Keith Haring Pop Shop Quad II For Sale

Pop Shop Quad II is a screenprint created by the artist in 1988.  The print in quad form is from a small edition of 45 compared to his other individuated, larger scale versions of Pop Shop series. The portfolio takes its title from the artist’s famed Pop Shop opened by Keith Haring a year earlier in SoHo, New York. These works capture Haring’s well developed visual lexicon at what can be seen to be the height of his career. 

Compared to the primary colours of Pop Shop Quad I, In Pop Shop Quad II makes use of a neon palette in bright pink. In line with series of which the work is a part, Haring’s idiosyncratic matchstick figures are characterised by movement and joy, always stretching, bending and waving beyond realistic human capacity: in plate two, a coral figure appears to dance on water, reminiscent of the Biblical miracle of Jesus walking on water. 

Haring’s figures have no features or visible genders, yet their personality is expressed through the dynamism of Haring’s colour and line. When viewed in totality, the order of Haring’s suite expresses careful coordination and narrative: the first and final boxes feature two figures merging into one, and the panels of three colours (pink, blue, and yellow) are altered each time in a harmonious way. 

Haring’s Pop Shop was at the intersection of art and commerce. Though it was criticised at the time for its crass commercialisation, Haring’s goal was to bring his art to as many people as possible. For Simon Oldfield, the Pop Shop ‘ushered in a new era and commented on contemporary culture in a way nobody else got close to. Pop shop was an act of genius. It took Warhol’s Factory to the street”.