1. What is the name of this work?
Silence Equals Death
2. What is the artist’s name?
Keith Haring
3. When was it created?
1989
4. What is the medium?
Keith Haring was an openly gay artist and social activist who emerged on the New York art scene in the early 1980’s. His colorful cartoon caricatures, featuring his signature slick figures,
associated him with ‘neo-pop art’ an important retro movement that came out of lively underground culture in the East Village.
Gay art came of age in the late 1980’s. In 1987 a group of gay and lesbian artist and critics founded ACT-UN New York (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Haring, who until this time had avoided his
gay identity in his art, stepped forward to be counted. One of his most moving works of art is a screen print he made in 1989 for an ACT-UP fundraiser. Its title, Silence=Death, was the
organizations motto. On a square black field, dozens of intermingled figures-outlined in silver-sob and grieve. Over this image, Haring centered a large pink triangle the Nazi concentration camp
badge that identified homosexual prisoners. Haring’s poster- like print was a defiant and elegiac protest against indifference.
In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDS. He died two years later.
5. Learn some facts about the artist – where did s/he come from?
6. Where when was this artist born and is s/he still living?
7. Where did s/he learn their art techniques?
8. What were the influences on this artist? (this will take some additional research)
9. Why and how did you select this work of art?
10. What is going on in this piece?
11. What do you see that makes you describe it in that way?
12. What else do you see in the piece?
13. What could be another interpretation of this piece?
14. How would you describe this piece to another person?
15. How does this piece inform your knowledge of contemporary cultures in the US?