I found my missing passion at a Toronto museum last year. 

It made itself known to me while I was roaming around a visiting Keith Haring exhibit. 

I have always been curious about the work of Keith Haring.  He had been an facet of pop culture during the 1980's, the decade where I spent my adolescence. When everything else at that time was oversized and neon-colored, Haring's work offered a simplicity that stood out.  Back then I was too young to really understand what motivated Haring.  But as I stood in the museum in Toronto, I could feel this life-affirming energy come flying off the canvases.  Now I think I have a better idea of what he was about. 
  
When I look at a Keith Haring creation, for one moment, I am convinced that life,  when taken in small doses, could be actually be something worthwhile.

 "One of the things about Haring's work is that it adapts itself so well to many different places in media," says Paul Kaiser, one of the people behind the Keith Haring web site.  "It works as a canvas on a museum.  It works on a wall in Harlem.  It works on a button.  It worked on MTV during his lifetime, and now it works on the Internet." 

Kaiser, a partner and digital artist at a company called Riverbed, first began working with the Haring estate three years ago to create a CD-ROM prototype.  A web site dedicated to Haring emerged from their vision. 
  

I first heard about the Keith Haring web site while I was reading a book and listening to Headline News.  They previewed the site and I went to it immediately.  Upon arriving, I found this quote from Haring: 

"I like the idea that my art could be on a floppy disk and you could send the floppy disk back and forth or even send the information by telephone..." 

Says Kaiser, "That quote comes from one of the last interviews he gave which was with Mac Weekly Magazine.  It was an unusual place for him to be talking, but it showed how he was always looking towards the new media and he died before he could do anything but a few small animations." 
  
Kaiser admits that while they are carrying on Haring's artistic aspirations, they are doing it conservatively. They are being true to his art form without altering it or doing any creative manipulations that Haring might have done himself. 

On the site one can find an exhibit of Haring's work, a bio, connections to his New York store  "The Pop Shop", and message forums.  Since the site first began visitors have been able to post messages ranging from their first Haring experience to general feedback about the site. Paul Kaiser tells of plans to archive messages which he has observed to be both "very personal and quite perceptive". 

They have also created a downloadable software program that, once executed, takes the viewer through a Haring sculpture garden in 3-D. 

There seemed to be two things that were important to Keith Haring: giving art to the masses and bringing art to children.  With the web site his purposes continue.  Both learning program for children and more shows and exhibits will be brought to the site in the future.  It's a place that Kaiser promises will eventually be more interactive and more lively. 

"The web site exists because the Haring Foundation realized that this is where Keith Haring wanted to be." 

Visit the Keith Haring web site.  
  
Copyright © 1998 by Wendy Wallace