There is an excellent exhibition of Keith Haring’s work at the Tate Liverpool until November 2019.  Keith Haring and I were born a couple of years apart but that’s where the similarity ends.  He was an American artist who collaborated with the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Walt Disney and Dr Seuss.  He was part of the New York street culture of the 1980s and many of his early works were forms of graffiti painted in subways and on the sides of buildings.  Some people think that art should challenge the way you think about the things; however, “Haring felt that the artist is ‘spokesman for a society at any given point in history’ whose visual vocabulary is determined by their perception of the world”.  His work about racism, the excesses of capitalism and the misuse of religion for oppressive purposes seem as relevant today as thirty years ago.

Sources:

Quotation from the one of exhibition displays with apologies to curators of the Tate exhibition, Darren Pih and Tamar Hemmes.

Comment on art challenging the way we think based on an article by Orla Ryan in the Financial Times Magazine on June 29th & 30th, 2019.