Keith Haring Untitled (with Sean Kalish) Portfolio For Sale

Untitled is a portfolio of eleven etchings created in collaboration with then ten year old child, Sean Kalish. The works on paper are a rare example of Haring’s collaboration with children in printmaking. Haring was a social activist with the aim of democratising art, and had made many public murals with schoolchildren – but this suite is a very personal instance of the artist creating a suite of works with an individual young person. 

Sean Kalish was six years old when he met Keith, and he was a frequent visitor to Haring’s Pop Shop. He was ten years old when they worked on the portfolio, and he said fondly of the artist: ‘When I was doing etchings with Keith, he let me draw anything I wanted to, and he made me feel that my drawings were very special’. As Haring was well known for his exuberant, cartoon style of drawing, it is unsurprising that he enjoyed the actual drawings by children, uncorrupted by notions of ‘high’ art. In this suite Haring’s line is indistinguishable from Kalish’s, and an array of human and non-human shapes appear in imaginative, nonsensical scenes.  

Although Haring and Kalish’s style is inevitably childlike, the suite simultaneously deals with adult themes: a naked, defaced Pope appears in plate seven, and a demon-like figures appear in plate two. This morbid sensibility is in line with other portfolios produced by Haring at this time such as Apocalypse (a hellish imagining of the end of the world), but also points to the idea that the artist did not censor his political or concerns even when working with children. For Haring the malevolent forces in society are most effectively expressed and recognised when they are presented in a way that is visually simplistic and readable. The collaboration with a young artist such as Kalish can be seen as a building upon of Haring’s beginnings as a street artist, where he aimed to reach a mass audience. 

Haring mused: ‘Children know something that most people have forgotten.’