Week 14: Keith Haring
SEE THINK WONDER
What do you see in the picture? What do you think is happening and what was the artist trying to tell you with this picture? What does this picture make you wonder about?
Keith Haring
Story Time: Keith Haring The boy with Just Kept Drawing read aloud
Keith Haring Biography
Keith Haring
Was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was raised in nearby Kutztown, Pennsylvania.
Haring moved to New York City and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts (SVA). In New York, Haring found a thriving alternative art community that was developing outside the gallery and museum system, in the downtown streets, the subways and spaces in clubs and former dance halls. Here he became friends with fellow artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Haring found a highly effective medium that allowed him to communicate with the wider audience he desired, when he noticed the unused advertising panels covered with matte black paper in a subway station. He began to create drawings in white chalk upon these blank paper panels throughout the subway system. Between 1980 and 1985, Haring produced hundreds of these public drawings in rapid rhythmic lines, sometimes creating as many as forty “subway drawings” in one day.
Assignment
Create a Keith Haring style artwork. The basic idea of these drawings is based on creating bubble letters.
Draw a jointed stick figure. Make sure you remember to include all of the body parts including upper and lower parts of the arms and legs.
Bubble around the stick figures
color them in
Add movement lines: refer to the work of Keith Haring to see how he uses small broken lines outside the figures to enhance the idea of movement in his figures.
Extend the project by adding a background to your work to create a masterpiece
Vocabulary
graffiti
pop art
movement
dynamic line
