From April 27th to September 8th, 2024, the Minneapolis Walker Art Center will exhibit Keith Haring’s work, featuring over 100 pieces, from the most famous to the rarely seen.

The exhibit traces Keith Haring’s journey from a graffiti artist in New York’s subway tunnels to a celebrity figure in the Blue Chip art market, all within a brief ten-year period leading up to his death in 1990 from AIDS-related complications at 31.

I grew up admiring Keith Haring’s work. As an artist born in the eighties, I copied his style for the 8th-grade yearbook cover contest and won the back cover.

What can I say- I was obsessed!

This exhibit is a must-see for any art lover. My artist husband and I couldn’t wait to take our three children along for the ride.

Few artists are as globally recognizable for their work as Keith Haring.

I’m sure most of you have seen his iconic work in some form. His carefree “cookie cutter” figures, flying saucers zapping humans, crawling babies, and DJing dog appear on paintings and large-scale murals.

His Pop Shop boutique epitomized the bright and bubbly style of the early ’90s. It granted ordinary people access to his “merch” when he became so popular that his graffiti was ripped from subway walls minutes after he tagged it.

New Yorkers knew Keith Haring’s tunnel pieces would sell to a collector for big bucks. You would be stupid not to take it.

Haring’s childhood obsessions with Disney, Charlie Brown, Dr. Seuss, and his amateur cartoonist father were the foundations of his iconic style.

His cartoonish “I could do that but really I can’t” illustrations serve as a sugar-coating that makes it easier to digest the political topics woven into his work—topics such as racism, social justice, and the government’s inadequate response to HIV/AIDS education, which devastated his queer community.

Haring’s work connects the elite fine art galleries with the vibrant energy of 1980s New York streets. At that time, DJs spun at clubs, boom boxes blasted hip-hop, and break dancers performed against graffiti-tagged walls, embodying rebellion, freedom, and self-expression.

This era was also marked by fear, as flickering TV footage documented the devastating impact of the crack and AIDS epidemics on America.

It was the life and energy found in the hip-hop music and dance of Black and Latinx cultures where people could escape the daily realities of life and have fun. It was contagious, spreading worldwide like a dew drop rippling across a still pond.

First, it spread across America, to Los Angeles, and then to the world. How could you not be mesmerized? So was Keith Haring.

Haring arrived in New York in 1978 as a 20-year-old scholarship student at the School of Visual Arts. He left his suburban middle-class upbringing in Pennsylvania for a new life exploring his gay identity in the East Village, where creatives flocked for the cheap rent and to be part of the underground art scene brewing in the nightclubs.

During this time, Keith hung out at Club 57 along with his art school friends. The space was in the basement of a church, rented out in the evenings so the congregation could earn extra income. Initially, the Club’s vibe felt more like kids hanging out in their parent’s basement rather than a thriving hotspot.

Lacking a DJ, Keith and his friends amused themselves with their entertainingly creative ideas, a record player in the corner, and cases of beer brought in beforehand where everyone pitched in to cover their share.

Soon, Club 57 became the hub for creatives- the place to be for LSD-fueled art performances, open mics, plays, poetry readings, and inventive theme parties like TV’s “Love Boat” and B-roll movie nights.

Haring even performed a poem by repeating:

FAT, BOY, LICK…

Over and over again until the audience booed him off the stage.

But he kept going.

One night, he squeezed his lean frame into a boxy, broken-out TV in front of the crowd as artful entertainment.

In 1981, the year I was born, Haring walked the subway tunnels and couldn’t resist the urge to draw on blank black advertising posters hanging on the wall.

He went to a bodega, bought some white chalk, and the tunnels became his laboratory, where he experimented, developing the style he is known for today.

I can only imagine how satisfying it must be to glide creamy white chalk along the smooth tooth of jet-black paper, then step back and see the stark contrast of your work against the gritty subway systems of New York.

His work was impossible to ignore.

By purposefully drawing during the daytime, when the subways were full of people, Haring received instant feedback from passersby—either praise or criticism.

He drew quickly—everything was spontaneous and unplanned—averaging around 40 tunnel pieces each day.

Eventually, he partnered with photographer Tseng Kwong Chi to document the subway project for the media, which got him noticed around town.

He became known as the graffiti artist who traveled the subways, leaving his iconic crawling baby tag everywhere.

Here is the point in Keith Haring’s career when things were about to change for him drastically.

Soon, he could quit working odd jobs in kitchens and making deliveries for cash by putting on an art show at Club 57.

At this time, Club 57’s popularity was building like a pressure cooker about to explode. Haring filled the space from floor to ceiling with artwork to sell, and people packed the space, eager to buy his work.

Haring’s big break came that evening when art dealer and gallery owner Tony Shafrazi and Andy Warhol came to his art show, creating connections that changed his life.

Shafrazi loved Haring’s work, and they formed a business relationship.

In 1982, Haring had a solo show at Shafrazi Gallery that drew a massive crowd of hungry collectors itching to buy.

He spent the night feverishly signing autographs as a line of collectors, club kids, graffiti artists, and celebrities formed outside the building.

He sold close to 250k in artwork in the first few days of his opening.

His popularity soared when CBS Evening News featured Haring’s story. The media attention boosted his career to new heights and extended his demand beyond America into the international art market.

He exhibited worldwide, with commission requests spanning from Tokyo to Paris. His work was everywhere. Haring was the center of attention, and he loved it.

He partied with famous artists like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and celebrated his success at the Four Seasons with celebrities like Madonna and Brooke Shields.

In 1985, he stopped creating tunnel art because people swiped and sold it minutes after he produced it. Life changed quickly for him.

His work was now selling for five figures, making it unattainable for most of the public, which was a source of internal conflict for Haring. He firmly believed that “Art is For Everybody.”

This feeling inspired him to open the Pop Shop in New York in 1986 and Tokyo in 1987. At these shops, prints, hats, and T-shirts featuring his artwork were sold to the public at reasonable prices. While the mass production of his designs made his work accessible to everyone, it also had its consequences.

Some people labeled him a sell-out, and “CAPITALIST” was spray-painted on the front of his New York location.

Interestingly, Pop Shop never turned a profit during Haring’s lifetime, reinforcing his commitment to making art accessible to all.

From the mid-80s until he died in 1990, Keith Haring experimented with massive murals that required him to paint using a cherry picker that allowed him to navigate tall spaces.

Working on such a large scale is challenging in itself.

What makes Haring’s work genuinely remarkable is that he never prepared his pieces beforehand. He didn’t draw from practiced sketches or use guidelines to align his work. Everything was created in the moment, starting from left to right, as he quickly and confidently painted his designs entirely from his imagination.

The paint would drip and dry, frozen in a moment, capturing the wabi-sabi of his work.

If you are unfamiliar with the word “wabi-sabi,” it refers to the Japanese aesthetic and worldview that celebrates and accepts imperfections and the natural life cycle of growth and decay.

It reminds us not to surround ourselves with perfect things but to try to find beauty in life’s imperfections. It’s a beautiful and freeing way to live, to be grateful for each moment no matter what it’s like.

After Haring’s HIV diagnosis in 1987, he knew his time was limited. He continued producing meaningful work through his murals, and in 1989, he created The Keith Haring Foundation.

To this day, his foundation preserves his legacy and history online through biographical accounts from his friends. It also supports causes he was passionate about by providing grants to non-profit organizations that help children and promote AIDS education and prevention.

Haring’s work, now on display at the Walker, showcases massive murals with an ominous tone dealing with death and mortality, which he produced near the end of his life.

I found one of his last pieces to be the most impactful—his 1989 Unfinished Painting. It is intentionally unfinished and dripping with purple paint, representing a life cut short with so much more to give.

“Amazing how many things one can produce if you live long enough. I mean, I’ve barely created 10 years of serious work. Imagine 50 years… I would love to live to be 50 years old. Imagine…hardly seems possible.”

-Keith Haring

But I don’t want to end this article about Keith Haring on a sad note...

As I walked down the white terrazzo stairs of the Walker out of the exhibition, holding a little hand in mine, music played, and people danced outside the gallery. I found myself feeling deeply emotional.

It was amazing sharing the Keith Haring exhibit with my kids. I admired him so much as a child that I copied his work. Each piece I copied helped me develop my own style.

I created art when I felt misunderstood or didn’t have the words. When I just needed to make things with my hands to express myself and build my confidence by overcoming challenges. It continues today through the jewelry I create or the interiors I design.

I highly encourage anyone who can attend this once-in-a-lifetime exhibit to do so and to celebrate Keith Haring’s life.

I didn’t want to end my article about Keith Haring on a sad note. So, here’s a quote from one of his good friends that captures his memorable quirkiness, which always makes me smile, and I hope it makes you smile, too.

“…He wore these funny “nerd” eyeglasses that he would paint different colors every couple of days. One day, his glasses would be silver. The next day I’d run into him and they would be silver with pink polka dots. Then a couple of days later they would be pink. Then later that week they’d become pink with red stripes on them. Then they’d turn red. And so on. Every time I saw him his glasses were different colors. The funny part was that he never took the paint off, so as he kept adding paint, the glass frames kept getting caked thicker and thicker because they had so much paint on them. They were ridiculous. And funny.”

-Kim Hastreiter

want to implement the same business tactics Keith Haring used to propel his career? Here is the Formula to his success:

GRIT + FEARLESSNESS + HUSTLE + MEDIA = SUCCESS

Step 1: Possess undying “Never Give Up” GRIT to lift yourself off the ground when momentum stops and you must start again.

Step 2: Be fearless by repeatedly doing uncomfortable things. Normalize rejection by putting yourself out there to start repelling and attracting people.

Step 3: Have the confidence to HUSTLE yourself or build a partnership with a HUSTLER who can sell for you.

Step 4: Invest time or money in publicity and MEDIA attention to highlight your uniqueness. Start by engaging your local community, then expand outward to whatever level of success and recognition you are willing to work for.