Chocolate Buddha 3
Chocolate Buddha 3
Signed Print
Keith Haring
£14,000-£21,000Value Indicator
$29,000-$45,000 Value Indicator
$26,000-$40,000 Value Indicator
¥140,000-¥200,000 Value Indicator
€16,000-€24,000 Value Indicator
$150,000-$220,000 Value Indicator
¥2,770,000-¥4,160,000 Value Indicator
$19,000-$28,000 Value Indicator
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56 x 70cm, Edition of 90, Lithograph
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
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Meaning & Analysis
This signed lithograph from 1989 is a limited edition of 90 from Keith Haring’s Chocolate Buddha series. Chocolate Buddha 3 shows an object resembling the artist’s ‘devil sperm’ motif and some intertwining stems that cut through the composition vertically. The central subject is rendered in thick, brown outlines to form a simplified shape and is set against a pink backdrop of loosely drawn hieroglyphs.
Completed the year before Haring’s death, this series amalgamates the artist’s clear-line figurative style with more complex patterns to form highly abstracted images. Recalling styles of the ancient world such as Eastern Mandalas and Australian Aboriginal art, the Chocolate Buddha series also shows influence from the European Modernists such as Miro, Klee and Matisse. This is notable from the way in which the prints focus on flat, richly coloured shapes and patterns that play out across the image surface.
Chocolate Buddha 3 includes the ‘devil sperm’ motif, injecting the print with a focus on the threat of male homosexuality. This motif is seen in many other later works like the Apocalypse series (1988), where Haring directly correlates sexuality with death in his depiction of enormous horned sperm, a demoniacal personification of death in relation to the AIDS virus. In the later stage of his artistic career, themes around sex and HIV/AIDS dominated his work, just as it dominated Haring’s personal life after his own AIDS diagnosis in 1988.
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