Art and Merchandise in Keith Haring's Pop Shop

<p>As one of the first academic monographs on Keith Haring this book uses the Pop Shop a previously overlooked enterprise and artist merchandising as tools to reconsider the significance and legacy of Haring's career as a whole.</p><p>Haring developed an alternative approach to both the marketing and the social efficacy of art: he controlled the sales and distribution of his merchandise while also promulgating his belief in accessibility and community activism. He proved that mass-produced objects can be used strategically to form a community and create social change. Furthermore looking beyond the 1980s into the 1990s and 2000s Haring and his shop prefigured artists' emerging self-aware involvement with the mass media and the art world's growing dependence on marketing and commercialism. </p><p>The book will be of interest to scholars or students studying art history consumer culture cultural studies media studies or market studies as well as anyone with a curiosity about Haring and his work the 1980s art scene in New York the East Village street art art activism and art merchandising.</p>