This week Sotheby’s New York's Dear Keith: Works from the Personal Collection of Keith Haring sale tripled its low estimate to reach an impressive $4.6 million. All 144 lots sold, some of which were offered without reserve and whose low-estimates totaled just $1.4 million. Ranging from folk art to personal gifts, photographs, and pieces by the greatest names of his day, many of which hung in Haring's home, the works on sale offered a unique opportunity to own part of the collection of one of Pop Art’s greatest figures. Coinciding with the thirtieth anniversary of the artist's death in 1990 from AIDS-related causes, the Keith Haring Foundation sold the works to benefit the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York.
An artist is a spokesman for a society at any given point in history. His language is determined by his perception of the world we all live in. He is a medium between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’.
– Keith Haring
An international star of the 1980s art scene, Haring’s murals can still be found around the world, and his bold, stylized drawings are now iconic. The breadth of his collection, as seen in this sale, shows what an important role Haring played in the art world of the 1980s.
