'His brilliance is in danger of being diluted': Has pop art icon Keith Haring been 'sanitised'?

From shop rails to gallery walls, the late New York artist's distinctive humanoid figures are ubiquitous these days – but some worry his work's real meaning is being lost.

Thirty-six years after his death, Keith Haring's kinetic pop art is arguably more popular than ever. His distinctive and dynamic drawings of colourful humanoid figures adorn T-shirts and hoodies that are widely available at high street stores like H&M and Uniqlo. DJ and electronic musician Honey Dijon, who collaborated with the artist's estate on a 2022 fashion line that printed Haring's uplifting illustrations on ponchos and jumpsuits, has described his work as "hieroglyphics of the soul".

Haring's creations have proved so malleable that his iconic dancing figures have even been turned into a 3D Lego set. All of these brand collaborations fill the coffers of the Keith Haring Foundation, which in 2024 distributed more than $5.7m (£4.3m) in charitable grants.

Established by Haring in 1989, a year before he died of complications from Aids, the foundation supports organisations that help children as well as those involved in HIV/Aids education, prevention and care. The brand collaborations it brokers don't just raise money for charity, but also make Haring's work accessible – something very much in keeping with his famous credo that "art is for everybody".

However, some of the brands that pay for Haring's creativity and cultural cachet take a rather selective approach to honouring his legacy. In 2022, jewellery manufacturer Pandora was criticised for failing to mention Haring's sexuality and HIV/Aids activism in the messaging for a collection of charms, necklaces and rings using his designs. It simply described them as "inspired by [his] pioneering principles of inclusivity and diversity".

That year, the foundation's then-executive director Gil Vazquez acknowledged to The Guardian that "we are often accused of not highlighting Keith's fight against HIV in our licensing programme". Yet in the same email, Vasquez maintained that "we don't think it is fair to force a brand to tell a story that doesn't make sense for them". The BBC has approached the foundation's current executive director Simon Castets for comment.

Haring is hardly the only late artist whose legacy has been embraced by brands in a way that some commentators view as crass commodification. Similar quibbles surround Jean-Michel Basquiat, his friend and contemporary in 1980s New York, whose street art has also been turned into an H&M collection, and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whose early 20th-Century folk art now decorates everything from a makeup range to a moka coffee pot. All these cases raise a debate about whether artists can become too commercialised to the detriment of their art's meaning.

The layers of his work

Despite some critiques of the way his work is licensed, Haring's stock as a serious artist has arguably never been higher. Last week, an exhibition dedicated to his formative years in early 1980s New York opened at The Brant Foundation in Manhattan. Now this week, an entirely separate exhibition featuring Haring's highly influential subway drawings is opening at the Moco Museum in London. Titled Voice of the Street, it features some of the thousands of graffiti illustrations that Haring drew with chalk on blacked-out advertising panels in New York subway stations between 1980 and 1985.

"Where other people saw the emptiness of a blacked-out space, he saw a real opportunity," Kim Logchies Prins, the founder and curator of Moco Museum, tells the BBC. "His mission was to break down barriers so that art wasn't only available in high-end galleries; he was literally giving it to people on their way to work." Indeed, Haring only stopped making his subway drawings when people began stealing them to sell to collectors.

Haring's subway........

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