Details
KEITH HARING (1958-1990)
William S. Burroughs, Apocalypse
the complete set of ten screenprints in colours, 1988, on Museum Board, with title, text by William S. Burroughs on acetate, and justification, each signed, dated and numbered 67/90 in pencil (there were also twenty artist's proofs and five hors commerce sets), published by George Mulder Fine Arts, New York, with the artist's and publisher's copyright inkstamps on the reverse, the introduction signed in black felt-tip by the author, with the original black cloth-covered portfolio
Sheet 965 x 965 mm. (each)
Literature
Littmann 98-109
FURTHER DETAILS
PLEASE NOTE THAT FIVE PLATES ARE FRAMED. THE REMAINING PRINTS ARE LOOSE, AS ISSUED, IN THE PORTFOLIO.
Sale Room Notice
Please note this lot will be transferred to an offsite warehouse after the sale. Please see the Storage and Collection pages in the Conditions of Sale for more information about storage charges and collection details.
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Lot Essay

`Everything is permitted because nothing is true. It is all make-believe, illusion, dream…ART.’ (William S. Burroughs, Apocalypse)

Keith Haring met the Beat poet and novelist William S. Burroughs in 1978 while a student at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Burroughs's ‘Cut Up’ method of deconstructing language was an important influence on the young artist’s own ‘stream of consciousness’ style. Apocalypse, their first collaboration, created in 1988, consists of ten pages of Burroughs's free form text with ten screenprints by Haring. A contemporary reprise of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, itself an inspiration for a long lineage of artists from Albrecht Dürer and Hieronymous Bosch to Salvador Dali, Haring riffs on Burroughs's text, appropriating imagery drawn from the street, and pop culture, and juxtaposing themes of religion and sex, life and death, adverts and activism, in his distinctive, high-energy linear style. Haring’s diagnosis with AIDS earlier in that year adds a poignant dimension to Apocalypse, and his iconography of ‘computers, spermatozoa, devils, halos, divine light and radiance shows the complexity, struggles, torment, and illusory bliss of life at that time’ (Pace Prints, Keith Haring: Collaborations with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, November 2018).

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