Apocalypse (5) by Keith Haring delivers a visually intense tableau, deeply rooted in Haring’s signature style and profound social consciousness. Following the spirit of the series, this piece magnifies Christian iconography, intertwines religion and sexuality in a confrontational dance, reflects the tumultuous feelings of its era and captures the bleakness surrounding the AIDS crisis.
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Skyscrapers scrape rents of blue and white paint from the sky, shredding, peeling, nitrous ochres and red eat through bridges, which fall into the rivers splashing colors across – my back I always hear – piers, streets AMOK art – Hurry up please, its time – floods inorganic molds – Times winged chariot hurrying – stirring passion of – near. Closing time gentlemen – metal and glass steel – these our actors as I foretold you – girders writhe – actors frantically packing in theatrical – mineral lust – hotels… are all spirits.
Apocalypse (5) delivers a visually intense tableau, deeply rooted in Haring’s signature style and profound social consciousness. Following the spirit of the series, this piece magnifies Christian iconography, intertwines religion and sexuality in a confrontational dance, reflects the tumultuous feelings of its era and captures the bleakness surrounding the AIDS crisis.
Resting upon a stark white backdrop, a melange of drawn lines, paints, and collage elements converge. Three commanding pillars rise from the composition’s base. Atop the blue tower stands a lithograph of Christ, his heart ablaze, surrounded by concentric black rings. Adjacently, the peach-colored phallic column, dissected by semi-abstract entities—a loud dog and a shark-like machine—seems to bark in defiance or warning at the Christ figure. One of them emits a corn-yellow plume and the other plunges into a red semi-circle where we find the third column, hauntingly composed of hand-drawn bodies, culminating in a candle-like flame.
Hovering above this melee of towers, a blue-green head in profile wearing sunglasses appears to be engrossed in a cigarette. From the rear of this head emerges a meticulously detailed serpent, its menacing eyes and forked tongue accentuating the piece’s inherent chaos. Further upward, an arm emerges, splashing liquid onto a blue-circled bonfire consuming human forms.
Created in collaboration with Beat writer William Burroughs after Haring’s AIDS diagnosis, this piece marries Christian symbolism with Haring’s distinctive graffiti style. Christ is depicted as both a beacon of virtue and a phallic figure, threatened by serpent-like foes symbolizing sin and malevolence. Haring’s message is clear: a stark critique aimed at those apathetic to the era’s tragedies, particularly the devastating AIDS epidemic. By placing Christ in a hellish context, Haring challenges viewers directly. This union of collage and graffiti elements captures the HIV epidemic as a forewarning of an apocalypse, evoking powerful reflections on the period’s overarching fears and concerns.
