Keith Haring’s art speaks loud and radiantly clear at Tate Liverpool in the first major UK show of his work
Keith Haring, at Tate Liverpool, is a true surprise: a show of unexpected jubilance and beauty. The American artist was only 31 when he died in 1990, and it is almost beyond belief that some of the most vital images in this enormous exhibition were painted when he was living with Aids. But for a British audience who know him through the instantly recognisable graphics, undimmed down the years through the use of timeless black and white on everything from T-shirts and posters to Reebok sneakers, at least part of the pleasure is the sheer power of them, writ large and in radiant colour.
Radiance – and the radiating black lines scintillating around Haring’s simplified images of lovers, tellies, barking dogs and his trademark baby, crawling ever-onwards – is the overwhelming effect of this art. It is achieved entirely through line and colour. Just two elements – and even one, if you consider the original chalk drawings he made on vacant subway hoardings in New York in the early 1980s. Somehow, two of these have been preserved like chunks of the Berlin Wall and are shown here alongside fabulous photographs of the speccy young Haring darting about with his chalk to the fascination of passing passengers.
For all the violence he warned against, and drew, there is an equal message of love
Related: ‘The public has a right to art’: the radical joy of Keith Haring
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