KEITH HARING, THE BLUEPRINT DRAWINGS 9, THE BLUEPRINT DRAWINGS SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 33, 1990
Completed the year of the artist’s tragic death by AIDS in 1990, The Blueprint Drawings 9 is a print from Keith Haring’s The Blueprint Drawings series. 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.
Communicating complex ideas through a simplistic visual language, this series incorporates some of Haring’s most recognisable pictograms and represents one of his most accomplished works. The Blueprint Drawings 9 shows a genderless figure falling down a set of stairs with the glowing stick, seen throughout the series, in its hand. Stairs are a prominent motif in The Blueprint Drawings series, with figures running up and falling down, and are always covered in dots, to symbolise the otherness of homosexuality and illness.
A sense of movement and dynamism is created in this print through Haring’s use of graphic action lines and dotted surface of the stairs. As with other prints in the series, The Blueprint Drawings 9 is striking in its graphic simplicity limited to black line against a white background.
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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.
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