Keith Haring Growing (Portfolio) For Sale

Growing is a portfolio of five screenprints created by the artist in 1988. Each screenprint is large in scale and the complete portfolio is from an edition of 100. In this much celebrated suite, Haring’s human figures – often standalone match-figures – gleefully interlock, enmesh and climb upon each other. Ranging from mosaic-like to a plant-like structures, the theme is presented in very novel form and different colours each time. The prints demonstrate Haring’s unrivalled talent to infuse bold lines and simple figures with a life of their own.  

In plate one, known as The People Ladder, a human tower or pryamid of arms and legs lead to a smaller figure at its very top. This smaller figure is haloed as in Haring’s ‘Radiant baby’ motif, and is therefore possibly a child, suggesting innocence and purity. It is held up by the members of its community, and a visual explication of joint effort.  

In the second plate, rendered in blue, yellow and red, many people form a human grid structure from one larger figure. The emergence of the people from one larger person can be seen to have multifaceted meanings. On the one hand, it can represent a God-like figure and people created in his image. Haring was raised into a Christian family, and was a member of the Jesus movement when he was an adolescent. Yet Haring would renounce organised religion by the time he had arrived in New York in the late seventies. He nevertheless had a spiritual temperament and interest in social activism that replaced religion. A second meaning can be that the larger figure represents not a person but an ideology or system, to which the many figures from which it stems are society. Society, much like the interlocking grid, is a building block and structure of individuals, groups and its values. Although Haring’s visual style is often categorised as primitive or naïve, the ease with which he can portray ‘big ideas’ in his cartoon like tableaus showcases why he is so celebrated. 

Plate three deals with the subject of growing in a style reminiscent of the Ancient world and hieroglyphs. Like in the first plate, headless bodies hold up one larger figure, yet here the structure is concaved and shapely.  

Plate four is the most abstract of the suite. Stark black and yellow in colour, spiralling lines, crosses and shape form barely discernible human figures. In keeping with the title of the portfolio, Growing, this chaotic scene exudes a sense of flux and transformation. Not all growth is easily defined or as we expect.  

In the polychromatic final plate of the suite, two alien like figures appear against a jagged background. Spaceships and extraterrestrials are seen frequently in the artist’s corpus of works. In the wider context of Haring’s work, and in Growing, aliens can be seen to represent anything ‘alien’, that is outsiders in society. An extremely socially conscious artist, Haring was strongly driven to represent the underdog in society and as a homosexual man himself, advocated for gay rights.