Keith Haring

Keith Haring

...was one of the first graffitti artists I knew by name. He started as a 'tagger' in New York City when graffiti still had a bad name and many people scowled when you mentioned it as an art form. I remember writing a paper on graffiti back in the late 80s and posting it on an art historian site where these scholars argued for days if one could call it art at all. I'd like to see their faces now after such famous artists like Basquiat and Bansky have made graffiti a regular avenue for top notch galleries.
Haring was one of the first mainstream graffiti artists and his subject matter has been dubbed political along with other buzz words. Aren't all graffiti artists political? The mere act of painting on a public building for all to see whether legal or illegally done is, in itself, a political statement. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Haring went on to tackle other issues in politics and the human mind before he was diagnosed with aids. Most people loved his fun, simplistic, expressive style with that flat 1 inch (for murals it was two) brush stroke that made him so distinct.  His consistancy was amazing and his style so expressive, we could recognize a work of Keith's even in a huge cluster of graffiti images. He had a natural sense of color schemes and no matter how shocking or  controversial his subject was, he always showed a playful approach to the issue...even when it came to the one thing that took him away from the world...AIDS.
I hope to learn some day, like Keith, not to take my own work so seriously.