Keith Haring: Postcard Book

American artist Keith Haring developed a unique visual language of elaborately entwined patterns and symbols that has come to epitomize the energy and popular culture of New York in the 1980s. Usually characterized by its thick black outlines, Haring's graphic, graffiti-like style draws from realms as diverse as cartoon and calligraphy. His lexicon of popular icons includes everything from babies to pyramids, flying saucers to TV screens, hearts and crosses to robots. Yet what emerges from Haring's colorful and upbeat images is often an expression of serious and poignantly expressed concerns: racial conflict, homophobia, and AIDS (of which Haring died in 1990 at the age of 32). This pocket-sized booklet of 18 detachable postcards includes an eye-catching array of humorous, colorful images that are representative of his entire body of work. --A.C. Smith