Keith Haring was one of the superstars of the 1980s New York art scene, one of a wave of young rebels who grew in Andy Warhol’s pop art shadow down in the creative underground beneath the city’s crime-ridden 1970s hellscape (see Scorsese’s Taxi Driver for a flavour). A wave which included Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as musicians like The Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC… all those figures that are now firmly established in the pop cultural consciousness. “Icons” is the word we have to use now.
Haring is firmly among this group, his work instantly recognisable, with his radiant babies, love hearts and shape-shifting, dancing figures, a rhythmical, instantly appealing style which always makes for successful gallery retrospectives and Uniqlo T-shirt ranges.
