Radiant Baby is a 1990 silkscreen by Keith Haring from his Icon series. Haring forged his own path with the fusion of graffiti art, and influences from aboriginal and Egyptian art to become one of the most influential artists of the contemporary world. Created in the year of his shattering AIDS-related death, the Icons portfolio is inspired by the career-defining symbolic language that Haring developed as an illustrative narrative device for his artworks. These hieroglyphic-like “icons” that helped make Haring’s works so recognizable included Barking Dog, Three-Eyed Monster, and of course, Radiant Baby.

As an equal artist and activist, Haring fashioned his art with the philosophy that art is for all people, and exists as a means to bring people together. Radiant Baby, which became Haring’s replacement for signing his name on his works, exemplified this purpose with immaculacy. “The reason that the ‘baby’ has become my logo or signature is that it is the purest and most positive experience of human existence. Children are the bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form. Children are color-blind and still free of all the complications, greed, and hatred that will be instilled in them through life” (Haring, K. 1987. Keith Haring Journals, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition).

Haring saw a future filled with the potential of purity, acceptance, and change in new generations; a rebirth of a society filled with prejudice and institutional failures. To this point, Radiant Baby is vibrant, rendered in Haring’s trademark bold lines and emphasized with gestural lines of enlightenment and hope.