Keith Haring

Haring’s idiosyncratic and colourful matchstick figures belong to a strongly interactive world in every Pop Shop example, whether it be alongside dolphins and angels (Pop Shop Quad IV) or whether they dance together (Pop Shop I). In this quad, they socialise and play with a radio or computer: in box one, a red figure pulls their friend outside of the radio itself. In box two, three people cover their eyes and appear to be shocked. In plate three, human figures morph into a pair of scissors that cut a cord, and in the last plate a yellow person appears to be trying to fix the piece of technology. Movement is strongly felt throughout the pictures, complimented by Haring’s line: bracketed lines signify energy, and his persons are always in different positions, against different coloured backgrounds.

From the start of his career, Haring believed that art should communicate to a mass audience. After moving to New York in 1978, he enrolled at the School of Visual arts and became immersed in the East Village scene. His artistic and social circle was wide and diverse; he was friends with the likes of Jean-Michel Basqiuat, AndyWarhol and Madonna, graffiti artists and young students from the Bronx. It quickly became apparent that Haring desired an artistic career outside of the elite art institutions. Inspired by the graffiti artists, one day he saw the blank advertising boards of the subway: ‘I immediately realised that this was the perfect place to draw’. With only white chalk, Haring famously began what would become known as his Subway Drawings, the beginnings of an iconography which are seen in their mature, printmaking form here.