Art Is Life!: The Life of Artist Keith Haring by Tami Lewis Brown (review)

Aspiring teen artist Keith Haring attended a presentation on Christo’s miles of fabric wall and determined, “The public needs art.” This wasn’t merely a comment on Christo’s innovative work but on the reaction of the audience as they warmed to a startling new idea. Brown’s picture book biography, which hits most of the same highlights and milestones as Kay A. Haring’s Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing (BCCB 2/17), emphasizes the “public” in public art, keeping a steady focus on how audiences reacted to Haring’s work—with bafflement, with legal action, with an adoring embrace of his commercialized Pop Shop output. Negley backs up the text with a slick trick of his own—floating clouds of multicolored runelike figures over Haring’s head as he ponders and brainstorms his designs, and then floating those same clouds over select viewers as they’re hit with a spark of . . . what? Amazement? Amusement? Comprehension? Imagination? Readers will enjoy watching the watchers, from the kid admiring a bird while perched himself on a massive Haring sculpture, to gallery visitors barely cognizant of the trendy works they’ve ostensibly come to see. Author and illustrator notes provide additional biographical details and thoughts on the illustrator’s rights-limited challenge of how to “showcase someone’s art without actually showing their art.” Lists of adult and kid-friendly resources are also included.