Artworks

Keith Haring, The Blueprint Drawings (Complete Set), 1990

Keith Haring

The Blueprint Drawings (Complete Set), 1990

Set of 17 screen prints
Each signed, numbered and dated

Various (From 42 x 46 to 42 x 79 in)
Various (From 106.7 × 116.8 cm to 106.7 × 200.7 cm)

Edition of 33 (Each)

Series: The Blueprint Drawings

Further images

The Blueprint Drawings is a powerful portfolio of seventeen prints created over several weeks in 1980, which Keith Haring revisited again in 1990, the final year of his life. Ambitious...

The Blueprint Drawings is a powerful portfolio of seventeen prints created over several weeks in 1980, which Keith Haring revisited again in 1990, the final year of his life. Ambitious in both scale and execution, the works are based on photostats of original drawings made by Haring using Sumi ink on vellum. The series is notable for its experimental approach: it marked the first time Haring employed this blueprint-style medium, while also reimagining many of the recurring visual motifs that defined his practice. The resulting images are among the most striking and uncompromising in Haring’s oeuvre.

A sense of violence and chaos runs throughout the portfolio. Haring’s figures tumble down staircases, are pursued and attacked by dogs, and hang suspended by their feet. Fear and panic permeate the scenes as the figures flee both dogs and looming spaceships—symbols that broadly suggest forces of “otherness” or an overwhelming non-human power. In the second plate of the series, a crowd of figures appears to be assaulted by descending spacecraft, while beneath a staircase a pile of bodies accumulates and a decapitated figure hangs lifelessly above them. The imagery is stark and unsettling, presenting a direct confrontation with mortality—an especially poignant theme as Haring himself was living with AIDS and witnessing the illness claim the lives of many friends and fellow artists.

Structurally, each print is arranged in a grid-like composition reminiscent of a comic strip. The scenes unfold across panels of varying sizes; in some plates, such as plate seven, the format narrows its focus to a single moment, intensifying the depiction of suffering and vulnerability. While Haring had used a similar panelled structure in works like the Pop Shop Quads, here the familiar, almost childlike visual language stands in stark contrast to the dark and disturbing subject matter, heightening the emotional impact of the series.

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