All language subtitles for Keith.Haring.Street.Art.Boy.2020.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM

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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 has always been art
really could communicate

to larger numbers of people, instead
of the elitist group of people

that could afford it
and, quote, unquote, understand it.

90% or more of the people
using the subways

would never go to a 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 realising 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 art 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, cos he's all right
with us.

The traditional art world didn't get
that he felt

that art should be as
accessible as possible.

It's 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,
four new paintings.

And 20 drawings. OK.

I think it's more important to keep
coming up with new images

and things that were never
made before.

From painting vacant ad spaces
in subways,

to being flown round the world
is quite a leap.

I would say Keith had some
of this carrot juice,

instead of doing a line of coke.

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,

so I was already sort of a little,
you know, 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 mould me

into something, I suppose.

# Once upon a once in a while...

I mean, the pressure to play Little
League, or to go play ball,

you know, I was really
more interested

in doing silly creative things,
like inventing a club,

or arranging some sort of clubhouse.

# Can't you say you want me to
stay?... #

I was completely obsessed
with The Monkees,

to the point where I would buy
teen magazines,

which were really made
for little girls

and I would, like, cut out these
pictures of The Monkees,

especially Davy Jones,
who was the cute young one.

He certainly was the cutest.
Which was one of the first times,

I think, that I began to frighten
my parents.

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.

Yeah, I call it sleepy,
because, er...

..well, just because it's...
There's not much going on.

And that definitely
was Keith's opinion of it.

Will you please stop?

Bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang, bang...

PHONE RINGS

..bang, bang, bang...

I was looking at my Tupperware...
..bang, bang, bang.

I went to church camp every summer.
Did you?

I couldn't have been more than 12
when I did a talent show,

and as my part of the talent show,
I did a strip tease,

but as a woman.

SING-SONG: Dah-dah-dah...
you know.

Oh, my God.

Out of a cake, which we had
made out of cardboard boxes.

But, I mean, did you actually strip?

Well, no, not to nothing.
I mean, this is church camp.

You know, we'd be driving somewhere
and we'd see hippies

and people hitchhiking and stuff,

and I always thought
it was really cool.

My parents were, you know,
Nixon supporters.

I mean, I remember distinctly
hearing my mother

say things about the Beatles.

Like how they should have sank the
boat on their way over and how...

I mean, they really weren't part of
the '60s cultural revolution at all.

Now, talk about your dad.

He was interested in ham radio.

Da, d-d-d, d-d-d-d, da-da...

A lot of times in the beginning
he was doing it with Morse code.

This sound was something that was
embedded in my head

from childhood, whatever.

Da-da-da-da-da-da.

My father... My father always used
to, always used to tell me...

..tell me, "This, this is Morse
code.

"This...this is Morse code."

We don't have an exact date on this.

Though I'm 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 draw on anything.

And he found a friend in Kermit,
they both liked to draw.

We grew up in the same town and 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...

..making things together.

We are standing before
the forces of power

in the state of Alabama, saying we
ain't going to let nobody

turn us around.

Living in the south, my connection
to real world events

was mostly through Life magazine
and on television.

# Ring all the bells
and tell all the people

# Everywhere that the
flower has come

# Light up the sky with your prayers
of gladness... #

At 7:30 this evening,
Martin Luther King was shot.

# Throw off your fears let your
heart beat freely

# At the sign that a new time is
born... #

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.

# Na na na na, na na na na na
na... #

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 and that replaced
the whole Jesus thing.

And loved watching
anti-drug things,

like on this glass gallas thing.

If we had a clue...

..as to where you got
the stuff you took at the...

Oh.

Oh, it's falling again, it's...

They're gonna... They're calling me.

Get the doctor.

Showing you the dangers of drugs...

..which just made me want
to do drugs even more.

Obviously, they are all able
to blow pot occasionally

without ill effects.

Well, almost all of them.

And acid was around a lot, and
taking a lot of acid and was

going to concerts and letting my
hair get longer and longer.

Now, did you draw while
under the influence? Yeah.

What do you make of that one, Alan?

Er, 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.

The older sisters were scared
of me at that point.

So my littlest sister became
my friend.

I was not making judgments of him.

I was open to him
in a different way.

He used to take me places, he used
to put me in the stroller

and push me across town to go
to the public library

and read books to me.

I would stand on top of the washing
machine and I would jump

into his arms and then he would put
me back on the washing machine,

he'd take a step back and we'd do
it again, and we'd see

how far away he could get
and I could jump to him.

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

in Pittsburgh.

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

around there to do my own work.

One of the most important things
in Pittsburgh was that Carnegie

did the Pierre Alechinsky
retrospective,

who I had never heard of before
and the work was so close

to what I was doing.

You know, it was the first time that
I felt that I was doing something

that was worth something.

And then, having seen my work,
this art singer asked me

if I wanted to have an exhibition.

So at 20 years old in 1978, I was
having my first show on my own.

And at one point, on my way
to go to work, I looked down

and there was a piece of paper that
just had written on top of it,

"God is a dog," right.

And I picked it up and turned
it over and the other side said,

"Jesus is a monkey."

I have no idea why this was, like,
such a profound thing to me,

but it triggered a punk attitude.

I knew that I had to make a break.

I had reached this plateau
in Pittsburgh.

That day, I cut my hair very short
and started going to record stores

and buying all these new bands.

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 realising,
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.

So, I checked into the YMCA...

I'm there on my first
night in New York City,

so I, sort of, ventured out.

I ended up on Christopher Street
and was like a kid in a candy store.

It's like gay Disneyland,
or something.

I was completely mesmerised.

And I ended up meeting someone
on the pier, going back

to his apartment and playing around.

And I ended up deciding
that I should move

in and be his roommate.

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.

You know, 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.

Travellers arriving at New York's
Kennedy Airport today

were handed pamphlets by off duty
police and firemen,

depicting New York as Fear City.

In other words, a good place
to stay away from.

But there was a great punk rock
music scene,

and an underground film scene,
and, er...

..it was the place to be.

You could get, you know, apartments
in really scary neighbourhoods,

like Lower East Side, and, you know,

so you get mugged a couple of times,

but at the same token, you don't
have to think about paying rent.

Work maybe a couple days a week
and that paid for everything.

So we had all this free
time to work on...

What we really wanted to work
on was our art.

There was an incredible
amount of freedom,

and you will trade your own
safety for freedom.

$1, $1.

When I was still living in Kutztown,
we would come in and I remember

the time, it was pouring rain
and all of these hookers ran

up to our car wearing raincoats
and then opened them up

with nothing under them, and, like,
stuck it all in the windows

of the car.

We were like, "Oh, my God,
we've got to move here."

It was absolutely full of bums
and drunks and fires.

Syringes. Basically, when you
were sweeping, you'd sweep syringes

off the sidewalk.

That was the Lower East Side, a lot
of syringes, broken syringes.

We didn't have Whole Foods there on
the corner like there is now.

Tribute To Gloria Vanderbilt.

Take one.

I was in school full-time
with a purpose,

and 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 right...

I mean, opposite me, but our knees
touching. And he just went,

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

I had this idea that the students
I was going to meet were going to

be really special.

So as soon as I got there,
I was a little disappointed right

away, because I felt all the kids
I met just seemed the same

as the suburban ones
that I had known.

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 this mark.

And I was like, "Wow!"

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

We just started talking
and we hit it off.

And I'll never forget, you know,
that moment.

I think Keith kind of, like, ruled
that school

from the time he got there.

I was already starting to sort
of step on some toes.

I would sometimes take the drawings
and hang them up

just in the hallways.

Sometimes they'd stay there.

One time they got taken down and
torn up in little bits.

And so what I did was I took
the drawing and hung it back up

with the torn pieces and said,
"It looked better even like that."

I mean, I was making a thing,
so I wanted to show them.

He was self-promoting. He had
made Xeroxes.

He was handing them out and his
buttons and people were like,

"You can't do that, that's not what
artists do."

I met him in the corridor.

This really tall, lanky guy.

And he looked like a mix between

Fred Astaire with Jerry Lewis

a little bit, you know, like...

He did put his stuff everywhere
in school.

There was a Keith something all the
time, you know what I mean?

Which is funny. I remember one time
on the stairs

he had put one drawing on each part.

So you went up and you kept
on seeing these things going up.

That kind of thing annoyed people.

I didn't attribute it to
raw ambition.

I mean, he obviously had a lot
of stuff inside of him.

I'm not sure he said this.

Some people have...
I think maybe it was John Lennon.

A lot of people have things
inside of them

that they can't get out.

But in the case of Keith,
he, I mean, he found a channel.

I really liked the video class
a lot.

Looking at yourself from outside of
yourself was an incredible

psychological sort of lesson for me.

Some of the stuff was actually shot
down in Kutztown.

No, no, no.

He'd videotape his mom
in the kitchen...

Can you please stop?

..and then take that and splice it
into, you know,

kind of dirtier stuff that they were
doing in New York.

Keith...

..I was looking for my Tupperware
book.

By this time, my friend Drew Straub
decided that he was going

to leave Kutztown.

We decided to get an apartment
together

and move to the East Village.

We 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, um, he ended up playing, like,
Rock Lobster, 20 hours in a row

while he would be drawing
in the apartment.

# We were at a party

# His ear lobe fell in the deep

# Someone reached in and grabbed it

# It was a rock lobster... #

I was living by coincidence,
I promise, directly across the

street from the club.

By the way, if a few people
cruise around here,

I really can't blame them.

That doesn't get you uptight,
does it?

I was living in the middle of the
West Village,

in the middle of everything that was
going on.

You couldn't go to the post office

or the grocery store without
cruising or without being cruised,

or without being totally aware
of sex somehow.

New York in 1978 was one big orgy.

There wasn't a lot of bad things
that could happen if you just went

crazy and explored every facet that
you ever dreamed of

without having your old friends
or your family or anyone watching.

Our best friends were Kenny Scharf
and John Sex.

And, you know, Kenny Scharf says he
had slept with everyone in the room.

And John Sex pretty much
got his name that way, too.

And then Keith and I were along
for that ride also,

every permutation.

But I was never... Keith and I were
never attracted to each other,

so that, that never occurred.

I discovered backroom bars
with people sort of anonymously

having sex with whoever
was there at the time,

which became a way of life for...

..you know, for a long time.

And because I was obsessed with sex,

there were all these drawings of...
Phallic. ..of dicks, tonnes of

drawings of dicks.

He did penis wallpaper for our
kitchen.

It looks like butterflies,
but it's actually penises.

Three...

Er. Nn.

At school, I was studying
semiotics...

Al. Al.

..looking at language and picking
it apart and deciphering

and how meaning attached
itself to things.

For it isn't man, but the world
that has become abnormal.

One of our first days in the city,
we ran into this thing called

the Nova Convention,
which was a sort of festival

celebrating William Burroughs.

It was about semiotics and words,

and it was about cut-ups.

It was about cutting up text
and putting it back together

for new meanings.

And Keith got that.

Lick.

Sin.

No.

Art. Sin.

So, I started spending more time

trying to dissect language and play

with language and found a stack

of letters that were printed on,

sort of, this glossy paper,

one letter on each page.

And for whatever reason,

there were 13 letters in this stack,

so it was an entire alphabet.

Took them to my apartment and

started to rearrange them to make

whatever words I could

out of these 13 letters.

Came up with phrases which became,

sort of, the basis for this whole

work, which were, "Art, boy, sin,
as, if, no..."

No. If no art. No fat if.

If no art.

Art if lick.

Lick fat boys.

Lick fat boys. Lick fat boys.

Lick fat...

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

We went out every night.

That was our entertainment.

At night-time, I'm becoming part
of the 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.

# I want to see you tonight

# I want you to walk in the
door... #

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.

57, Keith and I actually discovered
together, we saw this door open

and we were like, "What's in there?"

We'd go in there and there's a
jukebox

and we look and the music
was really fun.

It was like Motown, '60s
Go-Go music.

Put the quarter in and all of a
sudden Ann Magnuson comes out

from behind the bar and we're all
go-go dancing together.

And it was just like instant family.

MUSIC: Strobe Light
by The B-52's

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 grovelling

at the feet of corporate entities
for their approval to do anything,

where we can find another
playground.

MUSIC CONTINUES

You arrive in New York City
and you just create

who you want to be.

Which was why everybody
was so amazing to be around.

# Everything I see is red... #

There was art shows.

We were dying to get discovered.

We all wanted this dream
of fame and all this stuff.

No-one really was paying attention
to what we were doing

except for each other.

We had a vaudeville act called
Acts Of Live Art.

And I remember Keith bringing his
television set and doing

repetitive, "Art boy sin.
Lick fat boys."

Keith was already being like a
serious artist,

even though it was kind of deadpan
and hilarious at the same time.

Like, people who saw that,
that didn't go over real big.

It wasn't fun enough for, um,
Club 57.

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

and fascinated by the graffiti
that I was seeing.

Not only big paintings
on the outsides 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

neighbourhood in the
Lower East Side.

He started to come down to get
more acquainted

with the graffiti writers.

I felt immediately an affinity to

the work as if I had known it a
long time.

Here we go, here we go!

This incredible pop cartoon
sensibility from kids

that had grown up watching
cartoons with Technicolour.

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're the same kind of volumous,
aggressively fluid lines,

which were obviously done
really directly with very little

hesitation, but just really,
really strong.

He was just so fascinated
by the sense of the energy

that these young individuals had.

And I think Keith was very,
you know, like, just drawn to that.

It was a magnet for him.

He discovered Puerto Rican boys and
black, black boys, I guess.

It was kind of my penchant, too,
at that point.

As a kid I had this tremendous guilt

about all the things that white
people had done. You know, from

some fucking over the Indians to
the whole civil rights movement.

And I felt a much closer affinity

to culture and people of colour

than I did to white culture in
a way.

Disenfranchised youth creating

really beautiful, urgent
messages of, like, self-identity.

Way before Instagram.

You know, I like to call it
Insta-damn,

because Insta-damn was like,
"Damn, look at that!"

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear.

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly
swear...

When Ronald Reagan was elected
president, everybody was shocked

and we were all completely convinced
that Reagan was going to start

a nuclear war with Russia.

We must remain constant in
preserving the nuclear deterrent and

maintaining a solid capability for
flexible response.

So why not just keep creating and
making art and live for the moment?

Because the moment may not
last much longer.

Current technology has attained
a level of sophistication

where it's reasonable for us
to begin this effort.

Religion and morality are
indispensable supports.

He was saying these absurd things,
you know, that Vietnam,

the only mistake we made was not
winning.

And so I made these headlines,
many of which were about Reagan.

Cutting up headlines from The
New York Post and rearranging them

to create new news.

One of them was, "Reagan slain
by hero cop."

Another one was, "Pope killed
for freed hostage."

This was during the time of
the Iran hostage crisis.

The famed Times Square Show,

organised by
collaborative projects,

is the first time that the art world
acknowledged

that this underground existed.

DISTANT CHEERING

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.

Collaboratively Colab gave a
platform for artists to come and

either be whack, or be all that.

I had done an installation
of the Xeroxes of these letters

of the Art Sin Boy piece.

And there were reviews in Artforum
and Village Voice

and there was a few graffiti artists

had been invited to do things
inside.

One of which was Lee, who was one...

The king of graffiti artists
at that time.

It was an old... I didn't know
it was an old massage parlour.

AKA, you know...

You know, as we used to call it back
in the day, whore house.

Four floors, staircases
that were practically falling apart.

It was just crazy.

It was pretty wild.

I showed some paintings, like, two
or three paintings that I installed

and then Lee Quinones 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 was very curious
and it was really great to see

that he connected in that
spirit of graffiti.

He would see an interesting name,
a way it was written.

He had good questions, I had some
answers.

And we just became fast
friends, like, 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.

So they were animals, but it was
symbol for animal and human figures,

they were having sex.

All these sort of scenarios,

that just unfolded in these
drawings.

They were really roughly, roughly
drawn, cos 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 PS 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.

In the space at PS 122,

now the ceilings and walls
have been covered

completely with drawings.

And I had been given this space only
for, I think, a one-month period.

It became a buzz and everybody
wanted to go and see

what it was that, 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 round 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
there is in the world.

David Bailey, I fucking know
from 1962, for God's sake.

Does any of this mean anything
to you?

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? Yes.
What does that mean?

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 protests 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.

Tony was one of the first
ones to see, um...

..that it was worth money,

was really going to be worth money.

I caught myself when I would do
a double-take and I thought

to myself, "If there's something
making me double-take, there

"must be something to it, 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 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 you would place them
in unique places

and there was this little
crawling baby.

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

And then he would just get a cool
way, a quick way of doing it.

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
above ground and by chalk.

Keith was not sure
about using spray paint.

He was very sensitive, being white.

He didn't want to be this white guy
coming into a graffiti space

that was largely people of colour.

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 start 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.

The crawling baby, the dog,
flying pyramids, computers,

televisions, dancing man.

And then every sort of permutation
of those sort of things,

turning them into his, like,
own vocabulary.

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.

Keith went at it like a bomb.

It wasn't like he just went to one

subway station and did a couple
of drawings.

He kind of went throughout
the entire city

looking for black paper
that didn't have the ads on.

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 the 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.

"Brah! brah-brah-brah!"

And you're like, "Whoa, what was
that?" And it's a blur of colour.

But here you got the opportunity
to have an arrested audience

and they're like, "This is a
phenomenon. What's going on?"

He presented his work.

And then he would be interested
in what anybody would say about it.

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.

80, 90% or more of the people
using the subways would never go

to the Museum Of Modern Art, would
never go to a museum in their life.

So him, this was the museum.

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.

I had met the photographer Kwong Chi
standing on a street corner,

because he was just so eccentric
and absurd-looking that I knew

I had to meet this person.

CAMERA CLICKS

Chi almost immediately saw
the potential of what was beginning

to happen here and volunteered
to start photographing them.

All of a sudden in Times Square
on the main luminescent display,

there was Keith animation with his
figures, on the middle

of Times Square.

What did you guys think
when you saw that?

We were all, "Yay! Keith."
It was great, you know.

Apart from anything else, I think it

was one thing that he felt his
parents would definitely appreciate.

You know, that, that is impressive.

I watched it happen for him
super-fast,

which was...I was super-happy for
him and super-excited,

and at the same time, I'm human,

I was like, "Shit, what about me,
everybody?"

WHOOPING AND CHEERING

CROWD CHANT: No more nukes! No more
nukes!

I had made, with my own money,

20,000 posters to give away
at this anti-nuclear rally.

And it was huge.
Hundreds of thousands of people.

No more nukes! No more nukes!

He sat with a bunch of young
friends to roll them up

with a rubber band and give
them away. Roll them up,

rubber band, give them away.
Roll them... I mean, all day long.

We all wanted to be in important art
galleries and be taken serious.

But Keith had a particular
goal beyond that.

He wanted to be seen as a political
activist in his paintings.

I was now at a point where I was
realising the potential

of images and how much power

they had to speak almost
as a language.

I moved in with Samantha, who
Kenny's girlfriend,

but we'd become really good friends
by this point.

She has found an apartment
on Broome Street.

At this point, I meet Juan Dubose
at St Marks Baths and have great sex

and just decide this is the right
person. I mean, he's black,

he's really thin, his dick is 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... Oh, I see. So we have
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 ten drawings.

I mean, it's the first time I have
got over $1,000 in my hand,

and for the first time in my life

realising 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
his pocket and he took out

some hundred dollar bills
and laid them on the table.

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 realised that
some of the people do like his art.

What happened was up until that
moment, it was like

"All for one, "all for art"

and then all of a
sudden there was like, "Oh, wait

"a second, someone's making money.
I'm going to get left behind."

It was always competitive,
but in a fun way.

And then all of a sudden it became
a different kind of competition.

I'm starting to have dealers
sort of fight over me.

Collectors are asking to come
to the apartment 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
cos they're sort of creepier

and creepier. Already, they're

trying to rip me off for whatever
they can.

It's too distracting from doing
the work, which is what

I really want to do.

Tony is in the process of trying
to open a gallery.

And so I've decided that
I was going to go with Tony.

At that time, I already had 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."

So he did. He left and he came back
a day later, super-excited, ran...

"You know, the trucks, the way they
cover a truck with tarpaulin

"so the things, they wouldn't fly
away?" "Yeah."

He said, "Well, what about that?"
I said, "Great."

I ordered a special tarp
that was 13 feet square.

It would fit exactly in between
the two doorways at Shifrazi.

I was working probably obsessively,
constantly every day. Yes.

We covered the floor-to-ceiling
with drawings.

CBS News has asked to do

a little story for the Evening News
with Dan Rather.

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, I mean, it's a fast world.

Everything's organised,
everything fitted together.

And the basement make it all black
light, so all the paintings had

day-glow green and red and it glowed
at night, like psychedelia.

You never saw that before.

When he had his 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,
probably. Yeah.

We weren't there too long. No.

There was every type of person.

People who'd never go to an art
gallery opening, they were there.

We got homies 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. From the south,
I'm a southern painter.

Marvellous. Thank you.

Haring has become a hot property.
They ooh and they ah...

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 a quarter

of a million dollars' worth
of his pieces sold.

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

Literally, it was packed.

CAMERA CLICKS

No-one had ever seen an art opening

in the established art world
like this.

We had break dancers and, of course,
I'm constantly picking up beer

bottles and mess everywhere.

I mean, nonstop. At six in the
morning the music is blasting away,

and they're all drinking, smoking.

And, of course, I see downstairs,

somebody had fallen downstairs,
blood.

Somebody's skull had cracked open.

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.

BELL RINGS

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 this sense of it's OK
to make money.

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

By the way, it wasn't actually that
cool to sell stuff in the '70s.

It was, like, thought
as being a little bit uncool.

There was a generation in the art
world, first of all,

that was supposed to be aloof from
all those things,

and suddenly young folks are diving
in headfirst, 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 bona fide 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 in the whole

sort of graffiti performance aspect

made it possible for this whirlwind
tour now of going

from place to place.

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,
that, you know, this youthful spirit

and energy and the sneakers
and the jeans and the being gay

and hanging out and going to clubs.

Keith Haring is a New Yorker...

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

He really was treated
like he was a rock star.

On a trip that I happened
to go with him on to Japan,

all these stewardesses - oh, pardon
me - flight attendants from

Japan Airlines came chasing him

with roses in their hand, calling
his name.

You know, I mean, go figure.

He didn't do a lot of pre-planning
on his things.

He just did them.

So Keith had music going mostly
all the time.

Juan would make all these great
mixtapes for Keith.

Music was a big, big part of
his life.

A source of inspiration
and a...

I don't know. I mean, when you look
at Keith's work, it moves.

Some time right in this time,

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

I mean, I've never been the same
since.

THUMPING MUSIC, CHEERING

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 only

wearing 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

and a few others,

but it was mostly a black club.

Many people are on
hallucinogenic drugs.

This sort of communal, elevated
spiritual experience.

We smoked pot like cigarettes.

SHRIEKING

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 walk past this wall

almost every day on my way to go
to the studio.

I wasn't proclaiming it, but people
were saying the handbill 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."

He probably spent a couple hours
cleaning all the garbage,

there was just piles of garbage
everywhere.

It was a funky, horrible wall.

It was disgusting piece of garbage.

I remember, "Go there, can you
help?" I was like,

"Oh, yeah, I'll come later to help
you." You know, forget it.

It was the worst crappy thing.

He just got a ladder and paint.

And as Keith did, you don't ask
permission. You just do 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.

That was a real statement,
because he was far enough

along in his career that people
would know who he was.

He had done enough of it

that he had a vocabulary
that he could work with.

I was formally introduced
to this painting here yesterday

when the brother painted it.

We love it, because he all
right with us.

But we gonna drink that wine and

wash some windows and keep right
on painting.

Keep it up and don't interrupt.

Don't stop, chocolate, Kool and The
Gang.

Once Basquiat stopped doing work on
the street, you couldn't see his

work anywhere except either in a
museum or in a gallery.

Keith kept and continued
to make his work accessible

at all times.

I've alienated, I suppose,

some people by my meteoric
rise to fame.

And there is resentment
among other artists that feel

that I have sold out.

There was an article that had
come out that said that I still

hadn't sold anything over $10,000,
and so someone had written

in huge letters across the whole
painting "$9,999."

So it was really, it was too much

to fix up and it was really
too obnoxious.

And so I went and by myself painted
the entire thing silver and
destroyed it.

From painting vacant ad spaces
in subways to being flown

round 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.

MUSIC PLAYS ON STEREO

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 the Aboriginals.

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

the centre 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
in all these sort of poses.

I never felt exploited by Keith.

There was an article in
Rolling Stone magazine talking

about his Bwana Syndrome.

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

You know. He was an innocent.

Coming from, like, a white family
somewhere in Pennsylvania, you don't

grow up in the same horrible

sort of tenement housing that
kids that grew up, you know,

in the Bronx or whatever grew up in.

So when you try to assimilate
into that culture, you may run

into criticism for trying
to glorify it for your own gain,

you know, personal gain.

But, in fact, this was never true.

He was empathetic.

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.

There was nobody that didn't know
who he was.

I mean, he became New York.

The Party Of Life is done for the
occasion of my birthday,

but not on my birthday.

And it became the most coveted
invitation in New York.

May 16th, Paradise Garage, 1984.

And this is one of those
handkerchiefs like the gay boys

like 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,

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 going to celebrate.

It was very pagan and Keith just
embodied that.

We were inviting just really
gorgeous people, 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 at the
Garage was the ultimate highlight.

And I had just painted a jacket
for Madonna.

I've asked her if she'll sing there

and she agrees that she'll
sing there.

SHE SINGS INDISTINCTLY

They didn't take to Madonna.

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

SHE SINGS INDISTINCTLY

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

He said, "Andy says she's going to
be the biggest thing."

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

Well, Andy was right.

The parties got bigger
and more extravagant and wilder

and the invitations remained clever.

Well, this was at the Palladium.

Huge mob scenes outside, I mean,
almost practically closed

the traffic on 14th Street

and people having trouble
getting in.

There was just as big a mob
at the back door.

People passing out outside.

I mean, the whole thing was, again,
an incredible event.

He became very big and he became
very star struck,

cos he was a kid from Kutztown,
Pennsylvania.

I mean, I'm in newspapers all across
America the next day

with Brooke Shields at my party.

Who sings Happy Birthday?
Boy George.

I think he became really into it
really quick.

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.

We were in the kitchen.

And I think it was me, Keith,
Juan and someone else.

And the phone rang and Juan
picked it up

and he went, "Oh, oh, OK. OK"

and he handed it over to Keith and
Keith said, "Who is it?"

And Juan went, "It's Michael."

Keith went, "It's...it's Michael?"

And Juan, "It's Michael."
So he went, "Hi. Hi."

And he sort of got the phone and
he sort of went, "What's up?"

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.

And the conversation goes on for
not very long.

And then he goes, "Oh, my God!"
and it's Kerry ringing him

pretending to be Michael Jackson.

SHE LAUGHS

It's so funny!

So Keith was just absolutely livid
and slammed the phone down.

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 travelling, more notoriety
and more boys around me

all the time, I was already starting

to become less and less true
to Juan, really.

It was hard, cos I was
constantly surrounded by temptation.

And then I meet Juan Rivera.

There are some people who felt that,
you know, once he got famous,

he abandoned them.

He'd get upset when people
didn't come to his parties.

He was like, "What? Brooke Shields
not showing up?"

And I remember my wife
and I would be like,

"Why do you care about
Brooke Shields? We're here."

We kept being friends
the whole time, but however, I mean,

certain things, we cannot take the
Concorde, most people,

every weekend to go to Paris,
you know, so it makes a difference.

You have a different lifestyle,
that's all.

He was not really a fashion plate,
but he started...

He had a tuxedo with cummerbund.

He always looked like he was wearing
his father's clothes.

He was never trying to be something
that he wasn't.

He was amazed that what
he was was around this.

There was something about Andy's
sense of art as a business

that really appealed to Keith
and which, you know, had...

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."

One of the great things
about the image

is that it can be transferred
into any medium.

It doesn't matter whether
the image is reduced

to one inch by one inch,
it'll still hold up.

I mean, it's definitely art for, um,

art for the age of mechanical
reproduction.

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 that the work
was calling for

and that it had to become.

It never made money, lots of
money, never made money.

The Pop Shop never made money?
Never made money.

It lost money. What was the point of
it, then?

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.

I co-founded Spy magazine.

And in the first issue, there was a

two-page essay, Downhill From Here.

Here was Keith Haring at the,

I don't if it was the pinnacle of
his success,

you know, the implication is that
you don't have enough worth,

talent, whatever, to continue this.

You've gone about as far,
and mighty far it is,

on talent that may not be protean.

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 the 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.

Doctors are puzzled by the first
cases of a highly unusual breakdown

of the body's immune system.

You would be with your friend,
vivacious, cherubic 20-year-old,

and then you would not see them
for a couple of 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.

It starts out as a small purple

lesion similar to a bruise
or insect bite.

It's called Kaposi's sarcoma

and it's now on a deadly upsurge
among gay men.

At that point, if you got a bruise,
you thought you had KS.

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

And then there was...there was

..the stigma and, and the shame.

It was so shameful, AIDS, at that
point.

As the rate of new cases rises
sharply, mounting evidence focuses

the search on sexual and
blood transmissions.

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.

It was like this underlying

"When is it going to rear its head
and who is next?"

It's just the way that we had to
live life at that time.

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.

End of the day, I would go home
and as often as not, I would come

back the next day and there

would be, like, four new paintings
and twenty drawings.

I was like, "OK."

He was so prolific that it's just
hard to fathom.

The idea of going down in the subway
and really doing the public stuff

when you obviously didn't
need to was even more important

for me to do it.

The more well-known Keith became,
the more that was demanded of him.

And, you know, when I say that
I often had to say no,

it's usually because he said
yes to everything.

You know, he was drawing a logo for
somebody or there was a show

coming up and he needed to create
some works on paper.

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 then I don't miss any of my
Garage time.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Haring got plenty of publicity.

West German television pictures
of him working

were seen in East Germany.

CAMERA CLICKS

He loved the performative quality of
some of his work,

because he could create in front of
an audience.

He loved people.

He loved children, because they're
innocent, they're pure.

You know, Keith throughout his life

found that openness appealing
about children

and appealing about working with
children.

Don't let your brush sit inside the
cup, cos it can get knocked over.

CityKids brought the teenagers
to the project.

But Keith Haring, an artist known
for his work with graffiti,

brought the inspiration.

It takes quite a lot to organise

a paint job by 1,000 teenagers
from all over New York.

Wow!

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?"

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

"Without her, there'd be no me,

"no you, no liberty. Keyonn."

That was my statement. 1986.

I told you I couldn't draw.

HE LAUGHS

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!"

HE LAUGHS

It's a sight you can't miss
if you live in the neighbourhood

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 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, you know.

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, just major,
major, major museums.

Keith was very hurt that during
the period when he was having a lot

of his one-man shows all
around the world,

that MOMA wasn't interested.

It was, like, falling on deaf ears.

I still haven't had an exhibition

in a museum in the United States
of any kind of substance.

We were like, "What the fuck's
wrong with these American curators?

"How come they don't get it?"

You know, he was combatted
by critics for having a style

that resembled illustration.

You could say he had to think
about what he was illustrating.

You know, all the 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 start
to notice trouble with my breathing.

With inspecting every day and
waiting to see the purple splotch,

I found a spot on my leg.

So I went to a doctor and found out
that it was in fact KS, meaning

that now I fit exactly
the classifications

of actually having AIDS.

Now it was going to happen to me.

And now I had to deal with it.

Well, he had no delusions
that he was going to be cured

or that the disease was
going to change or anything.

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

Most people were a little
more histrionic and he wasn't.

He was very collected
and very accepting,

kind of matter-of-fact in dealing
with it.

And we went over to the side of the
river

and sat and cried and cried
and cried.

But then you can't just, you know,
it's like you have to go on,

you get yourself together, and you
realise

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.

He told us he was HIV positive.

HE SIGHS

And at that time...

..we had gone through this with
a lot of people. Um...

..I mean, a lot.

I guess, in a way, it almost
felt inevitable.

He had Kaposi's and he used to go
to the plastic surgeon, they'd

remove the one from the face and,
you know, the hands.

And he wouldn't go in the water.

And I say, "Oh, come on, let's go.
Who cares?"

"No, I have these things.
No. Let's go."

Then he took the T-shirt off and we

almost fainted, because it's
horrible.

You know, it is very painful.

You have to remember,
it's very painful.

It hurts like shit, you know.

I started having more and more need
to be with intellectual

companionship to deal with the
situation, because it really
required

talking about and trying to figure
out exactly what was going on.

I met this kid, Gil.

Turns out that he's straight,

but we still develop some
kind of bond.

He sort of starts to become my
intellectual companion.

So this photo, I was probably
18 years old.

When I met Keith Haring, you know,
I was introduced to a world

that I did not know existed.

I knew after a while I was the
typical quote, unquote, Keith boy.

For as much as he was attracted
to me,

he never, ever tried to pressure me
in any way.

You know, his... Our relationship
was more brotherly.

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

Um, his mother calls me, 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. It was an open
casket,

but Keith is looking and is saying,
"Well, I'm next.

"Soon it'll be me there," you know.

And I would drive him to chemo
and, uh...

..take him to doctors or hospitals
and stuff in the evenings to

do the things that he could do.

Meanwhile, he's making work and
almost more aggressively than
before.

MUSIC: Nulla In Mundo Pax Sincera
by Antonio Vivaldi

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.

MUSIC CONTINUES

He travelled like crazy.

You could absolutely paper the wall
with the to-do lists that he created

on a daily basis, sometimes
more than one a day.

You know, just a checklist of all
the things he had to accomplish.

And I would imagine that 99%
of those things were done.

You know, once he got the diagnosis,

he pretty much put himself
out there.

He used his art to create attention
and awareness.

CHANTED: Racist, sexist, anti-gay!

John O'Connor go away!

Racist, sexist, anti-gay!

John O'Connor 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...you can't

money to get your NCT or to get
whatever you have,

you know, people just give up.

When we discuss a huge action
that would cost a lot of money,

we get all excited about it,
but we don't worry, you know,

"How are going to pay
for this thing?"

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.

"Um, could you stop by my studio?

"Um, 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 it would be... It was, almost
invariably,

it was always $10,000.

I mean, 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 the future as it comes to you
and as it's doled out to you.

You know, he 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 was 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, the...

..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's starting to pour in from
this Rolling Stone article

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.

One of Keith's dear friends

who lived in Kutztown still

was having his child baptised soon
after Keith's article

came out in Rolling Stone.

There were people who refused
to come to church that day

because Keith was there
and they knew he had HIV.

The celebrity invites dried up
immediately.

It seemed overnight he...even
remember him mentioning it once,

that he... Just that the invitations
just stopped.

He wasn't invited any more.

It was hard to watch how he kind
of learnt

that the vapidity of just celebrity
for celebrity world.

I mean, there was some in the back
of his mind, kind of like,

"You know, I'm sick, I don't know

"how long I'll be able to
keep this up,"

but there was never any gloom.

He was working and he was joyful
that he could work.

And it was...it was joy.

Then I do a mural called
Once Upon a Time... Oh, yes.

..which is inside the bathrooms of
the

Lesbian And Gay Community Center
on 13th Street.

Wow.

I haven't seen this in 30 years.

He didn't very often title things.

He wanted to just bring home

the message that, you know, once
upon a time it was not

a death threat to engage in this
kind of behaviour.

HE CHUCKLES

I don't know, it doesn't have a
feeling of warning.

And there's nothing in this mural
about being sick.

I remember Keith kind of being,
like, cheeky, kind of like,

you know, being mischievous, wanting
to see what my reaction would be.

It's basically a love letter
from a gay man to other gay men

reminding us
of more innocent times in our lives.

MUSIC: Everybody Dance
by Chic

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 maybe ate

"healthy, had some of this
carrot juice

"instead of doing a line of coke."

And he'd be like, "Fuck that."

You know, "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've 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.

I do solemnly swear and promise
that I will faithfully perform

the duties to the best
of my abilities, so help me God.

Congratulations, Mr Mayor.

WHOOPING AND CHEERING

Keith, in January of 1990, attended
the inauguration of Mayor Dinkins,

um, 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.

He had such a wonderful group of
very close friends who were coming

in and out of that apartment.

You know, it was like
Grand Central Station some days.

He wasn't in there going,
"Oh, my God, this... My life sucks."

It was almost like he was loving
everyone.

There was, like, so much...

Ah, fuck!

He really loved his friends and all
the people that were around him.

And he really felt...

I think he really appreciated
that we were all so there for him.

So Kenny gave him a pad and a pen

and Keith tried to do the baby.

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, his kidneys are
failing and that means

that there's not much time.

And my parents got into bed
with him

and held him for the hours until
he died.

These are some of Keith's designs
with...

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 three million two,
three million five,

three million 800,000 already.

At three million 800,000...

Four million, at $4 million.

Looking for four two, four million
and two.

Four million five.
Four seven, I'll take.

At four million seven and selling.

At four million and 700,000.

All done.

GAVEL THUDS

MUSIC: Saturday
by Norma Jean Wright