KEITH HARING, ICONS (THREE EYED MONSTER), ICONS SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 250, 1990
Keith Haring’s print, Three Eyed Monster, from the Icons series (1990), features one of the artist’s most widely known motifs. It shows a green, square smiling face with three bright eyes looking avidly to the right, set against a saturated orange background. Haring’s choice of colour and subject gives this print a garish and jarring quality that emphasises both the playful and grotesque in his work.
The Icons series works to bring together some of Haring’s most iconic symbols and the Three Eyed Monster is one that occurs repeatedly throughout his work. Used as a symbol for greed by Haring, this image uses light-hearted imagery and a cartoonish visual language to critique the proliferation of capitalism in 1980s New York. Haring used his art to oppose the negative effects of capitalism and mass consumerism, undoubtedly inspired by the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and his friend, Andy Warhol. As evidenced by his famous Pop Shop, Haring conflated high art with commercialism and so claimed to mirror the capitalist world that he lived in. This print shows Haring’s use of flat, artificial colours that mimic the mass-produced nature of the world he was critiquing.
Three Eyed Monster is uncompromising in its positive, comic tone. However, upon closer examination Haring’s subject carries menacing connotations about greed and hellishness. Adopting a system of expression inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics, Haring’s syntax of signs create a universal language and a true public art charged with moral weight.
Read more about Icons 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.
