Pop Shop V, Plate IV

Pop Shop V, Plate IV was released when Haring was at the top of his career, and yet sadly only one year from his death. A few years before he had opened his first Pop Shop in Manhattan’s SoHo, selling badges, t-shirts and more from as little as 50 cents, in a bid to make his art more commercially accessible to everyone. This transition from painting to multiples also led to Haring’s adoption of screen printing – a commercial technique made popular by Andy Warhol in the ’60s – which offered him the chance to experiment with colour and line in large editions. Printed in five colours – black, pink, orange, purple and turquoise – this work shows Haring’s mastery of screen printing as a medium.

It soon became evident that the energy and curiosity he demonstrated for painting translated perfectly into printmaking and he began to work with publishers across the US, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark and Holland. The prints featuring singular images were released as portfolios of four, each from an edition of 200, while the Quad prints— compiling four images in a grid format— were released in an edition of 75. Totalling 875 prints featuring the pink-orange-turquoise Pop Shop V artworks and exemplifying the prolific productivity of Haring’s printmaking, each individual print nevertheless reflects the attentive care paid by Haring throughout the production process. Though initially the singular Pop Shop V prints were released as four-part portfolios (and remain extremely valuable in their original sets of matching edition numbers) many portfolios have inevitably been divided.

By the time of his death, Haring had produced so many prints that the exact number has become impossible to count. There are many unsigned editions on the market, though these tend only to be considered valuable if approved by the Keith Haring Foundation. Today his prints are frequently among the most sought after multiples on the market.