How Keith Haring turned a City into a Gallery

By 1984, some of the art Keith Haring made in the New York subway stations was disappearing into private hands.

“I’d go down and draw in the subway, and two hours later every piece would be gone.”

He told journalist David Sheff in a 1989 Rolling Stone interview. Haring had created an audience and subsequently, a market following it underground

That problem ran throughout his career. How can one make art available to people when its growing value encourages someone to take it away? Haring tried several solutions. In 1980, he began drawing with white chalk on the black paper covering unused advertising panels in New York subway stations.

His figures suited the setting. Barking dogs, crawling babies, and dancing people were recognizable at a glance with his signature bold lines that made them stand out. They gave the average person passing by something to see without a label or an introduction. 

In his essay “Art in Transit,” he described the contact with people as one of his main reasons for drawing there.

The Pop Shop was another way he tried to keep those people in the picture. Opened in SoHo in April of 1986, it sold shirts, posters, and other merchandise using his art. Haring painted the interior of the shop, making it somewhere visitors could step inside his work, and leave with a version of it to take home.

The opening of the Pop Shop also welcomed accusations of Haring being a sell out. Haring’s defense was that rising art prices had already put his originals beyond the reach of the average consumer. Merchandise offered a less expensive way to own the art. 

Alongside the shop, Haring kept putting his messages out into the world. His 1986 “Crack Is Wack” mural used a handball court wall in East Harlem to warn about the crack cocaine epidemic plaguing New York at the time. The first version was painted without permission and later covered up. The Parks Department eventually invited him to make a replacement that survives through restoration. A wall used for recreation had become a place Haring used to confront a crisis actively unfolding around it.

His signature figures were also used to carry that urgency. In his 1989 poster “Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death,” three figures cover their eyes, ears, and mouth. The piece was a critique on the refusal and negligence of the AIDS outbreak, and its consequences.

Haring used his ability to catch someone's eye served more than one purpose. The same directness that made his work easy to recognize could start a conversation, or make an uncomfortable subject harder to ignore. That is what connects the subway drawings, the shop, and the public murals. Haring kept finding ways for art to meet people in the midst of their lives.