KEITH HARING, APOCALYPSE 10, APOCALYPSE SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 90, 1988
The final print in Keith Haring’s Apocalypse series (1988), Apocalypse 10, is one of the more positive and hopeful scenes in the series. It features a collaged image of Christ as the head of a flower, growing upwards in the centre of the print. Dark imagery that permeates the series is still looming in this print, however the radiating image of Christ offers a beacon of light amidst the darkness.
In his Flowers series (1990), Haring uses flower-like subjects to allude to the fragility of life and closeness to death for those living during the AIDS epidemic. Completed the year of Haring’s own AIDS diagnosis and a couple of years before the Flowers series, Apocalypse 10 is an early conceptualisation of this powerful flower symbol. Haring makes clear the paradoxical theme of life and death with a horizontal stem that shows a skeleton hand on one side and an organic life form about to be plucked on the other.
Tear drops drawn by Haring, reflected in the drips of ink on the print, fall from Christ’s eyes as he overlooks the tumbling pile of anonymous dead bodies below. The image of Jesus weeping is a common Christian symbol to show Christ’s humanity, representing the rage felt against the tyranny of death over mankind. As with the rest of the Apocalypse series, Haring reworks common religious iconography to create a cynical, pictographic social commentary, that is especially pertinent in the context of the 1980s AIDS epidemic in New York City.
Read more about Apocalypse 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.
