Keith Haring
Keith Haring, the street artist who famously declared that "art is for everybody" started designing posters in 1982, while he was still a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. That same year, he made his Soho gallery debut with an immensely popular solo exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. In April 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop, a retail store in Soho selling T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons, and magnets bearing his images, as well as some of his contemporaries such as Kenny Scharf and Jean-Micheal Basquiat. Haring painted the entire interior of the store in an abstract black on white mural, creating a striking and unique retail environment. "Here's the philosophy behind the Pop Shop: I wanted to continue the same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people, and I wanted it to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx. The main point was that we didn't want to produce things that would cheapen the art. In other words, this was still an art statement." Haring later opened a Pop Shop in Tokyo in 1987 for a year before closing it, and the NYC pop shop location closed in September of 2005. The context and history of the Pop Shop was explored in Haring's 2006 Exhibition titled Art and Commerce. Then in 2009, as part of the group exhibition Pop Life, the Tate Modern reconstructed aspects of the NYC Pop Shop to recreate the feeling of the original. Haring’s Pop Shop merchandise directly paved the way for artists like Murakami and KAWS, both of whom have enjoyed success in both high and low art. Murakami with his Kaikai Kiki Flowers and KAWS with his Companion figures.