Flowers III
Flowers III
Signed Print
Keith Haring
£15,000-£23,000Value Indicator
$30,000-$45,000 Value Indicator
$27,000-$40,000 Value Indicator
¥140,000-¥210,000 Value Indicator
€18,000-€28,000 Value Indicator
$150,000-$230,000 Value Indicator
¥2,840,000-¥4,350,000 Value Indicator
$19,000-$29,000 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
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Medium: Screenprint
Edition size: 100
Year: 1990
Size: H 99cm x W 129cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2020 | Phillips London | United Kingdom | |||
| May 2013 | Christie's New York | United States | |||
| May 2011 | Van Ham Fine Art Auctions | Germany | |||
| October 2008 | Christie's New York | United States | |||
| April 2008 | Sotheby's London | United Kingdom |
Meaning & Analysis
This signed screen print from 1990 is a limited edition of 100 from Keith Haring’s Flowers series. Created using vivid pastel colours, Flowers III is a lively scene of fluid, phallic shapes with an organic composition of flower-like figures rendered with gestural marks and thick, bold outlines. Rendered in vibrant pastel colours and set against a saturated yellow background, this print has a visceral quality that is not always present in Haring’s work, yet is an excellent example of Haring’s pop-graffiti aesthetic.
Following his AIDS diagnosis in 1988, Haring completed the Flowers series only months before his tragic death in 1990. Flowers III is executed with dense, rhythmic lines and the screen print ink has been allowed to drip down the image, forming thin streaks of colour that stand out against the solid black outlines. The drip lines and splatter marks were intentionally left by Haring as an expression of his bodily suffering, whilst also to acknowledge the legacy of figures like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning from the Abstract Expressionist movement.
The Flowers series represents plant forms and growth with bright, artificial colours. In Flowers III, Haring uses coloured dots and holes to denote the otherness of homosexuality and illness, specifically AIDS, at the time. The flower figures that Haring carefully chooses as his subject matter throughout the print series, are deliberately ambiguous in their phallic nature. Through the use of colour and pattern, Flowers III employs a joyful visual language and flower-like shapes to allude to the fragility of life and closeness to death for those living with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s.
Keith Haring was a luminary of the 1980s downtown New York scene. His distinctive visual language pioneered one-line Pop Art drawings and he has been famed for his colourful, playful imagery. Haring's iconic energetic motifs and figures were dedicated to influencing social change, and particularly challenging stigma around the AIDS epidemic. Haring also pushed for the accessibility of art by opening Pop Shops in New York and Japan, selling a range of ephemera starting from as little as 50 cents. Haring's legacy has been cemented in the art-activism scene and is a testament to power of art to inspire social change
