Bill T Jones: ‘Much like Picasso, he could very quickly fill a wall in one go, and never use sketches or have to go back’
Dancer and friend of Haring
Keith in the 1980s was an amazing phenomenon. He was the last gasp of a certain sort of liberal sense of community, before identity politics took over.
We were very different. I’m African American, I have 11 siblings, I’m from a lower-income family. With Arnie Zane, I had my dance company, and James Carroll, who was a very progressive art teacher in Kutztown, had a programme of bringing out people from New York to his students. He told me about this young man, an artist with spatial, improvisational skills. Much like Picasso, he could very quickly fill a wall in one go, never use sketches and never have to go back over the work. That was Keith.
And then Bill Katz was an éminence grise of the downtown art world. He saw a rehearsal of a piece that Arnie and I were doing called Social Intercourse and there was something about the flattened, abstract shapes we were making that reminded him of Keith’s work. I contacted Keith and went to his studio and asked him if he might do a poster for Social Intercourse and within a week, he gave me three wonderful drawings. I don’t have them now, they were all stolen.
He was in a rather modest place in Broome Street with his companion Juan Dubose, from Dominica. We became friends. Keith was younger, with an arrested, boylike quality – an overgrown child, that temperament. He was very kind and generous and mischievous. And he was living a New York dream, being a young gay man. He loved brown-skinned people. Graffiti culture was blowing up. He was very much part of club culture, of high and low, that mix, which was the 1980s. His subway drawings were like a cinematic experience: as the train moved it seemed as though they were moving. It was an exciting time and he was exciting.
I am of the generation before – when I was 17, I was at the 1969 Woodstock. I did not experience disco. I moved to New York in 1978, the club scene was the Mudd Club, CBGBs. It seemed white and middle-class to me. The question is always: who is writing the narrative? Keith was an anomaly. How had he found his place among the young black and Hispanic Bronx fabulousness?
I remember he was on five covers of art magazines at the same time: Artforum, Art In America, ARTnews and two others, and that was it: people were not happy. But he aspired to be his two heroes, Walt Disney and Andy Warhol, he wanted to become a household name, to be intergenerational.
He painted my body for a show at the Robert Fraser gallery in London.. We were rather innocent about it. It took four-and-a-half hours to paint me. Someone said: “The press is coming!”, with an hour to go. But for a brazen, extroverted person as myself, that was not a problem. I was the only black person in the room, and I was being displayed. That says a lot about that era – there was a lack of awareness. It was a wild frontier, there was a certain excitement and naivete. He did Grace Jones after me.
Carlos Rodriguez (Mare139): ‘Keith helped us realise that you could be street, but you could also commercialise your work’
Graffiti artist and friend of Haring
In the beginning, many of us were very suspicious of Keith and Jean-Michel and these so-called street artists, because in a way, they were co-opting this culture. The novelty of Keith and those surrounding him was different to the novelty of black and brown kids from uptown that were painting trains. If you’re a white male… not to say if you’re gay it’s easier, but it’s different to being a kid from the hood. But there was this mutual understanding and agreement with Keith, especially with those of us who were more artistically inclined and trying to navigate the next space off the streets, which was the galleries.
We had a different need; there’s a difference between surviving and succeeding in the gallery scene. But what was interesting was that Keith helped us realise that you could still be street, but you could also commercialise your work and sell in galleries.
His impact is about self-empowerment – economically, culturally, politically. Artistically: how to run a studio, how to amplify a message, community service and activism. The Pop Shop inspired graffiti shops to open all over the world. He understood intellectual property, and being the brand, before many of us.
Samantha McEwen: ‘He was very sexy and we were all in love with him, really... he was a remarkable, special person’
Artist, classmate and friend of Haring
Keith was exactly the same with everyone: with a mailman, a celebrity, with a child. He could talk to anyone, and he would talk to anyone. Especially children. He would stop everything for children. He was very sexy and we were all in love with him, really, just because he was such fun. He was a remarkable, special person and you felt it as soon as you met him. New York was empty at that time. You could move apartments very easily because, honestly, there weren’t many people there. You’d walk around at two in the morning and there would be nobody else around. And it was cheap. We had a friend who worked at an art store and we would pile our arms up with supplies, paper and materials and she would ring through $3. You could eat for $2.
Club 57 was a centre for us. It was so small! Really not big, and Drew [Straub] would be on the door, with his blue hair – he knew who to let in. There was something different on every night and none of it was cool. Carmel [Johnson Schmidt] and I, because we were from Europe, sometimes we would be at the back just thinking: “What is this?” I remember a lot of dressing up, like a night where you had to dress as cowboys, or nuns. A mud-wrestling night, that was hilarious. And there would be performances, bands. Keith did performances there, and at some point Kenny would get on stage, always. John Sex, too.
Keith had a show at PS122 and that was where I first saw the baby, the radiant baby. His shining baby. It popped out at you, and I remember thinking: “Ah, so that’s gonna be your thing, your tag? A baby? Really?” But it shows something about him – there’s not many men that would choose to have their signature be a baby. He was always working, looking for an artistic language that he could really communicate in. A language that talked to other people, not just something he could work in. Graffiti artists were just talking to each other really – Keith wanted to involve everyone in a language that could discuss Roland Barthes or speak directly to a child.
The art world never changes, it’s still the same today. I think money focuses attention, if work is being bought, it brings attention. But outside the art world, I think Keith has changed things. People express themselves outside the establishment far more.When I went to his funeral, I travelled back with Tony [Shafrazi, Haring’s agent] and he said: “It’s very rare for an artist to be fully formed at 20, and to achieve so much in just a decade.”
Kenny Scharf: ‘I think of him often, and it’s the fun and the joy I choose to remember’
Painter, classmate and friend of Haring
Keith was very much fun as a roommate, as someone to spend time with, go down to the coffee shop, the daily things. It was pretty easy in New York back then before cellphones or even answering machines… you just walked out the door and you didn’t know where your day was gonna lead. A whole different vibe. Also, in order to have a conversation, you had to go out and meet in person. You need a communal place to hang out, you’re not going to hang out in your closet. You need to go to the coffee shop or the club or the stoop.
Usually when I think about Keith, I think about the fun. Something simple like buzzing him in downstairs when I lived in the East Village, opening the door and there he would be. I was just so happy to have him around me. That’s what I choose to remember. A lot of interviews want to know about when he died, and I was by his side and it’s very hard for me, you relive it every time. I think of him often, and it’s the fun and the joy. He was just the most wonderful friend.
Tony Shafrazi: ‘He was like a whirling dervish – an extremely athletic body, very elongated’
Gallerist who became Haring’s dealer
I came to New York and opened a gallery. I ripped everything out of the apartment where I lived and turned that into a gallery. I knew all the artists and Bill Beckley, a wonderful photo-narrative artist. I was beginning to show him, and he said if I needed someone to paint the walls he could bring a student. And that’s how Keith came, to paint the walls. I noticed his way of working: very disciplined and remarkable energy. And also, when he finished work, he washed all the brushes and put them in a very organised row. I was impressed. More importantly, he didn’t hang around, which everybody does, to beg for a show.
With the subway drawings, he was so fast. There was never any need for preparation. I’ve never known any artist to do this. He was like a whirling dervish – an extremely athletic body, very elongated – and he was constantly driven. It was not only the ability to scale, but even knowing where the line goes with nothing – no preparatory sketch, no notation, no slide projection on to a wall of a smaller image. It was so direct, just drawing head-on, stark. They didn’t know how to describe it so they called it graffiti, but it wasn’t. Different images, different identities, different narratives, different symbolism applied to narrative… it was much more complex.
He would get up early in the morning, take a shower, a bunch of chalks in his pocket. I went with him a number of times. Every time the subway train would stop, he would look left and right to see if there were panels, and if there were two or three he would jump out and start drawing very, very quickly. Finish one, the next one, the next one. All the way to Harlem, about 50 stops, doing two or three drawings every stop. And then on the way back on a different route, all way to Queens, New Jersey, all around. Some lasted a few days, some a month. Thousands of these drawings.
He was very aware of the traffic of life, and acting within it. Instead of feeling like an outsider, he saw public life as real life. He realised that very few of those millions of people travelling, hardly 1% went to a museum. The other component was to do with children. All this extraordinary energy that he had really related to children. Because he was like a child himself: wide open, ready to learn. Instead of having an ego problem like many artists, he was like a sponge. When he was working outside, everyone would watch him, because he was so concentrated, he brought such strong energy. He befriended many people while working outside publicly, on the streets.
