CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/5/2023

Keith Haring's art really is for everybody

“The public needs art,” Keith Haring wrote in his journals, “and it is the responsibility of a ‘self-proclaimed artist’ to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses. Art is for everybody.” Untitled (1982) is reproduced from Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody, published by DelMonico Books and The Broad, where the critically acclaimed exhibition will be on view until October 2023. A must-have for any contemporary art bookshelf, this 256-page, 11x11-inch hardcover combines a generous, career-spanning plate section with a wealth of archival materials and documentary photographs, a contextualizing illustrated timeline and a rich blend of essays and reflections by those who knew him well. “An artist is a spokesperson for a society at any given point in history,” Haring is quoted in the timeline. “His language is determined by his perception of the world we all live in. He is a medium between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be.’ If an artist is really honest to himself and his culture he lets the culture speak through him and imposes his own ego as little as possible.”