Keith Haring drew in New York City subway stations because the space was free and the audience was everyone who rode the train. Between 1980 and 1985 he filled blank black advertising panels with chalk drawings. There were thousands of them, illegal, and erased almost as fast as he made them. That conviction, that art belonged in public and belonged to everybody, runs through his whole career.
The idea is also the title of a new survey, Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody, published by DelMonico Books with The Broad.
What were the subway drawings?
Starting in 1980, Haring noticed that when an advertisement's lease ran out, the space was covered in blank black paper until the next one went up. He bought chalk and started drawing on the empty panels on his way to work. Over roughly five years, he made an estimated 5,000 of them across the system: radiant babies, barking dogs, the crawling figures that became his vocabulary, all in white chalk on black paper, all unauthorized, all eventually torn down or painted over. Almost none of them survived to this day.
Why did Haring insist art was for everybody?
The book's title comes from a line in Haring's own journals, and it isn't a slogan tacked on after the fact; it was the argument behind almost everything he made. Subway drawings that cost nothing to see, murals that went up on buildings, playgrounds, and hospital walls. He opened the Pop Shop in 1986 specifically to sell affordable items carrying his imagery, over the objections of people who thought a gallery artist shouldn't run a store. He believed that art required no ticket, no membership, no explanation.
How does the book cover his career?
It surveys Haring's practice from 1978, when he was a student in New York, to 1990, the year he died at thirty-one. Editor Sarah Loyer organizes the material both chronologically and thematically, grouping work around the public-facing projects: subway drawings, murals, and collaborations rather than treating them as a footnote to the studio paintings.
Who else is in the book?
Sarah Loyer edited it, with a foreword by Joanne Heyler and texts by Kimberly Drew and Tom Finkelpearl. It also includes a conversation between Patti Astor, Kermit Oswald, and Kenny Scharf, who were all part of the same downtown New York scene Haring worked in, plus contributions from George Condo, Bill T. Jones, and Ann Magnuson.
The book
- Hardcover, 256 pages
- 11 × 11 in
- 150 color and 25 b&w images
- DelMonico Books with The Broad, 2023
- ISBN 9781636810935
Haring's public murals and Basquiat's move from street tags to gallery walls came out of the same downtown New York moment. See our piece on where to start with Basquiat. For an artist who built an archive in the opposite direction, working alone for thirty years before opening it to anyone, there's our post on Wes Anderson's archive.
The Keith Haring survey is available now, part of our KNOWLEDGE collection.
Frequently asked questions
What were Keith Haring's subway drawings made with?
White chalk on the blank black paper panels the subway system used to cover ad space between rentals.
How many subway drawings did Haring make?
An estimated 5,000, made between 1980 and 1985.
Where does the book's title come from?
A line from Haring's own journals: art is for everybody.
What years does the book cover?
Haring's practice from 1978 to 1990, organized chronologically and thematically.
Who edited the book?
Sarah Loyer, with a foreword by Joanne Heyler and texts by Kimberly Drew and Tom Finkelpearl.
sabi is an online boutique based in Portland, Oregon. Our KNOWLEDGE collection is the reference shelf, books on the things we sell and the ideas underneath them.