Quotes by Keith Haring

About Keith Haring:

Keith Allen Haring was an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war. Haring's work was often heavily political and his imagery has become a widely recognized visual language of the 20th century.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.

Keith Haring

People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere with...

Keith Haring

The public needs art - and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses.

Keith Haring

If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can't afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I'm all for it.

Keith Haring

Art is nothing if you don't reach every segment of the people.

Keith Haring

The public has a right to art The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists. ... Art is for everybody. ... I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual id...

Keith Haring

Children know something that most people have forgotten.

Keith Haring

Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. I'm sure that evil exists, but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same.

Keith Haring

You have to be objective about money to use it fairly. It doesn't make you any better or any more useful than any other person. Even if you use your money to help people...that doesn't make you better than somebody who has no money but is sympathetic...

Keith Haring

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality.

Keith Haring

There are some images that I will only use once, and not use again because they don't seem to really hit the nail right on the head, but there are some which are so strong they have to be reduced; sometimes just reusing them makes them stronger.

Keith Haring

My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.

Keith Haring

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

Keith Haring

When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about.

Keith Haring

When I die there is nobody to take my place.

Keith Haring

Nothing is important... so everything is important.

Keith Haring

Everybody draws when they are little.

Keith Haring

I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all pe...

Keith Haring

I grew up in Pennsylvania in a small town. Real small, like one high school and one movie theater. Well, there was a state college there, that was the only good thing about it.

Keith Haring

Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.

Keith Haring

Author Bio

  • NameKeith Haring
  • DescriptionAmerican artist
  • BornMay 4, 1958
  • DiedFebruary 16, 1990
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPainter; Sculptor