KEITH HARING, APOCALYPSE 8, APOCALYPSE SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 90, 1988
The screen print Apocalypse 8, from Keith Haring’s Apocalypse series (1988), continues themes of hellishness and promiscuity that characterises the series as a whole. Framed by the number 666, the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelations and common symbol for Satan, Haring’s print explicitly points to the idea of Hell itself.
Apocalypse 8 shows a magazine clipping of a 1950s-era young girl, posing cheerfully in a frilly white dress to celebrate the Christian sacrament of First Communion. As with other prints in the series, Haring uses collage to shock the viewer and create a dialogue between dissimilar worlds. Placed among drawings of grotesque beasts, satanic symbols and promiscuity, Haring uses his linear style to deface the child and add mutating limbs that reflect the chaos around her. Lines radiating from the child’s head are reminiscent of his Radiant Baby 1990), glowing with an energy that renders her as sacred. An unusual but effective medium for the artist, collage works to inject a moment of purity and unrelenting optimism into the violent terrain occupied by the surrounding socio-cultural demons.
In this print, AIDS is explicitly represented as a plague in Hell. Haring depicts a glory hole in pastel blue, through which an ejaculating phallus is visible. Especially associated with gay culture, the glory hole alludes to the way in which AIDS was stigmatised as the ‘gay plague’ in 1980s America and the personified virus, the horned ‘devil sperm’, shoots upwards as though born out of this promiscuous activity.
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.
