Apocalypse 4

Multidisciplinary artist and activist Keith Haring created Apocalypse in collaboration with the writer William S. Burroughs to draw public attention to the ravages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Burroughs’s Surrealist prose was a frequent source of inspiration for Haring and had a definitive impact on this series, which was published two years before the artist’s own death from HIV/AIDS. In each of these ten prints, Haring invokes a range of motifs characteristic of his visual practice: sperm and male genitalia are interspersed with bright swatches of color, Christian iconography, and even Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa (1503). By commingling images of the sacred and the profane, Haring unfurls an end-of-times vision for those who would turn away from the vast, tragic impacts of the epidemic.