Retrospect
Medium: Screen-print in colors on heavy wove paper
Year: 1989
Image: 40 3/4 x 77 inches (103.5 x 195.6 cm)
Sheet: 45 3/4 x 82 inches (116.2 x 208.3 cm)
Edition: 75
Artist’s Proofs: 7
Other: 3 PP
Publisher: Martin Lawrence Editions, New-York, Los Angeles
Literature: Littmann pp. 120-121
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil with the publisher’s blindstamp
Retrospect is an edited survey of Haring’s series Pop Shop I-VI and features many of the artist’s most famous motifs, including barking dogs, dog man, angel and radiant baby. Made at a time when the artist was ailing from HIV Aids, Retrospect also includes several new images which do not appear in previous Pop Shop iterations and which were presumably intended for another series, tragically never realized. In an interview given a few months before his death in February 1990, Haring movingly talks about the new perspective his illness had given him as an artist:
‘The thing about all the projects I am working on now…is that there is a certain sense of summing up in them. Everything I do now is a chance to put a crown on the whole thing. It adds another kind of intensity to the work that I do now; it’s one of the good things to come from being sick. If you’re writing a story you can sort of ramble on and go in a lot of directions at once, but when you get to the end of the story, you have to start pointing all the things toward one thing. That’s the point that I’m at now, not knowing where it stops but knowing how important it is to do it now. The whole thing is getting much more articulate. In a way it’s really liberating.’
Auction Results
Sotheby’s online: 25 September 2024
Estimated: GBP 60,000 – 80,000
GBP 72,000 / USD 93,528
KEITH HARING (1958 – 1990)
Retrospect, 1989
Screenprint in colors on sturdy wove paper
Sheet: 46×82 inches (117×208 cm)
Signed in pencil, dated and inscribed HC 6/7
This work is one of seven hors commerce impressions aside from the edition of 75
Heritage Auctions: 24 October 2023
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 250,000
USD 200,000
KEITH HARING
Retrospect, 1989
Screen-print in colors on wove paper
Signed, editioned 9/75 and dated in pencil along lower edge
Sotheby’s London: 19 March 2020
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 187,500
KEITH HARING (1958 – 1990)
RETROSPECT (LITTMANN P. 120-121), 1989
Screen-print in colors
Signed in pencil, dated, numbered 46/75
Christie’s New-York: 22 October 2019
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 275,000
KEITH HARING (1958-1990)
Retrospect, 1989
Screen-print in colors on thick wove paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 24/75
Christie’s London: 17 September 2019
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 250,000
GBP 225,000
KEITH HARING (1958-1990)
Retrospect, 1989
Screen-print in colors on thick wove paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 36/75