Keith Haring Quotes & Sayings

When I die there is nobody to take my place. — Keith Haring

Everybody draws when they are little. — Keith Haring

Keith Haring wrote " You see that's why I work like a dog and I worked like a dog all my life. I am not interested in the academic status of what I am doing because my problem is my own transformation. Thats the reason also why, when people say. " Well you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else," my answer is[laughter]" well, do you think that I have worked like that all those years and not be changed?" This transformation of ones self by ones own knowledge is,I think something rather close to the aesthetic experience. Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting. — Keith Haring

The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation. — 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

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

Art is for everybody. — 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

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

Nothing is important ... so everything is important. — Keith Haring

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint ... — Keith Haring

Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye. That's why traffic lights are red I guess, and stop signs as well ... In fact I use red in all of my paintings. — Keith Haring

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

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

The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life. — Keith Haring

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work. — Keith Haring

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

I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything ... and then make something ... — Keith Haring

I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that. — 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

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 without becoming cynical. — Keith Haring

I've always wanted to work for Walt Disney. That's what I thought I was going to do when I grew up. — Keith Haring

Children know something that most people have forgotten. — Keith Haring

The dripping ... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work. — 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

Whatever you do, the only secret is to believe in it and satisfy yourself. Don't do it for anyone else. — Keith Haring

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

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

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

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 and genuinely loving to fellow human beings. — Keith Haring

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

Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. — Keith Haring

The public has a right to art
The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists.
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Art is for everybody.
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I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. — Keith Haring

Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it ... — Keith Haring

Pure art exists only on the level of instant response to pure life — Keith Haring

The public has a right to art ... Art is for everybody, — 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 people, all times. — Keith Haring

I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up. — Keith Haring