing industry perfected colour lithography
and made mass production of large and inexpensive images possible. Many fine artists worked in the
medium. Jules Chéret, was a French painter and lithographer who became a master of Belle Epoch poster art.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's posters for the Moulin Rouge, established him as one of the
foremost poster artists of the late 19th century. Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau artist.
One of the most prominent poster designers. And the 20th century saw great artists like Ernst Keller and
Victor Vasarely, producing limited edition posters Haring had championed the poster format as a
traditional form of political activism. He saw in them the immediacy which we now think of, when
we think of his aesthetic. It was in 1982 that he created one of his first posters. He printed and
paid for 30 000 of them which he gave out for free during an anti-nuclear protest in New York.
He would use his platform to get us talking about socio-political issues often ignored, by employing
a tradition used by political agitators since printing began. There is a generosity to Haring
often lacking in the art world. He was a populist who wanted his work "out there" for the world to
see - for free. The art establishment didn't really understand it, but Haring really believed that
art was for everybody. The artist saw the potential in posters as a democratizing force. Affordable,
mass-produced, and collectible. Public accessibility was a consistent concern in Haring's work, and posters
were a way to reach the widest audience possible. Haring: "I mean it's definitely art for the
age of mechanical reproduction". The artist had used the "wise monkey" figures before
in an earlier work that was inspired by the political organisation "Act Up", who in 1987, had coined the slogans
"Silence = Death" and "Ignorance = Fear" The painting also has the pink triangle that Nazis
used to identify gay people in concentration camps, which had been appropriated by Act Up and
reclaimed as a badge of Pride, The poster uses a more paired down graphic than the original
painting, and that was typical of Haring's punchy street posters, which were designed to catch the
eye of casual passers-by. This work was plastered all over New York City, and became the most famous
and impactful of all the AIDS activists work. At the time he created this poster, the numbers
of reported AIDS cases in the United States had reached 100 000, and many couldn't afford
the available medication. The mainstream was unwilling to discuss it openly, but Keith
Haring forced us to talk about AIDS. Haring: "If you don't have money in this city, you know
it's an expensive disease, and you can't get enough money to get your AZT (medication), to get
whatever you have, and you just give up". In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine,
he told the world he was HIV positive. This was so brave at a time that it was considered career suicide.
Haring: "My work, and all art really is about life. um especially um I mean my life is my work, my work
is my life, and so the two things are completely intertwined, and are almost one and the same. This
is a man who had no shame in an "Era of Shame". Who wouldn't be silenced when no one else was speaking
up - and he spoke loudly and often against the stigma and Prejudice associated with the disease.
People still believed you could catch AIDS from a kiss or even from a toilet seat - and
religious leaders were loud in their condemnation of any form of "Education as propaganda". Mainstream
Society saw the disease as one that only affected gay men, Haitians, sex workers, and drug addicts. But
with "Ignorance = Fear", Haring portrays three individuals, whose race and gender are not obvious.
And by using his trademark "de-individualised", "unisex" figures, he sends a coded message that
everyone is a target. All three figures have a pink X on their chests, symbolising AIDS patients, and
are covering their ears mouth and eyes, like the three wise monkeys who "See No Evil, Hear No Evil,
and Speak no Evil". As with many of his primitive figures, the three in the poster appear to be
jumping or dancing. A reflection of the hip-hop music he was obsessed with, and the club scene he
hung out at. If you ignore the text, the work could be read as a "fun clubbing Scene", it captures that
energy - and that's the point. It draws you in with its simple lines and primary colours, and then it
hits you with its message - loud and clear. Somebody had to shout about AIDS, and it might as well be
Keith Haring. He never sketched beforehand or planned anything, but let it flow spontaneously
like "automated writing". His line was described as "continuous", not because it is uninterrupted, but
because it has a fluidity that runs through all his Works - through dancing figures, barking dogs
and crawling babies - and through time and space. These graphic lines and colours, tap into a body
of work that started on the New York subway, over 10 years before. In the simple, "visually fun" image,
Haring encapsulates how a generation of gay men were ignored. Too afraid to stand up and say
something, because of fear - because of Shame. This work - so simplistic on the surface,
changed how people thought about AIDS. And that is both subversive AND deeply profound. In February 1990, Haring was seriously ill with
late stage AIDS-related infections, including lymphoma. He was receiving 24-hour care, when his
Studio manager came in with a letter from the Walt Disney Corporation. They wanted him to work
on a Mickey Mouse project. He had dreamed of this since he was a child - but - he didn't believe
the letter was real, and thought his friend was lying, to make him feel good. When he finally
realised it was a genuine offer, it was too late. Haring's death on February the 16th, 1990, meant
he lost his chance to give Mickey Mouse new life. He was only 32 years old
