KEITH HARING, ANGEL (WHITE), WHITE ICONS SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION 60, 1990
Angel is an embossing on white paper from Keith Haring’s White Icons series (1990) that shows a winged figure with its arms and legs spread outwards. Exactly mimicking the artist’s Icons series but without colour, this print corresponds with Haring’s Angel print. Angel is demonstrative of the way Haring shapes religious source material to reflect contemporary concerns of his generation.
Much like fellow graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring reuses particular symbols, all present in the White Icons series, to produce a memorable pictorial language. The angel is an image used repeatedly by Haring, in works such as Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1984) and Anti-Nuclear Rally (1982), to speak to the ambiguities and socio-political injustices of the time. Angel overflows with paradoxical themes like life and death, good and evil, religion and sexuality, heaven and hell. This paradox is further exemplified when considered alongside other prints in the Icons series, notably Flying Devil.
Haring produces a set of recognisable positive symbols and clear-cut narrative views in his use of simplified form and repetition of images from previous works. The way in which Haring has depicted these images in the White Icons series without their original saturated colours works to simplify the images down even further to produce a more subtle tone to the works.
Read more about White Icons by Keith Haring.
ABOUT KEITH HARING
Known for his bold graphic style and playful sense of humour, Keith Haring is one of the most influential and adored artists of the 20th century.
Born in Pennsylvania, in 1958, Haring was a talented draughtsman as a child and developed his cartoonish style at the hands of his father and the work of Walt Disney and Dr Seuss. However it would take some time before he realised he could marry this kind of drawing with being a fine artist. Upon graduating from high school he enrolled in a commercial art school before realising he had little interest in pursuing a career as an illustrator or graphic designer. After dropping out of college he joined the hippie movement and hitchhiked across the country where he made anti-Nixon t-shirts to pay for food and Grateful Dead tickets. Learn more about Keith Haring.
