=An Alphabet of My Creative Icons=

He was born on May 4th, 1958. In Pennsylvania. He grew up in Kutztown, a heck of a place for a future artist to be born. I’ll get the tragic out of the way straight off. He died on February 16,1990 of what we heard all-too-often back in the 90s: AIDS-related complications. He was only 31.

His father was an amateur cartoonist.

Haring said: I’ve always wanted to work for Walt Disney. That’s what I thought I was going to do when I grew up.

He went to school to study commercial art but couldn’t get into it. Ironic, as commercialism eventually became such a large part of his fine art—in an ironic way. So he moved to New York City to study painting. But he couldn’t get interested in art within an academic environment either.

So he began painting in the NYC subway system. Finally he hit upon what interested him. It had taken him two years, though, to figure it out.

He befriended Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna before they were famous. He befriended the already long-famous Andy Warhol.

Haring said: Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

He opened the Pop Shops, theme stores that marketed his work like, say, a Pier One Imports or an IKEA might, if they sold art like home furnishings.

Haring said: Nothing is important…so everything is important.

Three years before his death Haring, suspecting he might already be infected with the HIV virus, wrote: I don't know if I have five months or five years, but I know my days are numbered. This is why my activities and projects are so important now. To do as much as possible as quickly as possible.

This intimation of impending death spurred an intense flurry of artistic activity that has made his visual imagery one of the most recognizable in the world.

He has now already been dead for a quarter century.

Haring said: When I die there is nobody to take my place.

That, incidentally, is the way everyone should live.

Few do. 

Most of us lack the guts to do more than follow the tail swishing in front of us. Which is the surefire mark of having no guts at all.