Growing 4 is a 1988 screenprint on paper made by the renowned artist and activist Keith Haring. Haring’s Growing series is a testament to the values by which Haring lived and created. A firm believer that art is for everyone, Haring used his playful style to appeal to the young, old, and in-between and was passionate about using his artworks for activism. With symbolism, Haring formulated a pictorial language to reference with specificity many different social issues and movements to include the HIV/AIDS crisis, apartheid, nuclear war, LGBTQ+ issues, politics and the media, religious organizations, and others. These symbols, as well as the complexity of his works and messages, developed throughout his career and made Haring’s works extremely recognizable.

As the title Growing 4 suggests, this work harbors the theme of transformation. Haring held fast to the idea that art itself was a mechanism for change; societal and individual transformation was something Haring hoped to inspire with his work, not only by reflecting the issues with society, but also by painting a picture of what an alternate, more hopeful future may look like. Growing 4’s composition is saturated with brightness, an allusion to that hopeful future.

One figure is the strong base for a multitude of other figures, all rendered in Haring’s trademark simple, yet bold, lines. The composition likens itself to a tree of life, marked with gestural lines, as if the figures are branches waving in the breeze. It is a movement-oriented piece that reaches to the heavens, connecting lines, alluding to a sense of community and structural support. One detail, a blue hole in the centermost trunk figure, was often a symbol that Haring used to symbolize an emptiness. Still, the figure is able to hold up the rest of the figures, an inspired way of suggesting that support among despair still has the great potential to manifest growth.