KEITH HARING, APOCALYPSE 5, APOCALYPSE SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 90 1988
Keith Haring depicts a hellish scene with Christian iconography in his print Apocalypse 5 from the Apocalypse series (1988). A collaged image of Christ forms the head of a phallus in this print that shows snake-like figures, symbolising sin, evil and Satan, attacking the Christ figure. Haring uses his trademark pop-graffiti style to contrast good and evil, as well as to bring ideas of religion and sexuality into the same realm.
Apocalypse 5 appropriates and reworks Christian iconography to reflect the chaos of contemporary life and the imagined horrors of the world’s end. By using religious symbols like the serpent and Christ, Haring gives this print a moralistic charge. To address those who have remained ambivalent to the horrors of contemporary events, most especially the AIDS epidemic, Haring consciously pushes religious imagery to its extremes. By placing the Christ figure in a hell-like scene, Haring invokes utter disdain and profanity to the viewer.
Throughout the Apocalypse series, Haring uses a pictographic style inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics and bright colours to communicate clear-cut moralistic messages. One of Haring’s most famous pictograms, the barking dog, appears in Apocalypse 5. First appearing in his subway drawings from the early 1980s, the barking dog is used to represent abuses of power by the government and oppressive regimes that demand obedience. This rings true in the context of Haring’s Apocalypse series that creates a pictographic social commentary on the American government’s silence and complicity in the deaths of many thousands of people due to AIDS.
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.
