Pop artist doodler and icon Keith Haring is the latest artist to join the NFT ranks.
Haring is famous for his iconic graffiti inspired doodling style, which critics have described as a widely-recognised “visual language”. Haring himself believed that art should not be confined to gallery walls, which is why some think that he would have found an affinity with the web3 space, and the unification of traditional and emerging art collecting.
Today, nearly 35 years since Haring died, a selection of previously unseen computer art works have come to the surface. Since creation on the Amiga computer, they have been held on floppy disks and haven’t been revealed. Now they are being minted as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
In 1980, Haring briefly departed from his usual paints, canvas, and walls to draw on the Amiga computer. Although the art may not have been Haring’s typical medium, these works are steeped in the classic bright colours, energetic lines and pop symbols that have become synonymous with Haring’s style.
From September 12-20, Christie’s will auction five NFTs from the artists computer drawings in a show, Keith Haring: Pixel Pioneer.
Each NFT is estimated to sell between $200,000 and $500,000 — making the entire collection worth around $1.6 million. Some say these estimates are conservative — Andy Warhol’s Amiga drawings sold for $3.3 million in 2021.