KEITH HARING, THE VALLEY PAGE 10, THE VALLEY SERIES, SIGNED ETCHING, EDITION OF 80, 1989
Marking a new direction in the artist’s visual language, The Valley Page 10 is a print from Keith Haring’s The Valley series from 1989. This print shows a line drawing of a chaotic composition that shows three figures with elongated arms, each playing an instrument or singing. Music notes and energy lines emanate from the figures and their instruments, injecting the scene with rhythm and energy.
The Valley series marked a new direction in Haring’s visual language that continued until his untimely death in 1990 at the age of 31. Alongside his Apocalypse series (1988), this series introduces stylistic shifts of more complex compositions and characters such as jesters, masks, skills and martyrs. Completed two years after Haring’s own AIDS diagnosis, The Valley Page 10 is indicative of the artist’s preoccupation with hellish narratives and the end of times.
Haring’s later works such as The Valley Page 10 have been compared within art historical narratives to the chaotic storytelling of Hieronymus Bosch and the fierce liveliness of his friend and contemporary Jean-Michael Basquiat. The Valley series was born from a collaboration with the Beat Era poet and novelist William S. Burroughs, whose text-based ‘cut-up’ method formed the basis of Haring’s pictographic style.
Read more about The Valley 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.
