{"id":1572,"date":"2026-01-30T23:11:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T23:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2026-02-02T15:15:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T15:15:29","slug":"art-aint-dead-you-are-an-analysis-of-how-capitalism-has-warped-keith-harings-artistic-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/18\/art-aint-dead-you-are-an-analysis-of-how-capitalism-has-warped-keith-harings-artistic-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"ART AIN\u2019T DEAD, YOU ARE! An Analysis of how Capitalism has Warped Keith Haring\u2019s Artistic Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Spiral Weber<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>From the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This paper was written for the final of my WRT181H course in fall of 2024. The assignment was to choose a figure or group of associated figures from history and analyze their rhetoric. It took me entirely too long to figure out who I wanted to write or even think about. When your frame of study is all of recorded history, you&#8217;ve got quite a lot to choose from. What eventually pushed me in the direction of Keith Haring was the rediscovery of the tweet I mention in the paper \u2014 a person who used generative AI to complete the intentionally left incomplete final piece Haring made. The piece, simply titled &#8220;Unfinished Painting&#8221;, was left as such because he died of HIV\/AIDS while making it. It is often cited in the same breath as &#8220;Untitled&#8221; by F\u00e9lix Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres or &#8220;Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers)&#8221; by John S. Boskovich, both of which exist as commentaries on HIV\/AIDS-related death. For me, the decision to use genAI to complete Haring&#8217;s piece was incredibly disrespectful and showed a clear lack of understanding of the reason why he made it in the first place. Moreover, most of Haring&#8217;s art that has been profited off of post-mortem has been his less political pieces, which I thought was fascinating given how active he was for anti-apartheid, protesting the AIDS crisis, and other highly political movements. As an artist surrounded by other artists in a world increasingly defined by profit, I think this paper is a necessary look into the way that has been reflected throughout history.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/files\/2026\/01\/FIN_FYC001_25_FIN.pdf\">ART AIN\u2019T DEAD, YOU ARE! An Analysis of how Capitalism has Warped Keith Haring\u2019s Artistic Rhetoric (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Copyrights of all Verge articles and editorial material belong to the authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8230;it\u2019s nearly impossible to make a living as an artist in the modern world unless you receive outside funding or become ridiculously famous. People don\u2019t want to buy an intricately crocheted dress if it\u2019s more than a hundred dollars \u2013 even if that\u2019s exactly what it\u2019s worth. Artists today and throughout history must fight tooth and nail to preserve their spirit while interacting with late-stage capitalism.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-54552"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/verge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}