Keith Haring Chocolate Buddha 1-5 (Portfolio) For Sale

Chocolate Buddha is a portfolio of five lithographs created by the artist in 1989. Each example in the suite is a self-contained mosaic, rendered in brown (‘chocolate’) lines against a different colour background. Executed in the penultimate year before Haring’s untimely death, the portfolio is a departure from the artist’s more figurative, cartoon-like style and embraces Neo-expressionism with a spiritual slant. 

Following the suggestion of its title, Chocolate Buddha takes inspiration from Eastern religion in its patterns. Whilst not directly representing Buddhist symbols, Haring captures the essence of Zen Buddhism in his fluid, spontaneous style. In plate one, the juxtaposition of straight lines and curves form a barely human figure with an arm. Haring’s line is primarily about creation itself, a view mirrored in the zen approach to art which is 'the work of art-that emphasis on being on the spot.. Life, art making, process and environment combined’. 

In plate two, Haring converts some of his most known motifs, the Haring heart and his matchstick men, into geometric forms that interlink. Haring’s makeshift human-shape resembles the Buddhist endless knot, or infinity knot, traditionally represents the Buddha’s mind and the thought that everything is interconnected. As in the previous example, we see Haring's shared values with Buddhism thought and iconography: in his subway drawings and in Pop Shop prints, interconnectedness is a key theme, shown by his figures always interacting, playing and dancing together. Ever the humanist and empath, Haring stated ‘art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people’. 

 The third plate is notable for combining the spiritual with the sexual: Haring’s devil-sperm motif, seen in his famous Apocolypse portfolio a year earlier, is drawn in abstract form. The devil sperm is interpreted as a metaphor for AIDs, the sexually transmitted virus which the artist was diagnosed with a year earlier. Unafraid to draw attention to the taboo subject, the artist’s inclusion of it in the Chocolate Buddha points to the artist’s contemplation of sex as a natural part of life.  

Plate four further builds upon the theme of life and death, sex and spiritualism, as phallic imagery is featured alongside embroyos. Haring highlights the tragic nature of AIDs: that sexual fluid that creates life is something that can ultimately take it away. Though Buddhist teaching advocates the suppression of sexual desire, the artist borrows Buddhist iconography to suggest the opposite.  

In the fifth and final plate of the suite, an intricate coiling of arms, or possibly crosses (Haring leaves this deliberately ambigous and morphic) again recalls Buddhist smybols such as the Dharma Wheel. Haring is at his most visually explorative and curious.  

Though the artist was raised a Christian and is widely known for his use of Christian imagery (the crucifixion in particular), Chocolate Buddha is a fine example of the breadth of Haring’s artistic and intellectual influences. His fellow friends and artists, such as Jean-Michel Basqiuat, were also inspired by Buddhism: in Bird as Buddha (1984) depicts the jazz musician Charlie Parker as the Guatama Buddha. It is clear that the streets of Downtown New York were a melting pot of cultural references.