Keith Haring was born in 1958 in and died in 1990, he was
only 31 and died of AIDS.
Apparently he was a bit rebellious as a
teenager however was interested in Art and during school visits to museum and
obviously his studies he developed an awareness of modern art. After high
school, Keith enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh.
From what I have researched he abandoned his studies as he felt the people he
met were only doing it for a job and were not happy. He didn’t agree with the
traditional art world of dealers and collectors who were out to make money from
artists.
Perhaps it was his dislike of the traditional
art dealer gallery type of work that led him to explore graffiti. He may have
also been influenced as well by his Father who worked as a cartoonist.
In the 1980’s along with other artists he
expressed concepts of birth, death, sex and war in his work. The type of images he produced were thought of
as a visual language. I think these images and similar to the messages symbols
also give us.
Analysis
‘Radiant Baby’ was an image haring used to ‘tag’
or sign his work in the subways of New York initially
It came from the influence of the Jesus
movement that haring was involved with in his teenage years. The involvement with this group left an
impression on his art work.
This
piece is also known as the "Radiant Child" or "Radiant Christ."
Haring described the Radiant Baby as the "purest and most positive
experience of human existence." Though the image is clearly an influence
of the great impact of his ideology and religion, it can also be thought as
symbolic of "Haring's hope for the future and also his continuing interest
in the influence of Jesus Christ’s teachings on the world.
My first sight at the work, reminds me of some kind of a baby symbol that is sweating, the waves around it gives the impression of crying, shouting. The work does link to history about which is "Radiant Christ" when I first look at this work, it wouldn't remind me of the Christ, I'd just think of a baby crawling. The wavy kind of sound impression coming out of the baby's surrounding kind of tells me that the baby needs it's mother for attention.
The work isn't a perfect creative drawing, so I don't think there's any issue to the work, I personally think as a symbol that's what you need, something simple that stands out and easy for people to remember. However now that it relates to religion and known as "Radiant Christ" some people might worship this symbol. But when you focus deep into the work, it makes you investigate more, specially with the wave coming out of the baby, you wan't to know what's coming next, where is the baby crawling to, is it a happy baby or a sad toddler.
Not knowing the actual symbol at first sight I'd think that this symbol would be used somewhere in primary school, which is to do with kids, or it could be used for baby sitting website or nursery place.
Thinking about the color used in this symbol is very important because if the artist had used a different color then it might've changed the meaning behind the actual symbol. The only color that has been used is black on white, which is the most simplest color we know. The amount of time you'd need to look at this work wouldn't be long, because it's not something imaginative, it's just a symbol, which needs to give you a first impression the organisation it's used for. for instance if you spend more time focusing deep into the work, you won't be able to see more detail. However if the work was a cartoon animation then, you might spend more time watching what's coming next.
The techniques the artist might've used to create this piece of work is to simply capture an image of a toddler crawling on it's knees and then using Photoshop to draw the outlines, then by removing the actual image would give you a symbol in black and white. If I had to come up with my own response to Haring's work then I would capture images of different objects or people then play around with them to create a simple logo for an organisation by drawing the outlines in a simple color, this is so it stands out and there's isn't a lot of things going on. On the other hand I would continue to explore Haring's work and try to come up with some of my own symbols for different organisations.
