Keith Haring

Self Portrait

Keith Haring painted confidently, creating boldly graphic lines in intricate patterns. With an instantly recognizable style, he developed profound narratives dealing with religion, queerness, greed, death, and love. However, he rarely made himself the focus of a work.

Here, Haring’s distinctive technique meshes with a realism that departs from his usual, featureless figures. Unlike the artist’s typically kinetic, frieze-like compositions, Self Portrait follows the traditions of European portraiture by presenting a cropped and static bust.

The year of the work’s creation was a time of both success and tragedy for Haring. The artist recalls “By ... 1985, things ... seriously changed ... in my life, because the horror of AIDS had come to light.” Like historical portraiture, Self Portrait simultaneously commemorates achievement and anticipates mortality.

Although economically rendered, Haring’s features exude a depth that seems prescient of his own AIDS diagnosis in 1988. “I always knew ... that I would die young,” Haring said. “I live every day as if it were my last.”