All language subtitles for Keith.Haring.Street.Art.Boy.2020.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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-He kind of took New York
by storm,

and he was in all the magazines

before he was 25, worldwide.

-My philosophy was always
that art

really could communicate
to larger numbers of people

instead of that elitist group
of people that could afford it

and "understand it."

-90% or more of the people
using the subways

would never go to
the Museum of Modern Art.

-That was around the time
when Keith kind of went "Bing!

I'm going to do this."

-The crawling baby,

the dog, flying pyramids,
dancing man,

turning them into his,
like, own vocabulary.

-I was realizing
the potential of images

and how much power they had to
speak almost as a language.

-Keith had an inherent need
to have a dialogue with people.

-For me, the market has very
little to do

with what art is supposed to be.

-I was formally introduced to
this painting here yesterday

when the brother painted it.

We love it.
He alright with us.

-The traditional art world
didn't get that he felt

that art should be
as accessible as possible.

-As sort of a romantic idea of
being an artist of the people,

I just found a way to do it
that was very direct.

-He was so prolific.
I would come back the next day,

and there would be like 4
new paintings and 20 drawings.

Okay.

-I think it's more important
to keep coming up

with new images and things
that were never made before,

live as fully and as completely
as you can,

and deal with the future
as it comes to you.

-He was celebrating life
up to the very end.

-So this is the eighth day
of August, 1989,

and I'm speaking
with Keith Haring.

One of the things
I want to ask you

is what kind of a little boy
you were, if you recall.

-I had glasses from the time
I was in second grade.

I was already sort of
a little nerd.

I mean,
I think I was real insecure

about being last
to be picked for teams.

My mother was really trying to
sort of mold me

into something, I suppose.

I mean, the pressure
to play Little League

or to go play ball.

I mean, I was really more
interested in doing

silly creative things
like inventing a club

or arranging
some sort of club house.

-And you were the eldest
of how many?

-Of four.

Yeah, after me, they had a girl,

and then after two years
had another girl,

and my third sister was born
when I was 12 years old.

-Kutztown is a small town,

what I would call
a very conservative town

in the heart
of Pennsylvania Dutch country.

I call it sleepy because...

Well, just because
there's not much going on.

And that definitely
was Keith's opinion of it.

We don't have an exact date
on this.

-But we're pretty sure
it's third grade.

-"When I grow up, I would like
to be an artist in France.

The reason is because
I like to draw.

I would get my money
from the pictures I would sell.

I hope I will be one.
Keith Haring."

I mean, he was always drawing --
drawing in school

when he wasn't supposed to be.

-He would draw on
any kind of paper --

backs of store lists,
backs of cards.

Yeah, he was always open
to drawing anything.

-And he found a friend
in Kermit.

They both liked to draw.

-We grew up in the same town
two blocks away from each other.

A real friendship started,
I think,

you know, in grade school,
and pretty much

that's when we started
making things together.

We delivered newspapers
on the same street.

We were reading the paper
day by day.

There was a lot
of crappy stuff going on.

We were talking about it,
and it bothered us.

-We will prevail in Vietnam
over the communist aggression.

Keith, as long as I knew him,
was an activist.

When Nixon ran for president,

we found ourselves running
around town with bars of soap,

putting stuff about Nixon
on buildings.

In Kutztown, people didn't write

on things that didn't
belong to them.

You know, rolling hills
and cornfields

and horse and buggies
and absolutely no graffiti.

Keith got interested in
that whole Jesus Movement.

What it illustrated to me
was a kind of a longing

to be a part of something.

-I guess it was around that time

I discovered smoking pot
for the first time.

-What do you make of that one,
Allen?

-Smoking pot.

We were pretty well convinced
he was doing that.

-By this time, I was doing
really stupid drugs --

angel dust with my friend
who was making it.

But then I got a job
in the arts and crafts center

in Pittsburgh.

Even though I wasn't a student,
I proceeded to use

the other facilities
around there to do my own work.

One of the most important
things in Pittsburgh

was the Carnegie did the
Pierre Alechinsky retrospective,

who I had never heard of before.

And the work was so close
to what I was doing.

It was the first time
that I felt

that I was doing something
that was worth something.

At 20 years old in 1978,

I was having
my first show on my own.

I knew that I had
to make the break.

I knew I had to go to New York
because that was the only place

where obviously I was
going to find the intensity

that I wanted to find,

both in terms of the art world
and in terms of my life.

Also, I was realizing
little by little

that I had to sleep with men.

I had looked into schools
and found this school

which seemed incredibly
interesting to me,

which was School of Visual Arts.

-It worried us that he would be
exposed to things

that we try
to protect children from.

And we would have
no control over that.

New York of the late '70s,
when I arrived,

when Keith arrived,

It was a place a lot of people
were afraid to go to.

It was downtrodden.

-In 1978, it was bankrupt.

-Good evening.
New York City

was on the brink of default
for most of the day.

-A lot of the buildings
were abandoned.

It was extremely dangerous.
There was a lot of crime.

But there was a great
punk rock music scene

and an underground film scene.

And it was the place to be.

-Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt,
take one.

-I was in school full-time
with a purpose

in this new environment

and was just working.

It was all new to me,
and it was all very exciting.

-And you were 20.
-And I was 20, yeah.

I sort of met some people
very quickly.

Like in my drawing class,

I immediately gravitated
to this one girl

who was named Samantha McEwan.

-And he literally sat down,
I mean, opposite me

but our knees touching
and he just went,

"Can I draw you?"
And that was Keith.

-I was in the hallway,

and I heard Devo music,

and there's Keith
painting himself into a corner

with these black strokes.

And every stroke
was to every beat of the music.

And he had painted
the entire room

and he was at the very end

and he was standing
in the corner

and he was marking his mark
and I was like, "Wow."

I said, "This is the reason
why I came to New York."

-I think Keith kind of, like,
ruled that school

from the time he got there.

-He lived in a tiny apartment
on the third or fourth floor.

Huge roaches and plywood floors.

Keith's room was virtually
a closet,

but it had, like, a phonograph.

And he ended up playing, like,
"Rock Lobster"

like 20 hours in a row

while he would be drawing
in the apartment.

-No one in the East Village
had a television set.

We went out every night.
That was our entertainment.

-At nighttime, I'm becoming part
of nightclub scene

and then begin to become
part of this scene at Club 57,

a Polish church.

In the basement of the church,
there was a social hall.

-We were really kind of bored
with the art world

as an elitist place.

It seemed like
it was trying harder and harder

to be more and more esoteric

and not want to include
the public at large.

-Club 57 was our way
of going to Hollywood

without having to
go to Hollywood.

That whole spirit of DIY,
we're not going to be uptown

groveling at the feet
of corporate entities

for their approval
to do anything.

We can find another playground.

-What I'm obsessed
with at this time

is trying to figure out
why I'm an artist

and if I'm an artist,
why I'm an artist,

and also becoming aware
of and very interested

in what's happening
on the streets of New York.

I'm fascinated by the graffiti
that I was seeing.

Not only big things
on the outside of cars,

but the incredible calligraphy

which was covering
the insides of cars.

-It was to compete
with advertising

in a certain regard.

Like, all these companies
were just forcing their products

in your face all the time.

It's like we want to force
ourselves in people's faces.

-I started to notice him
in my neighborhood

in the Lower East Side
was he started to come down

to get more acquainted
with graffiti writers.

-I felt immediately an affinity
to the work

as if I had known it
a long time.

This incredible pop cartoon
sensibility from kids

that had grown up watching
cartoons with Technicolor.

The forms seemed very similar
in a way

to the kind of drawings
that I was doing,

even though
I wasn't making letters.

They had the same kind of
volumous,

aggressively fluid lines,

which were obviously done
really directly

with very little hesitation
but just really, really strong.

From the time I was a kid,
I had this tremendous guilt

about all the things
that white people had done,

you know,
from fucking over the Indians

to the whole
civil rights movement.

And I felt a much
closer affinity

to culture and people of color

than I did to white culture
in a way.

-Disenfranchisee youth creating
really beautiful,

urgent messages of,
like, self identity.

Way before Instagram.

You know, I like to
call it Instadamn,

because Instadamn was like,
"Damn, look at that."

-The famed Times Square Show

organized by
Collaborative Projects

was the first time
that the art world acknowledged

that this underground existed.

-The art world is very
unpenetrable at that time.

The velvet ropes are there,
and you don't want

just anyone crashing
those velvet robes.

-The Times Square extravaganza
on 41st Street.

-There was starting to be
this whole movement

in New York of people
trying to do things

outside of the regular
gallery system.

-Lee Quiñones and I
did a painting

on the front of the building,

a Fab 5 piece
which we spray-painted.

Keith was a big fan of graffiti.

He was watching trains, looking
at tags, and things like that.

He had good questions,
I had some answers,

and we just
became fast friends right away.

-It was really a moment where
the uptown culture of graffiti

and rap kind of collided with
the punk New Wave aesthetic.

So that was around the time
when Keith kind of went "Bing!

I'm going to do this."

-A few days or a few weeks right
after the Times Square Show,

I just started doing
these new flying saucers...

and these animal figures

which sort of looked like they
could have been cows or sheep

or something, but they had very
sort of square noses.

They're really roughly, roughly,
roughly drawn

because I hadn't done
anything figurative

in a really long time.

And out of these
were sort of really born

the entire vocabulary
that came afterward.

And all of a sudden,
it just totally dawned on me,

like, "What am I doing
in school?"

I had discovered my own work.

So I decided
I was going to have a show.

-The solo show in New York City
at P.S. 122 --

I went over there, and I think
Keith was there on his own,

and it was
absolutely spellbinding.

I mean, it was really --

you know, chills
went down your spine.

-I had been given the space

only for, I think,
a one-month period.

-It became a buzz
and everybody wanted to go

and see what was there,
you know?

Everybody wanted to go see it.

-And I think that was around
the time

when Keith brought Tony
to see this work.

-How's that?
-Too tight.

I can't turn.

-I'll move around more.
-Move here.

Yeah, there's nothing.

-You know, Tony is
a very forceful personality.

-I've done shows with Picasso,
Bacon, everybody,

and I'm like, "They're like
a dead, dead rat."

I know my crap. Please. I
know the editors of Vogue.

I know every fucking
photographer in the world.

-This is the guy that literally

went into
the Museum of Modern Art

with a spray-paint can
and painted "Kill lies all"

on the most famous Picasso
in the world.

-Why did you mark up
that painting like that?

-To tell the truth.
-To tell the truth?

What does that mean?

-That means to
kill all the myths.

The myths of art.
To tell the truth.

-Everyone's like,
"Oh, he's the guy.

He's the guy
who defaced 'Guernica,'

and he's an art dealer?"

-I would go to the Museum of Art

just primarily to look
at "Guernica."

However, the fact that he
believed in protest against war

and was committed enough
to stand up to what he knew

would be incredible attacks
from the art world,

I respected that.

-We went to see
the Keith Haring show,

and the animated line was so
original and so active

that it immediately
caught your attention.

It didn't look school-trained.

It didn't look qualified.

So I grabbed that.

-The other thing
that was happening

was that I had started
to draw graffiti

for the first time
on the streets with marker.

And I started drawing
the animal,

which more and more
looked like a dog

and kept getting referred
to as a dog,

and the person
crawling on all fours,

which then the more I drew it

and the more and the proportion
of the head got bigger,

the more it got referred to
as the baby.

-Amongst the graffiti community,

placement was
a significant thing,

and he would place them
in unique places.

And there was this
little crawling baby.

And I was like,
"Yo, that's dope. That's dope."

-One day I enter the subway
and see an empty black panel,

which has been put there
to cover an old advertisement.

Immediately, I knew that I had
to draw on top of this panel.

I mean, it was like a waiting,
perfect surface.

I knew that I had to go
aboveground and buy chalk.

-Keith was not sure
about using spray-paint.

He is very sensitive
being white.

He didn't want to be
this white guy

coming into a graffiti space

that was largely
people of color.

He wanted to be a part of it,
but in his own unique way.

-The deficit in the city
and the lack of advertisements

maybe at that time made for

a lot of vacancies
on those blackboards.

-After the first one, I started
seeing them everywhere.

And within days, I knew
what I had discovered here.

I could go back down
in the subway, you know,

a week later and the drawing
would still be there.

Within a week,
people would come up to me.

"I saw this other drawing.
I saw the drawing.

You're the guy
that did the drawing."

Blah, blah, blah.

-He would do over 100 sometimes
in one day.

It would be
enormously exhausting

to take the train, jump out
and do one, another one,

another one, another one,
go to next station,

all the way to Harlem,
all the way back.

I mean, you'd just be dead.

-You had to create a lot of work

to be seen in a sea
of 10,000 subway trains.

Where the train goes by

and you're like,
"Wow, what was that?"

And it's a blur of color.

But here you got the opportunity
to have an arrested audience.

And they're like,
"This is a phenomenon.

What's going on?"

-For everybody, I guess.

I mean,
I don't get paid to do it.

But I do it down here so
lots of people can see it.

-Keith had an inherent need
to have a dialogue with people.

And he knew what he was doing,
for crying out loud.

He was sending a photographer
around to every place

he did the drawing
to photograph every drawing.

-All of a sudden
in Times Square

on the main luminescent display,
there was Keith,

animation of his figures now
on the middle of Times Square.

-What did you guys think
when you saw that?

-We go, "Yay!"
It was great, yeah.

-Apart from anything else,
I think it was one thing

that he felt his parents
would definitely appreciate.

You know, that is impressive.

-I moved in with Samantha,
who was Kenny's girlfriend.

But we've become really good
friends by this point.

She has found an apartment
on Broome Street.

At this point, I'd meet
Juan Dubose at St. Marks Baths,

have great sex,
and just decide that

this is the right person to me.

He's black. He's really thin.

He's the same size as me.

We decide that
he should move in.

And we buy a tent because
Samantha has got to walk through

our room to get to the bathroom.

So we had this huge indoor tent
so that we have privacy.

And also what is starting
to happen for the first time,

people are starting to be
interested in buying the work.

They come to the apartment
and start to buy things.

This man from London
comes to the studio

and buys a group
of about 10 drawings.

I mean, it's the first time
that I've got

over $1,000 in my hand

and for the first time
in my life

realizing that I can live off
of being an artist.

-I was sitting at the kitchen
table when he came in.

I don't know if I was
having lunch or what.

And all of a sudden
he reached in his pocket

and he took out some $100 bills
and laid them on the table.

And I said, "What's that?"

He said, "Mom,
I'm making money on my art."

And I said,
"Well, don't you need it?

I know it's expensive
to live in the city,

and you need to buy things
and you need supplies."

He said,
"I'm doing pretty good, Mom,

and I want to start repaying you

for all you've given me
over the years."

That's when I realized that

some of the people
do like his art.

-I was starting to have dealers
sort of fight over me.

Collectors are asking to come
to the appointment,

and then they want to haggle
over prices

or they're people that you don't
even want to talk to them

to begin with because they're
sort of creepier and creepier.

Already, they're trying to rip
me off for whatever they can.

-At that time,
I really told him,

"Keith, I mean, think of doing
something that would last.

You know,
maybe paintings or something."

"Oh, no, I'm not going to be
an old-fashioned painter.

It's not about that."

I said, "You go and find a way
that could be new."

-I think it's more important
to make

a lot of different things

and keep coming up
with new images

and things that were
never made before

than to do one thing
and do it well.

They come out fast,
but it's a fast world.

-When he had a show, we went,
and...

-There weren't many there
that were dressed like us

or that were as quiet as us

or didn't understand
what was going on.

-We were definitely the oldest
there, probably.

-Yeah.
-We weren't there too long.

-No.

-There was every type of person.

People who would never go
to an art gallery opening,

they were there.

-We got homeys from the streets,
Lower East Side,

black and Puerto Rican people
partying.

You know,
it was a different world.

So when those white folks

that just went to
the regular art world things

would show up,
they'd be, like, blown away.

-I can't get over it.

-I'm from the South.
I'm a Southern painter.

Marvelous.
-Thank you.

-Haring has become
a hot property.

They ooh and they ahh.

-Downstairs is unbelievable.

I want to buy a few of these
little wooden things.

-And they pay plenty.

Within the first few days
of the show,

about $250,000 worth
of his pieces sold.

Not bad for a 24-year-old kid
from Kutztown.

-Literally, it was packed.

No one had ever seen
an art opening

in the established
art world like this.

All of a sudden we were like,
"Oh, we're big boys now.

We're, like,
in the big boys world."

And we started
making big boy paintings.

-When the great Wall Street
bull market began in 1982,

it was one of the markers
of New York being different,

of New York having a kind
of manic self-confidence.

-Just a sense of it's okay
to make money.

In fact, it's okay to mainly
think about making money.

-There was a generation
in art world,

first of all,
that was supposed to be aloof

from all those things
that suddenly young folks

are diving in head first,
awash in dollars.

There was a big party going on,

and it was studded
with famous people

and the want-to-be-famous.

And then bonafide stars
like Keith.

-There are starting to be offers

for exhibitions
all over the world.

-The demand for the work
and the way that I was working

and the whole sort
of graffiti performance aspect

made it possible
for this whirlwind tour now

of going from place to place.

-Haring got plenty of publicity,

and West German television
pictures of him working

were seen in East Germany.

-Keith was an amazing person
to watch paint.

I did it many times.

-People were very charmed by him

because he was such
a young spirit

and he was so American.

He really represented something.

You know, this youthful spirit
and energy

in the sneakers and the jeans
and being gay

and hanging out
and going to clubs.

-He really was treated
like he was a rock star.

-Sometime right in this time,

I begin for the first time
to go to Paradise Garage.

I may have never been
the same since.

-At that point, we were going
to the Paradise Garage,

which was a big gay disco
on the West Side

with the greatest sound system
ever known to man.

-It was so hot inside just from
dancing that people were,

you know, only when shorts
and little outfits and things

and sweating,
and the music was phenomenal.

-We went every Saturday.

And there was no alcohol
served at this club,

so everyone was on drugs.

It was 3,000 black people
on drugs with Keith and I.

-Many people are on
hallucinogenic drugs.

It's sort of a communal,
elevated spiritual experience.

-We smoked pot like cigarets.

And that's not counting
the mescaline and the acid

and the psilocybin mushrooms

and the part that they never
play up enough

in, like, the Keith Haring story
is the drugs.

I always think that a lot of
Keith's vibrations

around everything that he drew
was kind of psychedelic.

-On the corner of Houston Street
and the Bowery,

where many derelicts
and bums hang out,

I walked past this wall
almost every day

on my way to go to the studio.

-I wasn't proclaiming it,
but people were saying

the amber walls
all belong to Lee in New York.

So he out of respect
and out of the generosity

and out of the just the
sweetness that he had

as a person asked me,

"Lee, can I have permission
to paint that wall?"

I was like, "Keith,
I don't want to paint it

because it has a crack in it."

-I do this mural in two days
or something,

do this amazing,
incredible wall.

I mean, it's glowing.

The fluorescent paint
is so bright

and the sun hits this wall,
and it's just this incredible

sort of monolith
standing on the thing.

-It was outrageous
how powerful it was.

-I was formally introduced
to this painting here

yesterday when the brother
painted it.

We love it.
He alright with us.

But we don't drink that wine and
wash some windows

and keep right on painting.

Keep it up and don't erupt.

Don't stop the chocolate crew
and the gang.

-From painting vacant ad spaces
in subways

to being flown around the world
is quite a leap.

-I went to Australia
to do several projects.

The National Gallery of Victoria
was a huge building

with a glass front on it.

I was going to do
a painting on this wall.

It turned into this
major controversy

and even being on the front page

because people there were
seeing it as Aboriginal.

But I was doing what I had been
doing in New York

and in America
and all over the world.

It just coincidentally was
the same kind of line drawing

as Aboriginals.

Well, the final result was that
about a month after I had left,

the center panel ended up
getting a shot put through it.

And so the whole thing
had to be removed.

In London, I painted
Bill T. Jones,

and painting him,
every inch of his body

from head to toe
to the tip of his foreskin,

and then photographed him
and all these sort of poses.

-I never felt exploited
by Keith.

What was an article
in Rolling Stonemagazine

talking about
his Bwana syndrome.

Who is this white guy surrounded
by all these brown people?

-At this point, I've made
a sufficient amount of money,

which I have a sufficient amount
of guilt about

and want to sort of share
with my friends.

For my birthday, I do
my very first party of life.

-May 16th.
Paradise Garage, 1984.

And this is one of those
handkerchiefs like the gay boys

liked to wear
in their back pockets.

Keith's parties
were so exuberant.

People were young,
healthy, alive.

Fantastic bodies.

It was like
something you might imagine,

you know, the ancient ritual
where they've already pulled

the heart out of the slaves
and then now the sun has come up

and it's coming through
Stonehenge just perfectly.

And now we're gonna celebrate.

It was very pagan,
and Keith just embodied that.

-We were inviting just really
gorgeous people to this party.

You know, from street kids
to Calvin Klein.

Anyone who was anyone
at that time in New York

had found a way to get
an invitation to this party.

Diana Ross showed up,

which for the Garage
was the ultimate highlight.

And I had just painted
a jacket for Madonna,

and I've asked her
if she'll sing there.

And she agrees that
she'll sing there.

They didn't take to Madonna.

It's like, "Who is this trashy
white girl that can't sing?"

-And we said, "Oh, you know,
she doesn't have a great voice."

But then he said,

"Andy says she's gonna be
the biggest thing."

And we said, "Oh, sure, sure."

Well, Andy was right.

-He got well known,
and then he got around Andy.

And then everyone started having
one name that was around Keith.

It was, you know,
Brooke and Andy and Grace,

Yoko and Michael.

Having his stuff taken seriously

by the art world was one thing,

but getting to hobnob with
everybody on Hollywood Squares

was like a whole nother
level of fame

that he really relished.

-All of a sudden, he went from
being this kid from Kutztown

to hanging out
with Farrah Fawcett.

-Juan was my lover
during this time,

but I was having
more opportunity,

and especially with
more traveling,

more notoriety, and more boys
around me all the time,

I was already starting to become
less and less true to Juan,

really, and it was hard

because I was constantly
surrounded by temptation.

-There are some people
who felt that,

you know, once he got famous,
he abandoned them.

There was something about
Andy's sense of art

as a business that
really appealed to Keith

and which, you know --
that philosophy did play a role

in Keith's decision
to open the Pop Shop.

-They call it the Pop Shop.

From T-shirts to posters,

pins and pendants to watches,

it's the place to pick up, well,

just about anything from
pop-art sensation Keith Haring.

-So the Pop Shop
was a reaction to

"You can only have my work if
you have thousands of dollars."

It was "You can buy a T-shirt
and be part of what I'm doing."

-I knew that I was going to get
a lot of criticism for it,

but I also knew

that it was the thing
the work was calling for

and that it had to become.

-It never made lots of money.
Never made money.

-What was the point of it, then?

-It was everybody
could have art.

Everybody could be
enjoying something.

-But what happened was Keith
was accused of selling out.

-Do you think the Pop Shop

will in any way interfere with
Keith Haring, the artist?

-I mean, to me, it's all one
and the same thing.

I mean, to me, the Pop Shop is

part of Keith Haring,
the artist.

-He was not somebody who said,

"Oh, never mind, I'm not going
to read those reviews.

They don't matter."

He read everything
and, you know, it upset him.

-Things had seriously changed
already in New York

because of
this new horror of AIDS.

And little by little,
it's building up in the news.

Calling this thing,
like, gay cancer.

And people around me
started to get sick.

The first person that I knew
that died of AIDS

was Klaus Nomi,

who had been around
from Club 57 days.

-You would be with your friend,
a vivacious, cherubic,

20 year old.

And then you would not see them
for a couple weeks

and you run into them
in the street

and it would be like,
"What the fuck?"

You know, all of a sudden,
they looked like a skeleton.

And it would happen that fast.

-At that point,
if you got a bruise,

you thought you had K.S.

You thought you were going to
die as a gay man.

And then there was the stigma
and the shame.

It was so shameful, AIDS,
at that point.

-There were doctors
who were so frightened

that they wouldn't even
let patients in their office.

They just would send them down
to my office to see them.

-We got very myopic about
creating, doing things

and doing things
and doing things

I think in a lot of ways
to avoid the trauma

of seeing friends die
right and left.

-He said yes to everything.

-I painted Grace Jones
for two live performances.

And I went to Marseilles
in France

to paint a backdrop
for a Roland Petit ballet.

Did some graphics
for some heart pills in Germany.

Designed four watches
for Swatch.

Every trip coordinated
exactly to leave

after a Saturday night
at Paradise Garage

so that I don't miss
any of my Garage time.

Don't let your brush
sit inside the cup

'cause it can get knocked over.

I'm approached by this group
called CityKids.

We come up with this brainstorm
of an idea of making a banner

and letting kids come

and paint their own things
inside of my lines.

After the three-day period,

about 1,000 high-school kids
had come to this thing.

It was this big, major event.

-The buses just kept unloading,

coming from all five boroughs
in New York City,

bringing kids from everywhere.

I had never really been
out of Brooklyn.

I didn't know people
from Queens.

I didn't know people
from the Bronx.

When you come from poverty,

sometimes you think that
that's all there is.

Every single person
that you see represented

on this banner had a voice.

But somebody feeling like your
statement was important at 16,

that changed everything.

-There was this thing that
children were comfortable

with me,
and I was comfortable with them.

If you're not sure,
you come to me and ask me,

"Should they be painting
with red or green here?"

I knew that they can sort of
sense honesty in the drawing.

-"Without her, there'd be no me,
no you, no liberty.

Keyon."

That was my statement. 1986.

I told you I couldn't draw.

We got to see life different.

And it gave you
the opportunity to go,

"Hey, there's more to life
than just my everyday.

Let's see what else is out here.
Let's see what else we can do."

I got invited by Keith Haring
to go up.

He was doing a mural in Harlem.

So now it's this world-famous --

The "Crack is wack" mural,
right?

It was a nice, like,
sunny summer afternoon day.

All I can remember is,
"This is taking forever.

I think this is wack."

-It's a sight you can't miss.

If you live in the neighborhood

or you pass 128th Street
on the FDR Drive,

you may have even wondered
who did that and why.

Graffiti artist
Keith Haring did it.

-'86 was sort of the beginning
of the crack scene

sort of starting in New York.

The whole thing was that
it was quickly addictive.

It's a really terrible
addiction.

It's much different
than heroin addiction.

-Did you try it?
-Yeah, I've tried everything.

-When he would have been 27,

Keith was showing regularly
in galleries all over the world,

and he had his first
solo museum show

at the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux.

And that show then would go on
to the Stedelijk in Amsterdam.

I mean, these were major,
major, major museums.

-I still haven't had
an exhibition in a museum

in the United States
of any kind of substance.

-Keith sort of started to
develop a Bosch-like world.

Really kind of intense
and heavy.

We were like,
"What the fuck is wrong

with these American curators?

How come they don't get it,"
you know?

He was combated by critics

for having a style
that resembled illustration.

You could say, "Yeah, but think
about what he was illustrating."

You know, all their belief
systems were being challenged.

-It upset him that
people just didn't get it.

They didn't get that he thought
art was for everybody.

They didn't get that he felt
that art should be

as accessible as possible.

-During the summer,

I started to notice trouble
with my breathing.

Was inspecting every day
and waiting

to see the purple splotch.

And I found a spot on my leg.

So I went to a doctor
and found out that it was,

in fact, K.S.,

meaning that now I fit exactly
the classifications

of actually having AIDS.

Now it was gonna happen to me,

and now I had to deal with it.

-Well, he had no delusions
that he was gonna be cured

or that the disease
was going to change or anything.

He knew it was progressive.
He knew he was dying.

-You know, it's like
you have to go on.

You, like,
get yourself together,

and you realize that this
is not the end right there

and that there's other things.

And you've got to continue
and you've got to figure out

how you're going to deal with it
and confront it and face it.

I haven't heard from
Juan Dubose for a long time.

His mother calls me
and tells me that he died.

Telling people that Juan died

is in a way telling people
that I'm going to die.

-It was very sad.

There was an open casket,
but Keith is looking at it

and saying, "Well, I'm next.
Soon to be me there," you know.

He loved classical music
in the end of his life.

He listened to that
all the time very loud.

-Once Keith got his diagnosis,

he basically just
ramped up everything.

He just worked and worked and
worked and worked and worked.

He created so much art.

-He traveled like crazy.

-You know,
once he got the diagnosis,

he pretty much
put himself out there.

He used his art to create
attention and awareness.

- Racist, sexist,
anti-gay, go away.

Racist, sexist, anti-gay,
go away.

-If you don't have money
in this city, you can't --

you know,
it's an expensive disease.

People that can't get money
to get treatment here,

to get whatever you have,
people just give up.

- Racist, sexist,
anti-gay, go away.

-We always struggled
raising money and rarely had

more than $10,000 in the bank.

And he would come up
and he'd say, "Peter,

I really want to help
with this action financially.

Could you stop by my studio?

I kind of have a cash business
these days."

And I'd walk from
my East Village apartment

down to Soho.

He'd go off
to his little knapsack thing

that he'd have in the corner
and he'd come back to me

and hand me
this huge wad of cash.

-And I have always been
an incredibly energetic person.

And the hardest thing for me
is to slow down that process.

Yeah, I believe that
you live while you're living

and you live as fully
and as completely as you can.

And you deal with a future
as it comes to you

and as it's doled out to you.

-You know, he's certainly had
some days

that were very, very dark.

And certainly, you know,
if you look at the work

that he created
in those last couple of years,

there is a great deal
of darkness in them.

-It became the hell
and horror of it all.

Like some of the last paintings
he did were really, like,

all the beauty is destroyed.

All the happiness of it all
is gone.

And now it's just a --
it's kind of like hell.

-Fan mail starting to pour in
from this Rolling
Stonearticle

in which I have bared my entire
life story.

At this point, I hadn't even

told my parents
that I was sick yet.

-There was hysteria and fear.

So many people had it,

yet nobody was coming out
and talking about it,

especially nobody famous.

It was very brave of him
to do that.

-Even in the state he was,

he was celebrating life
up to the very end.

-In fact, he was celebrating it
a bit too much.

Like I would say, "Keith,

I would rather think
it's a good idea if you've maybe

ate healthy,
had some of this carrot juice,

instead of doing
a line of coke,"

and he'd be like, "Fuck that.

"No, I'm just going to do this

with the candle
burning at both ends, bright,

and not wait for anything."

-You know, I never had any
sort of delusions about living

until I was going to be
an old person,

but there's works that I created

that are going to
stay here forever.

There's thousands
of real people,

not just museums and curators,

that have been affected
and inspired

and taught by the work
that I've done.

So the work is going
to live on long past

when I'm going to be here.

-Keith in January of 1990
attended the inauguration

of Mayor Dinkins
in New York City.

And the inauguration
was held outside.

And he contracted a very,
very difficult chest cold.

-It was just like Keith
was the Eveready Bunny,

and then the Eveready battery
just died.

This is the last drawing
by Keith.

He struggled so bad.

He really wanted to show
that he could still do it.

And it was really hard
for everyone.

-The nurse woke my parents
to tell them that.

It was in the middle
of the night.

They said his kidneys
are failing,

and that means
there's not much time.

And my parents got into bed
with him

and held him for hours
until he died.

-These are some of
Keith's designs.

There you can see the baby.

-They're a little bit flashy
and on the loud side,

so I don't wear them much.

I'm not a flashy, loud guy.

-There was times when he drew
in the pictures.

He did not sign his name,

but he would draw a baby
in the lower right-hand corner.

He always said that the baby
was a symbol of life.

-So we move to the Keith Haring,

and we start the bidding here
at $3.2 million,

$3.5 million,
$3.8 million already.

$3.8 million.

-$4 million. $4 million.

Looking for $4.2 million.

$4.5 million.

$4.7 million I'll take
for the Haring.

-At $4,700,000 for the Haring.
All done.

7 O0 C1

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