[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. From WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. Full Bio is our monthly book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. This month, we are discussing Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch. At 24 years old, Keith Haring was dropped off in New York at the Y on 23rd Street. He was supposed to go to the School of Visual Arts. I say supposed to because he wasn't exactly the best student. He didn't follow the curriculum at all, but he had talent.

Keith made friends with fellow students like Kenny Scharf and local artists like Basquiat. As Keith tells this very French interviewer.

Keith Haring: I knew Jean-Michel when I first came to New York because he grew up in New York, but in Brooklyn. He started hanging out on the scene in New York, around the same time that I did. I met him in 1981.

French Interviewer: Basquiat painted with war, but you never did. Why?

Keith Haring: Partly because Jean-Michel did--

Alison Stewart: Let's get into it with Brad Gooch, the author of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring. In 1978, Keith Haring was dropped off at the Y on 23rd street. It was housing for students attending School of Visual Arts, SVA. He was there two days, I think you said?

Brad Gooch: Yes. First of all, it was the second YMCA he'd been dropped off. First was in Pittsburgh, and then this, the 23rd Street YMCA. The year, the season that that YMCA video was filmed there. That's one of the places. The Chelsea Hotel was another where you could stay for $80 if you were an SVA student. Keith goes there. He makes his way around day one, and one and a half. Christopher Street in the West Village, which he said is like landing in a gay Disneyland. Highest compliment he could give.

That was a moment where Christopher Street was teeming, especially on a Sunday afternoon with guys in all sorts of costumes. That's where the YMCA guys came from. I mean, there were people dressed in leather jackets and people dressed as lumberjacks. You could walk down to the pier where people were cruising. Keith meets somebody pretty quickly. This somebody takes him back to this house. He's living out on West 10th Street in the village, where there's an older guy who has a lot of rooms in his house, and there are a lot of young gay guys staying there.

This becomes his immediate group of friends, and they go to the Y and help him move out, bring all his stuff to that house. The next day, Monday, he starts school at School of Visual Arts. Shows how fast Keith Haring's life went and also what that time was like. There was a tremendous excitement. There was a feeling of liberation. We didn't have social media or cell phones. If you wanted to meet someone, you needed to go out to a club or a bar or a street. There's a lot of intensity among young gay people at the time. Keith just went with that flow.

Alison Stewart: He attended SVA, but he seems sort of unwilling to take the basic classes. What was required of him? Why was he allowed to sort of blow off certain assignments?

Brad Gooch: Well, the reason I mentioned the purple-haired teacher in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, when he was in middle school, is that they learned that he wouldn't take direction, and he had an idea about what he wanted to do. When he landed in certain of these required basic classes where you're supposed to paint or you were supposed to do life study drawing, he wasn't interested. I mean, he even said he couldn't do that. He had already this very strong sense. He was almost like an outsider artist in that way. Very strong sense of what he was going for, even if he wasn't there yet.

Instead, then he took a lot of the courses. SVA had a great faculty at the time. From seeing what classes Keith did take and became interested in, you get a sense of the mood of the art world in the late '70s. He was taking video classes, performance art with Simone Forti, conceptual art with Joseph Kosuth. He stopped painting pretty much entirely. He, for six months, was a poet and was reading at the St. Mark's Poetry project, readings at Club 57.

The art school for him, rather than being a painting school, is a place where he's starting to put together, again, these extremes and this kind of collaboration between different kinds of kinds of artworks. I think then the real importance for him, and he drops out again when he drops out of SVA after two years, feeling that he was beyond it and he didn't need it. It was true. That was its place. That's always that kind of character, is admirable, I think, or to me, is kind of inspiring that he has his own rudder and he doesn't want to be slowed down.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring. I'm speaking with its author, Brad Gooch. It is our choice for Full Bio. You mentioned the artist, Barbara Buckner, was somewhat like a mentor to him.

Brad Gooch: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What did she see in Keith?

Brad Gooch: Well, she actually saw-- She was one of the people in those early classes and who-- At first, they had a conflict because he wouldn't do what he was supposed to do, wouldn't do the life drawings. Then she started paying attention, and she would see that Keith would be sitting on a window ledge in the back of the class and go over and see what he was doing and talk to him. I think she began to realize that he was sort of the real thing in that he already had a sense of what he wanted to do. He had his own line, and there wasn't any--

I mean, she. She reinvented the 6th grade art teacher, and there wasn't any sense in trying to turn him into something else. She also saw that he had-- The way she talked to him about me was he had a golden heart. I think that was also unusual in Keith Haring. Also, Bill Beckley, who taught semiotics class at SVA that was very important to him, said a similar thing, that Keith wasn't ironic. There was a certain kind of earnest, joyful quality that he had, and that he kept it. He wasn't trying to be overly clever at that moment.

[unintelligible 00:08:30] [crosstalk] who was a curator also, and a friend of Keith told me that when they came to New York, at that time, the art world in New York was mainly white people in white rooms drinking white wine. Now, Keith didn't have that sort of attitude. His project then is how to bring his own kind of sensibility in his own world to the art world.

Alison Stewart: He spent time as a poet, and he spent a lot of time as a video artist, which is really cutting edge when you think about the time. What did he want to explore with the videos? Sometimes they were suggestive.

Brad Gooch: Yes. One thing that he was always exploring at SVA was gay liberation and coming out. One of the first assignments that he does was go out and do 21 drawings of one thing. Keith, over the weekend, does all these penis drawings, but it's like penis in front of the Museum of Modern Art, penis by Gucci's, my own penis, medium, soft, hard, all of these variations. Then he does penis wallpaper. He has this that going on his first semester or two at SVA. That's partly a way of coming out. We were talking about his parents before.

Interestingly, for someone who becomes an icon of gay liberation, Keith's mother told me that he never used said the word gay to them. I mean, he never came out in a conversation with his parents. At the same time, he's doing all this out there work, and he sort of similarly, at SVA, is doing these kind of penis drawings as a way of flirting with coming out or a way of communicating, telegraphing his identity. It was never that verbal with Keith, I think. That's an important part of what he's doing.

The video then-- he's interested in life, especially at SVA and performance art. The video, at first, are these sexy things, like him and different boys together sudsing up in their shower and bathtub and things like that. Those are the pieces that he would show in class and were shocking to the students at the time. Then he would also do videos of himself, or it was always videos of his friends, videos of himself. In a way that Warhol did when he was doing films, less together as scenarios, he was recording.

He was very interested in recording what was going on. That remains throughout his career. He's always playing with tampering with the world in some way.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting as you read about his life because he just, "Oh, he makes a friend, Kenny Scharf, at SVA," who obviously goes on to become a well-known painter. What did Keith think of Kenny?

Brad Gooch: Well, they were very close. I think that Kenny recreates his art buddy relationship he had with Kermit Oswald in Kutztown. Keith wasn't like a private artist. He wasn't in his studio, just doing his work. He was always out there. That makes him a good figure for a biography in that way because he was involved also with publicly with so much of the art world, the life, and the people of his time. He was kind of a fulcrum for it. Kenny, they find each other.

Actually, the description of both, especially Kenny of SVA at the time, in spite of faculty, was he was kind of disappointed because all the students seemed like they're from Long Island. There was illustration side to SVA, a commercial side to it, as there had been to Ivy. Early on, Kenny, who come from California, kind of long-haired surfer look, was going down the hall in SVA and sees that someone has a boombox on with Devo, and they are painting themselves into a corner of this room, and that's Keith Haring. Keith is videotaping himself, painting himself into the corner with Devo playing as the soundtrack.

That shows how video worked for Keith in a way, and how it was both performance, document, and artwork. Kenny's immediately, "Oh, this is someone I want to know. This is why I came to art school." They meet same day, later that day. Keith is helping Kenny drag television sets that have been left out in the trash from the West Village across town to SVA, which is on the east side, to build a TV sculpture. From that point on, they're bonded in their love of art, their kind of daffy, sensibility. They become roommates for a while at Times Square.

Very important relationship in that way. I think that then Keith becomes successful and famous faster than Kenny Scharf, and that becomes a tension between them somewhat, I think more on the side of Kenny, perhaps. Those kinds of things happen. Someone else who he meets at SVA is Jean-Michel Basquiat. This likewise happens in a random way, which he's going into school. Someone asks him, this kid, "Could you help me get in? I'm not a student. I want to get by the security guard." Keith does.

Then when Keith comes out of class, he sees on the hallways are painted all these images that Basquiat has been doing on the street under the name of SAMO. These are crowns, cars, and cryptic lines of poetry. Keith loves that work. He really admires it. It's this kind of poetry and mystery to him. He realized, "Oh, that's that guy." Then they become friends. Jean-Michel, Keith, and Kenny Scharf, and also John Sex, another SVA student, having changed his name from John McLoughlin, become this crew, in a way, for a while.

They all then make their mark and are important in creating the world of that moment, the art world of the '80s.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about their art world, but there was this-- it's a little bit of a sidebar, but it's interesting is that graffiti artist Michael Stewart was at Keith's apartment the night he got killed in police custody.

Brad Gooch: Right.

Alison Stewart: What impact did that have on Keith?

Brad Gooch: Michael Stewart death had a big influence on everyone at that time. It was a scary event, and also, doubly impactful for Keith, I think because Michael Stewart, who was a Jean-Michel Basquiat type or wannabe in a certain way. He was coming to a party at Keith's. Keith's then is living on Broome Street. These are very crowded, popular parties. People would ring the doorbell, come downstairs, Keith would let them in. Michael Stewart comes in. He's with two other people. One is actually George Condo comes, a great artist later, a well-known artist later, and someone else who had somehow ripped Keith off.

Keith sees this person and then sort of decides, "Oh, there's no room right now, it's full," and they leave. That's the night that then Michael Stewart goes, but much later, a few hours later to the subway to go home and is beaten by police, is accused of doing graffiti which no one has ever seen evidence of. There's also some kind of strangulation happens there. We don't know what kind. Then he dies about two days later in the hospital. This is a shock to Keith in some way that he feels responsible because he hadn't let him into his apartment.

If he had, maybe the night would have gone differently. It's a shock to Jean-Michel Basquiat because he feels that could have been me as another black artist, young black artist. There's a lot of police brutality at that time. There was a cover story in the Village Voice around that moment about police brutality. We sort of romanticize and love the '70s and '80s and downtown and the creativity of it all, but it was also, it was dangerous and tough. Life could be tough.

Alison Stewart: After the break, we'll learn about how Keith Haring got the nickname the Chalkman. This is All Of It. This is All Of It. From WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue our Full Bio conversation about Keith Haring. Brad Gooch is the author of Radiant. Keith was labeled a graffiti artist early in his career. He spent time with local painters and brought his own style to the work. Here's Keith Haring sharing his story with some local news anchors who really don't have any idea who they're interviewing.

Female Interviewer: You started working in a subway. How did you manage that?

Keith Haring: Well, I've been working in a subway in New York for about the past two and a half years. Where I draw is where they usually have advertisements on the platform. When they don't have enough advertisements, they put empty black paper to cancel out the old ad. I noticed these about two and a half years ago on my way through the subway and immediately went above ground and bought some chalk and went back down.

Male Interviewer: This is one of your works here?

Female Interviewer: And this is permissible. I mean, you're not breaking them all.

Male Interviewer: Is this illegal or not?

Keith Haring: Yes, it is illegal. It depends on the police when they catch you. I have been handcuffed and arrested. Sometimes, I'm just given $10 fines.

Male Interviewer: Sometimes told to move along, buddy.

Keith Haring: Yes, or sometimes when they catch me, they're eager to meet me because they've been wondering who was doing it this long.

Alison Stewart: Let's get back into it with Brad Gooch, author of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring. Keith Haring begins drawing on subways, the area where posters are supposed to be. Why was this the way he wanted people to experience art?

Brad Gooch: If you need one bumper sticker for Keith Haring, it would be art for everybody. His phrase. He was always trying to find a way to get art outside of the galleries, those white rooms with white people drinking white wine. When he was at SVA, in his semiotics class, he wrote a paper in that class about art and the way that art is valued, and that the more rare the artwork, the higher the value. Why some artists feel they should only put out a painting a year? This was the kind of system he's trying to figure out a way around.

He was very influenced, of course, by street art. Also, at that time, it was a high moment for the wild style of graffiti on subways. That was this spray can painted big bubble letters, acid TV colors, huge scale that the graffiti artists illegally were doing on the outside of the subways. Keith's more an art student. The answer, trying to find a way into this, is he sees actually near the subway at Times Square when he and Kenny are living there. These black matte rectangles, which have always been there, and these are the advertising panels.

They used to put ads up for Smirnoff, and then after the rental period of a few weeks, they would take it down and put an ad up for Oh! Calcutta!, Broadway show at the time. Between then you have these soft black matte space. Keith looks at it and thinks, "Oh, it would be perfect with chalk." It looks like a blackboard to him. He runs up onto the street, buys some school children chalk, comes down, and draws his crawling babies and barking dogs, basic kind of Keith Haring images. Then he starts and he likes it. Then he starts doing more.

This becomes also a kind of performance. People are watching him, watching him doing this. Then it begins to be in all the subway station. I remember these, some of them, being in subway stations downtown, the Broadway–Lafayette Station, and also that it's a mystery at this point, who's doing this. There's an article in the, I think in the Post called Chalkman, in which calling him Chalkman, and they're trying to figure out who it is, who's doing all of these. Eventually becomes, he starts going uptown, downtown. These are impermanent.

The reason we have a record of them is Keith's friend, Tseng Kwong Chi, photographs them. Keith will call him up and say, "Oh, I went on the F train today, and I did drawings at 14th Street and 23rd and 34th." Then Tseng Kwong Chi would get on the train and ride at the front so he could see and then get off if he saw one of these drawings. They, eventually, over five years and goes on for a while. Keith does 5,000 of these subway drawings. It's like one of the largest public art projects ever.

Enough that William Burroughs says at some point, "The same way you can't look at a sunflower without thinking of van Gogh. You can't go into the New York City subway system without thinking of Keith Haring." It was no accident that what appealed to him was that this was the place where Madison Avenue was putting its creations, and they were meant to communicate to people and to get people's attention. He wanted art that was going to communicate to people and get people's attention in just that manner. That was what was really driving the excitement, I think, of that whole endeavor.

Alison Stewart: Keith Haring also worked with other artists. He worked with Angel Ortiz. Who was Angel Ortiz?

Brad Gooch: Angel Ortiz was LA II. When Keith moves to or further down into East Village, actually, the Broome Street apartment, he sees all these LA II signatures around. Graffiti artists had aliases, signatures, styles, and very influential to Keith. He kept wondering, "Who's this LA II?" Finally, he's involved in a collaborative project, painting in a schoolyard on the Lower East Side and with a group of other artists, street artists, one of them, he's sort of asking around, "Does anyone know who LA II is?"

One of them, Futura 2000, does, and says, "Well, he lives in those projects. Over there, I'll see if someone can get him." Eventually, LA II comes over. Angel Ortiz. He's 16 years old and small kid. Keith is sort of doesn't first believe it's him. He asks him to draw his signature, and he does. Then he realizes it is. Very thrilled about this. He then invites LA II to come over to his studio and that they collaborate on a work. At this point, so they start doing these collaborations. Keith goes and has dinner with Angel Ortiz's mom, just to reassure.

She's, like, wondering, because Keith starts selling these works, like the first one for $2,000 to a psychiatrist. He splits the money with LA II, whose mother is wondering where this money has come from because there's drug dealing going around and things. Keith comes in and has dinner and explains who he is, and so then she agrees. It leads, eventually, Keith actually takes Angel Ortiz to Japan, to Tokyo with him. They collaborate on paintings and then on sculpture that are done with dayglow paintings, a lot of these things in Keith's first show.

He's always very collaborative. He mentioned a couple of his art friendships with Kermit and with Kenny Scharf, but he's also then creating work with artists like LA II.

Alison Stewart: Last year or the year before, there was a show in New York of Angel Ortiz's work, and you can see the influence that he and Keith Haring had on each other. Some say in the art world, Keith Haring was treated a lot better than Angel Ortiz was treated. Should Angel get more credit?

Brad Gooch: Well, he certainly deserves a lot of credit for what he did and for those sorts of collaborative works that they did together. It's always difficult with collaboration. I think as far as I know, LA II is always credited in the works that they created together. Who's influencing what becomes a little tricky. It's certainly true that Keith Haring becomes this giant art star, and LA II has a much more rugged life, I would say. It's also that this was, for Haring, this was one piece among many, many pieces. He was always evolving and changing his style and also moving very fast.

I mean, not to excuse it, but he could tunnel his way through. A lot of people felt, I would say, burned, not by him directly. I interviewed La, too, and he not angry at Keith Haring, and he doesn't blame Keith Haring. His anger becomes more at the Keith Haring Foundation or at the public reception or the coverage in some way. I think what would happen, I mean, it happened with Kenny Scharf, different people was that Keith's flame of fame was so bright that it left a kind of shadow in a way.

This was had to do with, in the case of artists, there would be envy among these artists. There was money that was now flowing in. In terms of these friends around him and especially graffiti artists who he was friends with, they were suddenly, like, Angel Ortiz popped up into this world of Andy Warhol and rich people and Tokyo. I know Angel Ortiz wound up dropping out of school at a certain point, and he didn't tell Keith. This was a problem for Keith in that way. It became a stress test, I think, that world. Keith seemed suited in his way.

As we were talking about, I mean, a kind of monovision about what he wanted to accomplish. People who maybe have less equipment to deal with these or less experience could get burned.

Alison Stewart: Tomorrow on Full Bio, we'll look at the success of Keith Haring and his political activism.

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