Radiant Baby, 1990
by Keith Haring

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a point of reference. the Radiant Baby was actually born sometime around 1981, but i combed through my Haring books, and amazingly, this was the only decently scannable image of it that i could find. it's from the Icons set that was produced posthumously.

it was pretty startling to go through my Haring books and find only 1 decent Radiant Baby. but sure, of course. for a time, that image was so ubiquitous that yeah: who would want to see it in a Haring book? it was Absolutely Everywhere: the street, the museum, and bootlegged Japanese t-shirts.

to me the Radiant Baby will always be yellow, but i didn't want to recolor the scan using my computer. i think Keith H must have drawn them in pretty much every color he ever used. it remains his major symbol, and it was the second tag he originated after the laughing/dancing dog dude.

talking about the Radiant Baby in his official biography, Keith H says it started out as a cartoon drawing of 'a person down on their hands and knees' and it developed into a baby. to do Radiant Baby 2006, i basically thought: Radiant Baby's about 25 now, so what does s/he look like?

for me, probably Radiant Baby is a he, and he's living in New York still, and in fact, he's back on the streets again because the Pop Shop has closed. he's thinking about all the countries he hasn't visited yet, and he's wondering if he'll ever get there. at the moment, he's a little bit desperate, and he's doing something naughty for money. if you ask him to pick a number any number, he will pick the number 5. he trusts in the lines around him; he always has and he always will. he thinks about the subway like it's one enormous cock.