Keith Haring: The Pop Shops

When Haring opened his Pop Shop on the streets of SoHo in 1986, it was less a retail venture than an extension of his artistic mission — a deliberate collapse of the boundary between fine art and everyday life. The prints that followed, the Pop Shop Sets and Quads, became some of the most technically rigorous and conceptually charged works of his career: signed, limited-edition silkscreens produced during the peak of his output, now among the most desirable works in his oeuvre.

The selection presented here spans both formats. The individual plates — executed in bold flat color with thick black outlines — draw directly from Haring's graffiti-inspired visual lexicon, figures dancing, leaping, and radiating energy in compositions that are equal parts comic and cosmic. The Quads operate differently: each a single work composed of four quadrants, the panels reinforcing and dialoguing with one another, amplifying their impact through symmetrical design and layered symbolism. Pop Shop Quad I, the earliest in the series, was issued in an edition of just 45 — a scarcity that speaks to the sustained demand these works continue to command.