Keith Haring Fight Aids Worldwide For Sale

Fight Aids Worldwide is a lithograph created by the artist in 1990 from an dition of 1000. The work directly deals with the subject of AIDs, which the artist had been diagnosed with a year earlier. At this late stage in career, Haring devoted his artistic output to explicitly dealing with raising awareness for the epidemic which had caused thousands of deaths. Though he had always been a socially and politically vocal artist, in these years he arguably reached the height of his activism.

The picture depicts a human mound in which a large mass of people are piled on top of another larger figure, who is crushed by the weight of the bodies. It is a simple but nonetheless impactful image representing the large number of anonymous victims lost to the AIDs epidemic. In 1983, more than three thousand people had died from the virus, but President Reagan did not address the issue publicly until 1985. By 1990, AIDs cases had creased exponentially: over forty thousand cases were reported, accounting for one fourth of all cases reported between a nine year period. Haring’s growing frustration with the lack of political recognition and help for victims is felt in full force in this work.  The artist was also directly affected by the disease even before his own diagnosis, stating that his friends were 'dropping like flies.' The black, white and red colours, as well as the simplicity of the picture, condenses the message down to its boldest, most easily readable form.