Pop Shop I (complete set of 4)

A store as an artwork

On April 19, 1986, Keith Haring opened the Pop Shop at 292 Lafayette Street in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. Architects Moore & Pennoyer designed the small space, but Haring painted the walls, floor and ceiling himself in a black-on-white mural, so that customers stepped inside one of his drawings. Only one of each item was on display; a clerk checked off what a customer wanted and the goods were picked up at a counter. Haring called it his 'version of fast food or fast art.'

The shelves held T-shirts, posters, buttons, magnets, toys, radios, Swatch watches and satin jackets, along with shirts designed by friends including Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, Futura 2000 and Stephen Sprouse. Haring explained the idea plainly: 'I wanted to continue this same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people, and I wanted it to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx.'

He had a practical reason too. By the mid-1980s people were stealing his subway drawings and selling imitations of his work. 'There were so many copies of my stuff around that I felt I had to do something myself so people would at least know what the real ones look like,' he said. Many in the art world criticized the shop for cheapening the art object; Warhol was among its strongest supporters.

From subway chalk to SoHo

Haring was born May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Kutztown, learning to cartoon from his father. After two semesters at a commercial art school in Pittsburgh he moved to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts, and fell in with the downtown scene around Club 57, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

In 1980 he noticed the empty advertising panels in subway stations, covered in matte black paper, and began drawing on them in white chalk. Between 1980 and 1985 he made hundreds of these drawings, sometimes as many as forty in a day, and commuters stopped to talk with him while he worked. In 1982 he made his SoHo gallery debut with a celebrated solo show, and that year he also showed at Documenta 7 in Kassel.

By 1986 he was famous enough to be the subject of more than 40 newspaper and magazine articles in that year alone. He painted the Crack Is Wack mural that became a landmark along FDR Drive, worked with 900 children on a mural for the Statue of Liberty centennial and painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall. The Pop Shop was his attempt to keep that public, street-level audience as his prices climbed.

The first Pop Shop portfolio

Pop Shop I, made in 1987, translated the shop's cast of characters into fine-art prints: four screenprints of Haring's dancing, leaping and interlocking figures, each about 12 by 15 inches. The suite was printed by Durham Press in Durham, Pennsylvania, and issued in a numbered edition of 200, plus 30 artist's proofs. Each sheet is signed 'K. Haring,' dated '87 and numbered in pencil at the lower right. The suite is described as using the same five colors on every sheet: turquoise, red, yellow, purple and black.

It was the first of six Pop Shop suites Haring produced. In the same year he also made Pop Shop Quad I, which puts all four images on one heavy sheet in a much smaller edition of 45. The standard reference for his prints, the Littmann catalogue raisonne of the editions, records the Pop Shop I suite at pp. 82-83.

The prints were the high end of the same philosophy as the shop's buttons and magnets: numbered, signed multiples that put a real Haring within reach of more people than a painting could.

1987: a year of murals and a diagnosis

Haring spent 1987 on the move. He showed in Helsinki and Paris, and while in Paris he and his partner Juan Rivera painted Tower, a mural on an 88-foot exterior stairwell at the Necker children's hospital. He designed a carousel for Andre Heller's Luna Luna, an artists' amusement park in Hamburg, painted a mural at the Carmine Street pool in the West Village, and painted We the Youth in Philadelphia's Point Breeze neighborhood for the bicentennial of the Constitution. He designed the cover of the benefit album A Very Special Christmas.

Two losses framed the year. Andy Warhol, his friend and the Pop Shop's champion, died on February 22, 1987. Bobby Breslau, the friend who managed the shop, died that year too. Haring's own health was failing: one account says he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, and his foundation's biography says he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988.

Outside the studio, ACT UP was founded in New York in March, President Reagan stood in Berlin and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall in June, and the stock market crashed on Black Monday in October.

From shop shelf to auction benchmark

Haring opened a second Pop Shop in Tokyo's Aoyama neighborhood. It closed in the summer of 1988 after disappointing sales; Haring complained there were 'too many Haring fakes available all over Tokyo and, this time, they're really well done.' He founded the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 and died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990, at 31. The New York shop outlived him and closed in 2005; its painted ceiling was donated to the New-York Historical Society, and in 2009 Tate Modern rebuilt the shop inside the exhibition Pop Life.

Complete Pop Shop I sets come to auction only now and then. One market report counted the October 2023 sale of a complete set as only its third auction appearance in five years. That set brought $177,800, reported as a record for the set and for any complete Pop Shop suite. In January 2024 another complete set, numbers 14, 23, 24 and 134 of 200, sold at auction in Los Angeles for $107,100 against an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.

Single sheets from the suite trade on their own. In 2006 one plate sold at auction for $5,040 and the one-sheet Pop Shop Quad I brought $18,000. In the first half of 2023, a single sheet, Plate IV, sold for more than $40,000 at two different auctions, according to one market report.

How to read a set

A complete set is four sheets, each about 12 by 15 inches, signed, dated '87 and numbered in pencil, usually at the lower right. Numbered sets carry fractions out of 200; artist's proofs are inscribed 'AP' out of 30. Sets do not always share a number: the January 2024 set combined four different edition numbers. At least one unsigned proof set outside the edition has also been offered at auction.

Condition matters, and the colors can fade. A set sold in 2018 was described with its colors attenuated, the orange and purple having faded, after years in frames. Catalogs give slightly different measurements for the same sheets (305 to 307 mm by 381 mm), and the four images are sometimes sold apart, so a buyer checks that all four sheets belong together.

Sources also differ on who is credited as publisher of individual sheets, and on the dates of the Tokyo shop's opening and the New York shop's closing. The Littmann reference remains the standard for identifying the suite.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper, set of four

Sheet size

12 x 15 in. (about 30.5 x 38 cm) each

Image size

About 10 1/2 x 13 3/8 in. (26.7 x 34 cm) each

Edition

200, plus 30 artist's proofs

Catalogue raisonne

Littmann pp. 82-83

Printer

Durham Press, Durham, Pennsylvania

Signature

Signed 'K. Haring', dated '87 and numbered in pencil on each sheet

Owners

An edition of 200 sets in private hands; no single public owner

Timeline

1. May 4, 1958

   Keith Haring is born in Reading, Pennsylvania.

2. 1978

   Haring moves to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts.

3. 1980

   He begins his chalk drawings on blank subway advertising panels.

4. 1982

   Haring's first SoHo gallery solo show; he exhibits at Documenta 7.

5. Apr 19, 1986

   The Pop Shop opens at 292 Lafayette Street in SoHo.

6. 1987

   Haring makes Pop Shop I, four screenprints in an edition of 200, printed by Durham Press.

7. 1987

   Haring paints Tower in Paris and We the Youth in Philadelphia.

8. Jan 1988

   Haring travels to Japan to open Pop Shop Tokyo; it closes that summer. One source dates the Tokyo opening to 1987.

9. 1988

   Haring is diagnosed with AIDS.

10. 1989

    He establishes the Keith Haring Foundation.

11. Feb 16, 1990

    Haring dies of AIDS-related complications at 31.

12. 2005

    The New York Pop Shop closes; sources give August 28 and September.

13. Nov 1, 2006

    One plate from Pop Shop I sells at auction for $5,040; Pop Shop Quad I brings $18,000.

14. 2009

    Tate Modern reconstructs the Pop Shop in the exhibition Pop Life.

15. Oct 22, 2018

    A complete set with faded orange and purple is offered at auction in Dallas.

16. Oct 2023

    A complete set sells for $177,800, reported as a record for the suite.

17. Jan 10, 2024

    A complete set sells at auction in Los Angeles for $107,100.

18. Sep 24, 2025

    An unsigned proof set outside the edition is offered at auction.

The world in 1987

• Feb 22, 1987

  Andy Warhol, Haring's friend and Pop Shop supporter, dies.

• Mar 12, 1987

  ACT UP is formed at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York.

• Apr 19, 1987

  The Simpsons first appear as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.

• Jun 12, 1987

  In Berlin, President Reagan challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

• Jun 1987

  Luna Luna, an artists' amusement park with a Haring carousel, opens in Hamburg.

• Oct 19, 1987

  Black Monday: stock markets fall sharply on Wall Street and around the world.

• Dec 8, 1987

  Reagan and Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Pop Shop I (complete set of 4) is number 44 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (41 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Haring said one reason he opened the Pop Shop was that fakes of his work were everywhere, and he wanted people to know what the real ones looked like.
• Customers never took goods off the shelf: one of each item was on display, a clerk checked off orders and buyers picked them up at a counter.
• The Pop Shop's original painted ceiling now hangs at the New-York Historical Society.
• Haring closed his Tokyo Pop Shop within months, complaining that the Haring fakes in Tokyo were 'really well done.'
• The same 1987 images also exist on a single large sheet, Pop Shop Quad I, in an edition of only 45.
• A complete Pop Shop I set offered in 2023 was only the third to appear at auction in five years, according to one market report.
• Sets are not always matched: the set sold in January 2024 combined edition numbers 14, 23, 24 and 134.