Has pop art icon Keith Haring been “purged”?

Layers of his work

Despite some criticism of the way his works have been licensed, Haring’s status as a serious artist has arguably never been higher. Last week, an exhibition dedicated to his formative years in the early 1980s opened in New York at the Brant Foundation in Manhattan. Now, this week, an entirely separate exhibition featuring Haring’s hugely influential Underground drawings will open at the MOCO Museum in London. Titled Voice of the Street, it features some of the thousands of graffiti illustrations that Haring drew in chalk on blacked-out billboards in New York subway stations between 1980 and 1985.

“While others saw the dark emptiness of space, he saw a real opportunity,” Kim Logchez-Prince, founder and curator of the Moko Museum, told the BBC. “His mission was to break down barriers so that art wasn’t just available in high-end art galleries, he was giving it to people on their way to work.” In fact, Haring only stopped drawing his subway drawings when people started stealing them to sell to collectors.

Haring’s subway drawings were meant to be spontaneous and ephemeral—he began drawing them while bored waiting for trains—but they helped him cultivate an instantly recognizable aesthetic that proved enduring. The enduring appeal of his work depends on the accessibility that Haring, who grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania before moving to New York in 1978, had in the way he made and published his art.

Dr. Fiona Anderson, a senior lecturer in art history at Newcastle University in the UK, told the BBC: “Anyone who looks at a Haring painting [piece] “He could get something out of it.” However, she also believes that his works operate on multiple levels. “You can analyze his work in terms of semiotics and the study of signs and symbols, but you can also look at a basic Haring image like a barking dog or the Radiant Child and enjoy it,” Anderson says. [more simply] “As a joyful and fun icon.”

Laura Levin/Corbis via Getty Images/Moco