Artist
Keith Haring
American artist and activist (1958–1990)
Keith Haring drew a language rather than a style. The radiant baby, the barking dog, the dancing figure and the winged angel were set down in a single continuous line, fast enough to be made in a subway station between trains and clear enough to be read by anyone walking past.
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1958, he moved to New York in 1978 and made his first public work in the chalk drawings of the subway system. Within five years he was showing internationally, and by the mid-eighties he had opened the Pop Shop so that the work could be owned by the people who had first seen it underground.
The 1986 Andy Mouse suite is his most direct statement about the art market itself: Andy Warhol reimagined with Mickey Mouse ears, swimming in dollar bills — homage and satire in the same four screenprints.
Fertility Suite, made in 1983, turns the same line towards activism. Ankh crosses, glowing pregnant figures and dancing bodies were his response to a health crisis largely ignored by the press of the time. Icons, completed in 1990 in the final months of his life, isolates five of his best-known symbols in flat, saturated colour.
Haring died of AIDS-related complications in February 1990, aged thirty-one. Causon Daniels sources signed prints from all three series through its network. Provenance, edition and condition details are confirmed on enquiry; price on application.
