ARTIST

Influences.

A lover of cartoons and science-fiction television shows, young Keith Haring responded to encouragement from his artistic father by creating his own vividly original stories and illustrations. He moved to New York in the late 1970s and studied abstract expressionist painting at the School of Visual Arts, where he befriended fellow artist Kenny Scharf. Frustrated with the insistence on artistic tradition at the school, Haring began to work on a different scale, often drawing on giant rolls of paper he spread on studio floors. By 1979 Haring had become captivated by subway graffiti. Its raw energy and sense of color and life pleased his growing pop sensibilities, and its visibility in a public space appealed to his desire to reach everyone with his art. Using chalk instead of the typical graffiti artist's spray paint, Haring began leaving drawings on the rectangles of black paper that covered unused subway...