Ask students: What could these Haring Symbols mean? Share your best ones. Barking Dog X man Pyramid Radiating Baby Angel Robot UFO Monster Television
While watching the flash movie, be looking for two things: Who/What were Keith Haring’s artistic influences? Haring said his symbols changed meaning based on what other symbols he used (the context). What do you think these compositions mean?
How does Keith Haring use line? [outlines, contour, active, motion/energetic, etc.]
What is a symbol?
After drawing, write on back what it means. Gallery walk? Share good ones.
"I was taking the trains often to go to museums and galleries or to wherever I was going. I was always taking the trains and I was starting to see not only the big paintings on the outsides of cars but the incredible calligraphy, or signatures, which were covering the insides of cars." --Haring, from interviews by John Gruen
"Which [the grafitti on the trains] for me were very similar to the whole interest that I had had in calligraphy, not only eastern calligraphy because of the Japanese and Chinese connection, the whole eastern philosophy connection, but really very similar to the kinds of lines and the kind of stream of consciousness mind-to-hand flow which I saw in Dubuffet, Mark Tobey, and Alechinsky. The forms seemed very similar in a way to the kinds of drawings I was doing." --Haring, from interviews by John Gruen
Pierre Alechinsky; Jean Dubiffet; Mark Tobey "Even though I wasn't making letters specifically, they had the same kind of voluminous things and aggressively fluid lines which were obviously done very directly with very little preconceived plan or hesitation; just direct and really strong." --Haring, from interviews by John Gruen
"I was taking the trains often to go to museums and galleries or to wherever I was going. I was always taking the trains and I was starting to see not only the big paintings on the outsides of cars but the incredible calligraphy, or signatures, which were covering the insides of cars." --Haring, from interviews by John Gruen
The Chinese Language uses over 3,000 characters. Each Character represents a different whole word.
Ancient Chinese characters for HORSE & FISH. Like the Ancient Egyptians, Ancient China used a language based on pictures to represent words and ideas. Here are two examples.
Over the years, the Ancient Chinese pictograms evolved into the modern characters of the Chinese language of today.
Each Character is written using calligraphic lines.
