I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.
Interpretation
Art should inspire and free the spirit rather than serve as a tool for manipulation.
In this quote, Keith Haring expresses his belief that art should be a medium of liberation and creativity, sparking imagination and personal growth. Instead of being used as a vehicle for propaganda or control, art should celebrate the essence of humanity, encouraging individuals to explore and push beyond their boundaries.
In practice
This quote can be used at an art exhibition to highlight the role of art in personal expression.
I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.
The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life.
When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about.
Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.
I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that.
My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.
Perhaps it is no surprise I became an entertainer because many of my relatives were natural performers. Dad, who had a fine pair of lungs, was master of ceremonies at East Ham working men's club in east London. I felt so proud when I saw him in his white gloves calling out the names of the dances.
I spent my life folded between the pages of books._x000D_ In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
I can hold a cup of sake on a full moon in Japan, and the reflection of the moon in that little cup can make me feel so enthusiastic about beauty. That one good, magical moment can give me enough to create other things like the teardrop earring or necklace.
How many shows on TV do you see young black people, both women and men, really embody a full-fledged human being, flaws and all?
There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.
People really feel like music is free but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap, and it's good water. But they're OK paying for it.
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