Its Most Famous Icon (Radiant Baby) – Keith Haring

The famous American artist Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an unorthodox social worker and artist. Their ingenious designs carried the essence of harsh reality, thus creating a niche for themselves. Keith’s art became part of popular youth culture. His revolutionary art became a fashion that crossed the formal limits to reach the streets of New York, through graffiti, cartoons, sculpture and other forms of visual art. His most outstanding works have not been independent pieces, but caricatured icons that became recurring means to portray them in his works. The most popular of these icons were “The Radiant Baby”, “The Barking Dog” and “Andy Mouse”.

Of these, “The Radiant Baby” brought Keith Haring to the limelight as the pioneering ‘modernist’ artist of the masses, who established his identity even among average people. Haring’s affinity for babies was likely an influence from his upbringing in a large family, he being the eldest of his siblings. “The Radiant Baby” is often said to be his self-portrait, though Keith repeatedly denied it. “The Radiant Baby” began in the early 1980s, with a bold sketch of a crawling baby, with rays of glow all around. Like most of his works, these sketches were simple outlines, rather than an elaborate artistic delineation of human anatomy.

The “Radiant Baby” first found its place in the New York subway, as graffiti on the walls and later, in Haring’s series of works on the other types of media. This baby was not simply a representation of a helpless human child. Instead, he was an embodiment of innocence, freedom from human vices, youth, energy, magic, and power, the traits of which were featured in Haring’s deepest images, without him being an “active” participant in the scene. The baby appeared in various natural and unnatural themes, including fertility, spirituality, sexual liberation, social ills, and the supernatural (such as UFOs). In one of his works against nuclear proliferation, Haring has represented the baby in the middle of thick smoke and angels, on the images of two people at war. Despite its high complexity, this sketch conveyed his message in no uncertain terms, which was a trademark quality throughout his art. In his ‘happiest performances’, “The Radiant Baby” was the focal point in themes covering festival greetings, celebrations, health and radiance. In fact, this symbol, with all its modified forms, appeared in almost every genre of themes that Haring took up.

In the 1980s, Keith came up with a groundbreaking idea to popularize “The Radiant Baby” via buttons, which he would hand out to passersby and onlookers on the subway, in lieu of his “business cards.” Although Haring described the “Radiant Baby” buttons as a keepsake for his fans, it was understood by the public as his profitable advertising tool, referred to as the “logo.” However, the influence of “The Radiant Baby” cannot be ignored as a mere marketing gimmick, as it remained throughout Haring’s artistic journey in all his pursuits, expressions, and pursuit of social good.