Bad Boys 4
Bad Boys 4
Signed Print
Keith Haring
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51 x 66cm, Edition of 30, Screenprint
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Meaning & Analysis
This signed screen print from 1986 is a limited edition of 30 from Keith Haring’s Bad Boys series that celebrates and advocates for safe sex in the LGBT+ community amidst the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Bad Boys 4 print shows an image of a male figure bent forwards and so as to show his buttocks, forming the focal point of the image.
Haring himself was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and subsequently the subject of sex and sexuality dominated his work in the latter part of his career, before his tragic death in 1990. This image is charged with a sense of fun as well as being sexually explicit in its subject matter. Haring’s use of free flowing lines that fill the interior of the figure’s body create a sense of energy and dynamism that catches the viewer’s eye.
Writing of Keith Haring in the catalogue for the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997, David Ross states that “His use of simplified figurative abstract forms and his highly graphic style gave his works an immediate character, the complexity of his puzzlelike constructions pulled the viewer deeply into a unique picture space. Haring’s art radiated energy and he carefully directed that energy beyond the confines of the art world.” This is evident in the Bad Boys series, a set of five prints in black and white that recall Haring’s subway drawings from the early 1980s.