Art in Transit – by Keith Haring (pg 66-67) Reading Comprehension Questions HW

1. Who taught Haring how to draw?

a. his mother
b. his father
c. his older sister
d. his teacher
2. What happened to Keith Haring’s art when he turned eighteen?
a. it became less cartoon-like and more abstract and concerned with spontaneous
action
b. it became more cartoon-like
c. it became concerned with political issues
d. it focused on animals
3. he became interested in eastern:
a. philosophy
b. design
c. calligraphy and the art of gesture
d. traditions
4. How old was he when he moved to NYC?
a. 15
b. 18
c. 19
d. 20
5. What attracted him to NYC?
a. the amount of media
b. different people living and working together in harmony
c. the amount of museums
d. the way people communicated with each other
6. He said he arrived at a time in New York when the most beautiful paintings were being
shown ___________________
a. in bars
b. at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts
c. at the Museum of Modern Art
d. in the subway
7. During his transitional time, his first two years in New York City, what was one thing he
became interested in?
a. semiotics
b. Greek mythology
c. hermeneutics
d. abstraction
8. How does art gain power, according to Haring?
a. through subjugation
b. through imagination, invention, and confrontation
c. through gallery representation
 d. through subversion
9. What would he do while waiting for a train?
a. draw in his moleskin sketchbook
b. draw on people’s shoes
c. draw on a black panel where an advertisement used to be
d. write down quotes he heard people say
10. When he writes, “the number of people passing one of these drawings in a week was
phenomenal, what does he mean?
a. that people were from another time
b. that he couldn’t see them
c. that they were nice to him
d. that there was a large number of people
11. What caused him to constantly keep inventing new images and ideas?
a. how often the advertisements would be posted on top of his drawings
b. how easy it was to ignore it
c. how quickly people spit on it
d. how soon before the police intervened
12. He said the symbols he would use came from our…..
a. African conflict
b. current events and popular culture
c. history
d. NASA problems
13. What were the drawings designed to do?
a. stimulate protest
b. complain about the president Ronald Reagan
c. provoke people to think and use their own imagination
d. challenge authority
14. Why did he do the drawings quickly and simply?
a. to avoid getting arrested
b. to maintain his style
c. to escape from other graffiti artists
d. to show how art can be made in a quick moment
15. What was the worst thing that happened to Haring in the subway?
a. he was handcuffed and taken to the police department
b. he was thrown in front of a train
c. he was made to erase all his work
d. he was expelled from school
16. Why is the subway his favorite place to draw?
a. because he can see a variety of people and through their faces can read
expressions of hope and beauty, despite the challenges of oppression and
struggle
b. because he doesn’t have to pay for wall space
c. because he enjoys seeing people relaxing before and after work
d. because he understands the phenomenon of work
Post-Reading Comprehension questions:

1. What causes you to come up with new ideas?

2. Haring said art gains power through imagination, invention and confrontation. Would
you add anything to that list? If yes, what?
3. What’s your opinion of street art?