Growing 3
Growing 3
Signed Print
Keith Haring
Screenprint, 1988
Signed Print Edition of 100
H 76cm x W 102cm
Critical Review
This signed screen print from 1988 is a limited edition of 100 from Keith Haring’s Growing series. Growing 3 is a print that shows two figures conjoined at the hip by a target symbol in the centre of the image, depicted in rounded yellow lines against a black backdrop. There is a clear focus on pattern across the entire image and the symmetry of the composition organically develops outwards from the centre. As the Growing Series progresses, it is unclear where some figures begin and end as Haring’s compositions become more complex and interconnected.
Haring’s use of symmetry along a vertical central axis and abundance of form marks a clear affinity with Australian Aboriginal and Aztec art. Across the image Haring creates concentric circles, curving, organic lines, figures and small patterns, bringing them into an abstract pictorial system that moves and flows with the viewer’s eye. Indeed, Haring’s focus on pattern makes this work distinctly ‘primitive’ in both a technical and stylistic sense, much like that of the European Modernists like Klee and Matisse.
Growing 3 evokes a clear sense of collectivism, working together and positive energy as a means to make a political statement on the culture of individualism in 1980s capitalist America. The figures seem to dance across the page, moving against complex patterns, providing the image with a rhythmic character that sparks joy in the viewer.
