Keith Haring The Fertility Suite (Portfolio) For Sale

Untitled 1-5 is a portfolio of five screenprints executed by the artist in 1983. Known as the Fertility Suite series, it explores the epidemic of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. The sheer vibrance and magnitude of each print reframe an important, complex issue which at the time of the work’s creation, received little attention due to stigma. Fertility Suite is therefore a seminal portfolio of Haring's, securing his reputation as a social and political activist. 

In the Fertility Suite, Haring’s usually featureless matchstick figures all have protruding, pregnant bellies. They pray and dance in a ritualistic manner: in plate one, four women wave their arms towards a baby floating in the sky. The crawling baby with beams of light, referred to as Haring’s ‘Radiant Baby’, is regarded as something of a signature seen throughout the artist’s work: ‘It is the purest and most positive form of human existence. Children are the bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form.’ However, distinct from other iterations of the Radiant baby, this bearer of life is tragically tainted by the risks of childbirth with HIV in pregnancy: green spots, covering the child’s form, connote disease or infection.  

In plate two, another quintessential Haring icon appears; the UFO. Two spaceships beam down upon a bespotted pyramid, a pregnant woman hailing up again once more. Haring combines the ancient and the extraterrestrial in the symbols of the pyramid and spaceship. Whilst its narrative is somewhat ambiguous, the plate leaves the impression that the pregnant woman is at the mercy of an alien power, seeking guidance and help from above literally and metaphorically. The panels of black, yellow and pink are suitably harsh and ominous. 

In plate three to five, the artists usual matchstick figures are seen amongst gigantic and God-like versions. Their interpretation is manifold: as fertility gods or the disease itself. In plate four, two pregnant women, palms touching, are embraced by a central figure, jagged with an ankh-shaped abdomen. The same ankh-abdomen is seen in the last plate, wherein a towering character is held up by five smaller pregnant figures. The ankh is an Ancient Egyptian symbol that represents life and the power to bestow it. As with the pyramid, Haring utilises a repertoire of easily recognisable, universal symbols to convey the power of the African women in the face of hardship. 

Ceremonial and dynamic, the scenes in Fertility Suite appear to vacillate between celebration and foreboding. As Haring grapples with a cruel disease that claimed many lives, his neon palette at times counteracts the dark and tragic course of events. But he also grants Subsaharan women a life-affirming narrative and much-needed representation, portraying them as part of a community with a rich history and culture. They are not defined by the disease from which they suffer. 

Five years after the present work, Haring himself was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. The artist felt a deep and personal motivation to spread awareness for the illness and dispel the taboo surrounding it. Whilst this is commonly portrayed through conversations about homosexuality (‘I think one of the hardest things AIDS has done to kids growing up now, trying to figure out their sexuality in an unbiased way’), the Fertility Suite is important because it speaks to his activism on an international scale. Unfortunately, young women in the Sasahara in Africa are still disproportionately affected by AIDs and face great risk during pregnancy, making the series prescient to the world today.