Apocalypse 5
Apocalypse 5
Signed Print
Keith Haring
£5,500-£8,500 VALUE (EST.)
$10,000-$16,000 VALUE (EST.)
$9,000-$14,500 VALUE (EST.)
¥45,000-¥70,000 VALUE (EST.)
€6,000-€9,500 VALUE (EST.)
$50,000-$80,000 VALUE (EST.)
¥890,000-¥1,380,000 VALUE (EST.)
$6,500-$10,500 VALUE (EST.)
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Screenprint, 1988
Signed Print Edition of 90
H 97cm x W 97cm
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Toni Clayton, American Pop & Modern Specialist
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2023 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| September 2021 | Bonhams Los Angeles - United States | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| June 2021 | Germann Auctions - Switzerland | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| May 2017 | Swann Auction Galleries - United States | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| October 2016 | Bonhams Los Angeles - United States | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| September 2016 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print | |||
| September 2012 | Dorotheum, Vienna - Austria | Apocalypse 5 - Signed Print |
Meaning & Analysis
This signed screen print in colours from 1988 is a limited edition of 90 from Keith Haring’s Apocalypse series. In his print Apocalypse 5, Haring depicts a hellish scene with Christian iconography, juxtaposing collage with his iconic graffiti style.
Haring pushes Christian iconography to its extremes in this print, showing two serpent creatures attacking a phallic Christ figure. A collaged image of Christ forms the head of a phallus in this print that shows snake-like figures, symbolising sin, evil and Satan, attacking the Christ figure. Haring uses his trademark pop-graffiti style to contrast good and evil, as well as to bring ideas of religion and sexuality into the same realm.
Apocalypse 5 appropriates and reworks Christian iconography to reflect the chaos of contemporary life and the imagined horrors of the world’s end. By using religious symbols like the serpent and Christ, Haring gives this print a moralistic charge. To address those who have remained ambivalent to the horrors of contemporary events, most especially the AIDS epidemic, Haring consciously pushes religious imagery to its extremes. By placing the Christ figure in a hell-like scene, Haring invokes utter disdain and profanity to the viewer.
Throughout the Apocalypse series, Haring uses a pictographic style inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics and bright colours to communicate clear-cut moralistic messages. One of Haring’s most famous pictograms, the barking dog, appears in Apocalypse 5. First appearing in his subway drawings from the early 1980s, the barking dog is used to represent abuses of power by the government and oppressive regimes that demand obedience. This rings true in the context of Haring’s Apocalypse series that creates a pictographic social commentary on the American government’s silence and complicity in the deaths of many thousands of people due to AIDS.
