The Blueprint Drawings 7
The Blueprint Drawings 7
Signed Print
Keith Haring
POA
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Screenprint, 1990
Signed Print Edition of 33
H 108cm x W 135cm
Critical Review
Completed the year of the artist’s tragic death by AIDS in 1990, The Blueprint Drawings 7 is a signed screen print from Keith Haring’s The Blueprint Drawings series and is a limited edition of 33.
Originally produced as unique works on paper with Sumi ink, Haring displayed these works in a one-week exhibition in Manhattan in 1980 where not a single drawing was sold. However, he did find success in the sale of several blueprint copies of the original drawings and so revisited the subject in 1990, a month before his tragic death creating a portfolio of 17 screen prints of the original images.
Throughout the series Haring revisits recurring pictograms to communicate complex ideas through a simplistic visual language. In The Blueprint Drawings 7 Haring uses dots to convey the otherness of homosexuality and illness, specifically AIDS, and thus presents the dotted figure as infected. Furthermore, throughout Haring’s oeuvre the stick is a commonly used weapon, used as a means to activate figures, creatures and objects with power and strength.
The Blueprint Drawings 7 shows two anonymous figures rendered in black and white in Haring’s iconic linear style, notably the figure on the right is hanging from its hands and has dots across its body. The uninfected figure on the left is seen poking a stick through the dotted figure’s stomach to exaggerate the dotted figure’s otherness.
