Decades after his death Haring remains one of the most influential pop artists.

Cover Photo: UNTITLED (HARING) by KAWS (1997). Scanned from the book, KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS by Andrea Karnes and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

A Favorite

Keith Haring is one of my favorite artists. He embraced his identity as a gay artist during the most difficult time possible, while fighting for social issues, and demanding art be for the public.

Who is Haring?

Being born in 1958, the first generation of the Space Age, born into a world of television technology and instant gratification, a child of the atomic age. Raised in America during the sixties and learning about war from Life magazines on Vietnam. Watching riots on television in a warm living room comfortable safe in middle-class white America. I don’t believe in solutions. Things are beyond my control and beyond comprehension. I do not have dreams of changing the world. I do not have dreams of saving the world. However, I am in the world and I am a human being.

— Keith Haring (March 18, 1982. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Haring was born near Kutztown, Pennsylvania, to a stay-at-home mother and an engineer-by-day-cartoonist-by-night father. Haring enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh but he dropped out after two semesters. He moved to New York City in 1978 and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts.

Haring fell in love with graffiti while in New York and he quickly rose to prominence during the 1980s thanks to his memorable style. He would tag blank subway walls, occasionally getting arrested. Following his first solo show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, in 1982, Haring became on overnight success.

Haring would see great success in his short career. His meteoric rise flew him over the world, collaborating with Absolut Vodka, Swatch, Lucky Strike, and painting various murals around the globe. He even participated in the Venice Biennale of 1984.

Religion

This is one of the first works by Haring that I saw in person. In 2014, I visited the exhibition Urban Theater: New York in the 1980s at the Fort Worth Modern for class. The entire exhibition was phenomenal, featuring Basquiat, Holzer, Koons, Sherman, and Warhol among others, but this work left the biggest impression on me. To date this is my favorite Haring piece.

Here, Haring’s classic barking dog is transformed into a seven-headed beast, a clear reference to the Beast of Revelations in the Bible, signifying the arrival of the Armageddon, and Haring’s figures line the bottom of the work. One of the figures lifts up another, reminiscent of a sacrifice.

At the beginning of his teens, in the 1970s, Haring became involved in Jesus Saves, a counterculture grassroots Evangelical Christian movement. Followers were called Jesus People and even Jesus Freaks. They were characterized by antimaterialism, compassion for the poor, and rejection of church authority.

People fell into the Jesus Saves movement because it was something to believe in. It was just like it is in the Bible, except you took everything more literally. Being born again meant that you didn’t just commit your life to it, but would convince others to believe in it. Not only was it a way of dealing with your own life, but it was your duty to convince the rest of the world about it. It was a self-declared mission. And a lot of it was an obsession with the concept of the Second Coming—and the “End of the World,” and that everything was a sign that these were the last days.

So I read about all these things in the Bible and I read Revelation—about the end of the world. And I read a book called The Late Great Planet Earth, and I digested all this information and wanted to believe. All my art of this period was involved with these Jesus things. […] Finally, I myself became bored with it. I had done it for about a year, and it seemed to make less and less sense to me, and it became less pressing. In between all that, I discovered smoking pot—that, plus listening to rock music. […] So, anyway, after the Jesus thing I got into drugs.

— Keith Haring (from the book Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography)

Haring quickly outgrew religion altogether but the Jesus Movement left a lasting impact on Haring’s outlook and visual style. Haring would later explain in his journals that, “Touching people’s lives in a positive way is as close as I can get to an idea of religion.” Christian imagery played a large part in Haring’s lexicon and the antiauthority tenants of the Jesus Movement lasted throughout Haring’s prolific career.

Children

Haring loved kids, they were both his favorite audience and collaborators. The “radiant baby” became Haring’s personal logo, a potent combination of newborn optimism, the Christ-child, and sex.

I would love to be a teacher because I love children and I think that not enough people respect children or understand how important they are. I have done many projects with children of all ages. My fondest memories are of these experiences. When I was 21 I spent a summer teaching “Art” at a day-care center in Brooklyn. It was the most fulfilling summer of my life. There is nothing that makes me happier than making a child smile. The reason that the “baby” has become my logo or signature is that it is the purest and most positive experience of human existence.
Children are the bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form. Children are color-blind and still free of all the complications, greed, and hatred that will slowly be instilled in them through life.

— Keith Haring (July 7, 1986. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Visual Poetry

An avid reader, Haring was fascinated by semiotics, hieroglyphics, pictograms, and symbolism. Haring developed his own visual lexicon of dancing figures, radiant babies, barking dogs, and aliens. Haring’s style was often compared to Jean Dubuffet and Fernand Léger but it was uniquely his own. David Hockney, a fellow queer artist, in the foreword for Keith Haring’s published journals, described Haring’s work as “easily identified but memorable.”

Keith Haring thinks in poems.
Keith Haring paints poems.
Poems do not necessarily need words.
Words do not necessarily make poems.

— Keith Haring (October 14, 1978. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Spirit of the Line

Haring’s style is very personal and spontaneous. Haring was inspired by Eastern art in the idea that the line possesses a certain kind of power. He once explained,

Nothing is ever planned out first with a pencil or a grid or anything like that. Whether it’s a small painting or a huge mural like this, it’s always done directly on the spot. And part of the idea of the whole approach is that it has to come directly out of your head, directly into your hand. It’s a really immediate and direct response which is, in a way, more close to an Eastern idea of art or a so-called primitive idea of art than it is to the classical, sort of, Western idea of what the idea of making an artwork is.

— Keith Haring (May, 1989. Excerpt from a WTTW Video.)

In Tokyo, after walking and shopping around Harajuku and Shibuya, Haring was dismayed to find many counterfeit goods bearing his style and name.

I had always felt that the things [Japanese] people responded to in my work were tied to their own traditions of the “sign” and the gesture and the concept of the “spirit of the line” that is so evident in sumi painting and calligraphy. I thought people here [in Japan] were more receptive to my work than Westerners because they understood it and felt it more clearly and deeply. The proliferation of all the imitations has taken away some of my confidence. The things that are copied are usually redrawn and therefore the whole “power” of the line is lost. This is very distressing to me since I believe the very essence of my work rests in this concept of the “gesture” and the “spirit of the line” to express individuality. The only thing that remains is the concept of the “cuteness” and the fashionable hype.

— Keith Haring (July 26, 1988. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Among Haring’s many contemporaries was Ken Hiratsuka, a Japanese-American, who arrived in the East Village in 1982. While Haring was leaving graffiti at subway stations, Hiratsuka was chiseling into concrete. In all, Hiratsuka carved nearly 40 sidewalks in New York. Hiratsuka’s style was once called “Keith Haring meets prehistoric petroglyph.” In fact, the two share many similarities. Like Haring, Hiratsuka was and is committed to art existing for everyone, believing it to be a powerful force that transcends man-made boundaries. Hiratsuka has also achieved international success with his One Line World Project, creating site-specific carvings in 21 countries. Hiratsuka continues to work today.

New York in the 80s

In the 1980s New York was the epicenter of the world and the subway system served as Haring’s primary canvas. In my college essay about the Fort Worth Modern’s exhibition titled Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s, I wrote,

During the 1980s New York was the one of the greatest urban centers of the world. Throughout this decade a synthesis of art and popular culture was taking place. Artists were tackling such subjects as feminism, politics, consumerism, celebrity, and sexual illness. […] Graffiti culture gave rise to a whole new onslaught of artists. It was no longer petty vandalism; it was expression. Anyone with a newly invented aerosol can of spray paint was empowered to show the world their own tags, designs, and opinions. Graffiti crossed all social boundaries or class distinctions. It was art of the people, by the people, for the people, an essentially democratic and American ideal. This led to narcissism and focused self-inspection. Artists felt encouraged to explore a vast array of topics ranging from corporatism to sexual deviancy and as a result many artworks feel intensely personal and intimate.

Graffiti as Performance

Equipped with his visual lexicon, Haring was able to draw quickly while trying to avoid the police. In the accompanying book for the Fort Worth Modern’s exhibition Urban Theater: New York in the 1980s published by Skira Rizzoli Publications, Haring is described in this way:

Haring’s high-strung character was a perfect fit for the action-oriented nature of graffiti. Those who witnessed the artist executing his graffiti work in public described it as a pop-up graphic performance. [Haring’s friend and contemporary,] Kenny Scharf has said, “It was all about drawing and performance. I used spray paint, but Keith performed drawings. Consciously or unconsciously, graffiti artists think of art as theater. We were doing our art in public with a time limit. Even if it’s at night with no one around, you felt like people were watching. In effect, it was a performance people had to re-imagine when they saw the work the next morning.

Haring also loved to dance. He was a regular of Club 57 in the East Village, New York, at the very beginning of his career. Once he began to travel, Haring frequented the best gay clubs in every city he visited. Among his favorite songs was Electric Boogie.

Formalism and the Public

Haring was deeply interested in the relationship between the public and art. Haring wanted to bring art to the masses and he had disdain for art critics and the bourgeoisie.

Art as a personal exploration.
Art as an end to the question “what is it?” or “what does it mean?”
The meaning of art as it is experienced by the viewer, not the artist.
The artist’s ideas are not essential to the art as seen by the viewer.
The viewer is an artist in the sense that he conceives a given piece of his own way that is unique to him.
His own imagination determines what it is, what it means.
The viewer does not have to be considered during the conception of that art, but should not be told, then, what to think or how to conceive it or what it means. There is no need for definition.
Definition can be the most dangerous, destructive tool the artist can use when he is making art for a society of individuals.
Definition is not necessary.
Definition defeats itself and its goals by defining them.
The public has a right to art.
The public is being ignored by contemporary artists.
The public needs art, and it is the responsibly of a “self-proclaimed artist” to realize the public needs art, and not make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses.

— Keith Haring (October 14, 1978. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Haring painted his public murals for free. In 1989, he was invited by the City of Chicago to paint a mural with students in what is now called Millennium Park. Haring painted the black lines and guided the students to fill in the mural with color. You can watch the painting in a video by WTTW Chicago Public Media here. Some of the students who helped Haring paint the mural are now artists in their own right.

36 of the panels from the original mural were displayed in 2018 at the Chicago Cultural Center. The work is beautiful in person and it was really moving to see the positive messages painted by the students.

Emergence of the Computer

Also in the 80s, humanity witnessed the dawn of the personal computer. Haring was skeptical about the technology and recognized the way computers would change our relationship to art. He warned that artists would become more important than ever. Haring’s own free-form organic style posed a perfect antidote to threats of the machine. He also seems to have predicted artificial intelligence and computer generated art.

The silicon computer chip has become a new life form. Eventually the only worth of man will be to serve the computer. Are we there? In a lot of ways we are. Computer banks control information that we are incapable of dealing with. Are we controlling computers, or are we merely helping them to control us? This is “1984” and it has been for the last ten years. If the computer continues to make the important decisions, store information beyond mental capabilities, and program physical things (machines), what is the role of the human being?
To service our computer?
And what is the role of the artist?
Should the situation be resisted or accepted?
It appears to me that human beings have reached an end in the evolutionary process. We will, if we continue on the same path, eventually destroy ourselves. We are creating technologies to destroy ourselves. We are self-destructive. Possibly the computer will save us. Maybe it is a good thing that we have created a life form that can continue to evolve and grow beyond our capabilities.
The major question is, though, are we going to be able to control the evolution of the computerized mind, or can it evolve and grow by itself? Will computers be able to decide their future and make it happen without our aid? Computers can do more and more every day. I think we are capable (with our minds, our technologies, our computers) of creating computers as a form of life that can function more efficiently than us in almost every aspect of life.
Machine aesthetic?
Do computers have any sense of aesthetics? Can an aesthetic pattern be programmed and fed into a computer so that is reasons and makes decisions based on a given aesthetic? Why not?
The role of the arts in human existence is going to be tested and tried. It is possibly the most important time for art the world has ever seen. The artist of this time is creating under a constant realization that he is being pursued by the computers. We are threatened. Our existence, our individuality, our creativity, our lives are threatened by this computer machine aesthetic. It is going to be up to us to establish a lasting position of the arts in our daily lives, in human existence.

— Keith Haring (October 14, 1978. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

During the 1984 Superbowl, Apple premiered their iconic Orwellian “1984” ad. CSMonitor writer, Karis Hustad explains, “The idea was that Macintosh would revolutionize computing and that the future of technology would bring freedom, rather than control.” Haring seemed to grow more optimistic but he continued to make works critical of the computer.

In the last 100 years we have seen the invention of telecommunications, radio, automobiles, television, air and space travel, computers, genetic science, satellites, lasers, and on and on. In short, our experience of life has been drastically altered. The role of the image maker cannot be seen as the same as it was 100 years ago, or even 10 years ago. The rate of change is accelerating at an increasingly rapid speed and the artist has to change with it. Contemporary artists cannot ignore the existence of media and technology and at the same time cannot abandon ritual and popular culture. The image maker may be more important now than at any other time in the history of man because he possesses qualities that are uniquely human. The human imagination cannot be programmed by a computer our imagination is our greatest hope for survival.

— Keith Haring (Excerpt from the catalog for “Tendencias en Nueva York” organized by Carmen Giminez.)

Contemporaries

Haring’s contemporaries were the numerous friends he made in New York, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Andy Warhol. Warhol, considered the father of Pop Art, was a mentor to Haring and the two even collaborated.

I was continually getting compared to Andy [Warhol], but I don’t know if it was for the right reasons. For me, it was an honor to be compared to him even though I feel we are very different and our contributions are different.

But I will always acknowledge my debt to him. The biggest honor was the support and endorsement he bestowed upon me. By mere association he showed his support. […] He set the precedent for my venture into the commercial world and the popular culture. He is the validation for a kind of “seriousness” or “realness” that is balanced on the tightrope I am walking between “high” and “low” art. His support made me oblivious to the critic vultures waiting for a wrong move and anxiously anticipated fall.

— Keith Haring (February, 1987. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

While living in New York, Italian street artist Paolo Buggiani collected Haring’s work from around the city and the two became friends. Haring signed a copy of the Shafrazi Gallery catalog from his first ever solo show for Buggiani. Haring also incorporated Buggiani’s flying man into his lexicon, which can be seen in Haring’s final public mural, Tuttomundo.

International Acclaim

Haring’s work was deeply inspired by activism. He denounced homophobia, racism, consumerism, and apartheid. Haring enjoyed great success outside the United States and he traveled around the world for his work, including Milan, Paris, Pisa, and Tokyo. He frequently exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and, in 1986, he was invited to paint on the Berlin Wall, just three years before its collapse. It was the greatest honor for an artist activist and Haring painted approximately 300 feet, covering the wall in interlocking figures in the colors of the German flag. Haring described it as a “political and subversive act – an attempt to psychologically destroy the wall by painting it.”

Haring did not enjoy the same levels of success in New York as the rest of the world. After a 1988 Frank Stella retrospective at the MoMA (towards the end of Haring’s career), Haring developed a one-sided rivalry with the abstract painter, lamenting in his, now-published, journal, “Yes, this is Frank Stella’s second retrospective at MoMA. They have not even shown one of pieces yet. In their eyes I don’t exist.”

Pop Shops

Haring opened his first Pop Shop in 1986, in the SoHo district of Manhattan, New York, that sold t-shirts, toys, posters and more. Critics didn’t approve of the commercialism but Haring was dedicated to making his art accessible to the public. Warhol supported Haring in the endeavor.

Haring explained,

“I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art.”

Haring sold most posters for a dollar and often gave buttons away for free.

Money doesn’t mean anything. I think money is the hardest thing for me to deal with. It is much easier to live with no money than to live with money. Money breeds guilt (if you have any conscience at all). And if you don’t have any conscience, then money breeds evil. Money itself is not evil, in fact it can actually be very effective for “good” if it is used properly and not seriously.

— Keith Haring (July 7, 1986. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

It is during this decade of the 1980s that the museum gift shops we know today became commonplace. According to Marketing General Incorporated, some museum stores net as much as $8.3 million.

Haring’s Pop Shop merchandise directly paved the way for artists like Murakami and KAWS, both of whom have enjoyed success in both high and low art. Murakami with his Kaikai Kiki Flowers and KAWS with his Companion figures.

Fellow SVA graduate Joe Donelly, known as KAWS, explains:

“Keith [Haring] was definitely, like, an artist, I think, for me to see somebody who’s working in a graphic sensibility, transitioning into galleries but still making accessible products.”

Gay and Proud

Haring was not an artist who happened to be queer, like so many of his predecessors, but a genuinely queer artist. Haring's homosexuality was a vital part of his identity. Many works Haring created were unapologetically homoerotic and graphic.

I’m glad I’m different. I’m proud to be gay. I’m proud to have friends and lovers of every color.

— Keith Haring (February, 1987. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Haring was sex positive and a proponent of safe-sex. Sex was a driving influence behind his work. After he had contracted AIDS and had developed physical symptoms Haring lamented his work had lost meaning.

I’ve totally lost the ability to seduce and enjoy the art of seduction—the source of much of my inspiration to work and live. It sounds ridiculous that something like sex could hold such high importance in someone’s life who has “the profound gift of artistic invention,” but it does and always has. Maybe that is the rouse of some of my guilt about my incompetence. It was always impossible to separate art and life for me and life was inevitably dominated by sexuality. It is probably the driving force behind all of my work. Now, isn’t that pathetic? Or is it? Maybe, just maybe, it is not so uncommon and even quite normal.

— Keith Haring (March 6-8, 1989. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

With invitation from curator Rick Barnett, Haring was among 50 artists invited to paint inside the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village in 1989 to honor the 20th Stonewall Rebellion. Haring chose, what was then, a restroom and dedicated his mural to careless cruising before the days of the AIDS crisis.

AIDS and ACT UP

In 1981, seemingly out of nowhere, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about five gay men who became infected by a pneumocystis pneumonia and died. The CDC noted that this type of pneumonia rarely affected people with uncompromised immune systems. 136 people died the following year and the disease was called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. The disease appeared to spread mainly among men who had sex with other men.

AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, and transmitted through bodily fluids. People with early stages of HIV infection experience flu-like symptoms, if any, and later stages include weight loss, tiredness, and skin sores. AIDS is the final stage of infection, accompanied by fatal infections and cancers.

AIDS was among the most fatal infections doctors had seen; without treatment 98% of people died. President Ronald Reagan, inaugurated 1981, had been elected by the Religions Right and was apathetic to the epidemic. Patrick Buchanan, director of White House communications, commented that AIDS was “nature’s revenge on homosexual men.” AIDS would kill over 650,000 Americans. 

Ravaged by the so-called “gay plague”, the queer community was further marginalized. At time, some people, including Haring, believed the epidemic had been manufactured by the government. He was a loud voice in the LGBT community, using his art to bring attention to the disease, personifying AIDS as “demon sperm.”

Haring was certain he would die and he subsequently hastened production of his art.

Anyway, there is one question [my friend] George [Condo] is asked about life and art and which is more important, and George said art because it is immortal. This struck a very deep note inside me. For I am quite aware of the chance that I have or will have AIDS.

The odds are very great and, in fact, the symptoms already exist. My friends are dropping like flies and I know in my heart it is only divine intervention that has kept me alive this long. I don’t know if I have five months or five years, but I know my days are numbered.

This is why my activities and projects are so important now. To do as much as possible as quickly as possible. I’m sure that what will live on after I die is important enough to make sacrifices in my personal luxury and leisure time now. Work is all I have and art is more important than life.

— Keith Haring (February 1987. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and established the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989. Haring joined the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, an organization formed in 1987 to fight for visibility and to end the AIDS crisis. The main symbol was a pink triangle, appropriated from the NAZIS. Haring was among the first artists to create work about AIDS (Ross Bleckner is generally considered the first artist to tackle the AIDS crisis).

HIV/AIDS still exist today, with Africa as the most affected continent, but it is not the death sentence it once was. By the end of 2012, the morality rate was 6%. Today the Keith Haring Foundation continues to serve the LGBT community in his memory. “The Foundation supports not-for-profit organizations that assist children, as well as organizations involved in education, research and care related to AIDS.”

Final Public Mural

In June of 1989, Haring traveled to Pisa to paint what would become his final public mural. It was one of Haring’s favorites.

Pisa has been amazing. I don’t know where to start. I realize now this is one of the most important projects I’ve ever done. The wall is really part of the church. It’s attached to the building the friars live in. I had dinner with the friars the other night and visited the chapel.

— Keith Haring (June 19, 1989. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

I visited Pisa while studying in Florence and the mural is absolutely beautiful. The colors are subdued to match the surrounding architecture and the forms are particularly inventive. Tuttomundo, translating to “All of the World”, is Haring at his best.

“This is really an accomplishment. It will be here for a very, very long time and the city really seems to like it. I’m sitting on the balcony looking at the top of the Leaning Tower. It’s really pretty beautiful here. It there is a heaven, I hope this is what it’s like.”

— Keith Haring (June 19, 1989. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Eight months later, on February 16th 1990, just 31 years old, Keith Haring died of AIDS complications at his home in Manhattan. He was one of over 18,000 people who would die of AIDS that year.

Legacy

Haring learned much from artists who came before him. In his journals he cites numerous artists, including Picasso, Warhol, and Léger as inspiration. Haring knew that he was building upon the legacy of others.

I feel in some way that I may be continuing a search, continuing an exploration that other painters have started and were unable to finish because they advanced to new ideas, as I will also, or perhaps because they were unable to carry out their ideas because of the cruel simple fact of death. Their lives are stopped before their ideas are completed. Matisse making new discoveries up until the time he could hardly see, using scissors, creating ideas that sparked new ideas until death interrupted. Every true artist leaves unresolved statements, interrupted searches. There may be significant discovered, seemingly exhausted possibilities, but there is always a new idea that results from these discoveries.
I am not a beginning.
I am not an end.
I am a link in a chain.
The strength of which depends on my own contributions, as well as the contributions of those before and after me.

— Keith Haring (November 7, 1978. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Approaching the end of his life Haring realized that he was working very differently from his contemporaries. Haring would survive both Warhol (1928-1987) and Basquiat (1960-1988).

And when I die there is nobody to take my place. There is nobody working now who is even vaguely similar to my style or attitude or principles. I mean that seriously. I suppose that is true for a lot of people (or everyone) because everyone is an individual and everyone is important in that they cannot be replaced. But, right now, there is nobody in the world who can be put into a group with me and called a movement.

— Keith Haring (July 7, 1986. Journal Entry Excerpt.)

Haring does not have any obvious successors but artists like KAWS and Murakami as well as Mr Doodle and Eddie Peake come to mind.

Television and Movies

Haring’s work has lived on after his death. Sesame Street aired animations inspired by Haring in 1991, created by head animator Bill Davis, with the approval of Keith Haring’s Estate.

One of Haring’s drawings, Best Buddies, can be noticed in the top left during the “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” scene in the feature film Love, Simon (2018) while the closeted titular protagonist Simon Spier imagines being “gay and proud”.

Clothing

Haring’s work also lives on through clothing collections in partnership with the Keith Haring Foundation. His popularity shows no sign of stopping. Most recently, Lacoste launched a capsule collection in 2019.

News

A 1986 mural of Haring’s, his largest ever, was recently uncovered by Mick La Rock, a Dutch graffiti artist, in Amsterdam.

Haring’s 1987 Boys Club Mural was just re-unveiled in New York in celebration of the Lacoste capsule collection launch.

Current and Upcoming Exhibits

You can find current exhibits of Haring’s work here.

And you can follow upcoming exhibitions here.

Also, the Arlington Museum of Art in Texas has announced an upcoming exhibition, Keith Haring: Against All Odds, lasting June 21st- September 15th of 2019.

P.S. Questions!

Have you heard of Haring before? If yes, did you learn of anything new? Which of Haring’s themes do you most relate to? Do you have any Haring merch? Are you going to see a Haring exhibit?