KEITH HARING, THE STORY OF RED AND BLUE 5, THE STORY OF RED AND BLUE SERIES, SIGNED LITHOGRAPH, EDITION OF 90, 1989
The Story Of Red And Blue 5 is part of a series of prints called The Story Of Red And Blue by Keith Haring from 1989. Presented in the form of a children’s story book, this series is representative of Haring’s desire to create a visual language that appealed to both children and adults alike. Throughout the series he limits his colour palette to bright red and blue and renders each image in his distinctive linear style with black rounded lines.
The Story Of Red And Blue 5 shows an egg-shaped figure outlined in thick red brushstrokes, it’s smiling face depicted as a single-line drawing. Appearing to sit happily on a brick wall, Haring is deliberately referring to the character from the famous children’s nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. Throughout the series Haring loosely refers to a variety of children’s fictional characters so as to make clear his allusion to the notion of a storybook.
Across the first half of the series, each print alternates in colour between red and blue and by the end of the series the two colours appear together in the prints. In each print Haring uses simplified and generic pictograms to produce the effect of a children’s story book without a sensical storyline, where instead the story seems to focus abstractly on the colours red and blue.
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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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