Buy Lucky Strike (Portfolio) (Littman p.77-79) by Keith Haring

Lucky Strike is a portfolio of five silkscreen prints executed by the artist in 1987. Commissioned by the eponymous American tobacco company for advertisements, the series shows Haring’s energetic and playful style alongside his commercial acumen. The artist produced nine silkscreens, of which the present five were chosen by the company. A tenth work was created but distributed amongst Haring’s friends, a joke on tobacco’s dangers; a smoking skeleton which Haring noted in his diary the executives did not appreciate. 

The portfolio perfectly amalgamates the Lucky Strike brand with Haring’s immediately familiar visual lexicon -  bracketed lines, radiant halos and matchstick men. Lucky Strike boxes historically had green packaging, a design choice that Haring honours in plate one by featuring a green background. He also depicts the trademark red and white design in the other four plates, creatively reinventing it in each time: a white figure with a red lucky stripe logo in place of a head, a gigantic packet with noodle-like cigarettes jumping from out of the box.  

In the first plate of the suite, a looping figure with a woven appearance appears smoking a Lucky Strike: its characterisation is in Haring’s signature style. The artist’s swift, swirling lines work harmoniously with the visual representation of smoking as the smoke fills the air. 

The tone of the portfolio, in keeping with much of the pop artist’s work, is characterised by joyous feeling and movement. Figures are never static and leap, dance and wave out of the bounds of Haring’s pictures. In the third plate Haring’s person literally springs up as a jack-in-a-box rendering of the brand, an image that is unbounded in its enthusiasm. Similarly people in plate four crowd around a Lucky Strike box and reach to open it. Though two-dimensional and seemingly simple in expression, what is striking about the portfolio is the viewer can almost hear and imagine the excitement of the faceless and sexless characters. Haring is able to invoke the power of imagination through the simplest expressions of line and colour. 

In the Lucky Strike portfolio Haring gives an even greater legacy to a household name. It is reminiscent of Warhol’s Ads series, wherein Warhol produced screenprint advertisements for iconic brands such as Disney, Chanel and Volkswagen. Haring was inspired by his friend and fellow artist, and much like Warhol, recognised the enormous potential of his work for a mass audience.