Pop Shop IV (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. He painted the walls, floor and ceiling himself and sold T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets bearing his images, some items for as little as 50 cents. Haring saw the store as an extension of his work, not a sideline.

He 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 also said copies of his work had become so common that he wanted people to know what the real ones looked like.

Many in the art world criticized the shop for cheapening the work. Andy Warhol, Haring's friend and mentor, supported it. A second Pop Shop opened in Tokyo on January 30, 1988, by one account (the foundation dates the Tokyo opening to 1987), and closed that summer; Haring complained that there were too many well-made Haring fakes all over the city.

From subway chalk to world murals

Haring was born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Kutztown, learning cartooning from his father and from Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney. 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.

In 1980 he began drawing in white chalk on the unused black advertising panels of the subway, sometimes as many as forty drawings in a day, a practice he called his laboratory. He made his SoHo gallery debut in 1982, showed at Documenta 7 in Kassel, the Sao Paulo Biennial and the Whitney Biennial, and between 1982 and 1989 produced more than 50 public artworks, many for hospitals, schools and charities.

The prints that carry the Pop Shop name took the same visual language into numbered editions. A market guide describes the singular-image suites as portfolios of four, each sheet from an edition of 200, with separate Quad prints combining four images on one sheet in editions of 75.

1989: the last full year

Haring was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and with AIDS in the autumn of 1988. In 1989 he established the Keith Haring Foundation to fund AIDS organizations and children's programs and to expand the audience for his work.

He kept painting in public at a furious pace. In February 1989 he painted Todos Juntos Podemos Parar el SIDA in Barcelona. In May he painted a 480-foot mural in Chicago's Grant Park with nearly 500 students and painted Once Upon a Time... in a bathroom at New York's Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. In June he painted Tuttomondo on the rear wall of the convent of Sant'Antonio Abate in Pisa. Late that November he painted a mural in Pasadena for A Day Without Art and told a reporter, "My life is my art, it's intertwined."

Pop Shop IV belongs to that year. Haring died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990, at 31.

Four sheets, one vocabulary

Pop Shop IV is a set of four screenprints in colors on wove paper, cataloged as Littmann pp. 146-147. Each sheet measures about 13 1/2 by 16 3/8 inches (343 by 416 mm); one auction catalog gives the image as 11 3/8 by 14 3/4 inches (288 by 374 mm). Dealers list the sheets as about 34.3 by 41.9 cm.

The suite was issued in an edition of 200 sets with 25 artist's proof sets, published by a New York print publisher whose iguana blindstamp appears on the sheets. A further 20 hors commerce impressions are recorded aside from the edition. Each sheet is signed, dated and numbered in pencil.

The imagery gathers almost all of Haring's signature icons: the radiant baby, the barking dog, a winged figure often described as an angel or a flying superman, and the thick movement lines that make his figures vibrate. Descriptions of the palette differ. One dealer lists red, brown, yellow and black; another lists red, yellow, orange and black; a market guide calls the suite brown-yellow-red.

The same four images were also printed together as Pop Shop Quad IV, a single 24 by 30 inch (61 by 76 cm) sheet in an edition of 75. One market guide counts 875 sheets in all carrying the Pop Shop IV images: four editions of 200 plus the Quad's 75. Collectors should check whether an offering is a full set, a single plate or the Quad, since they trade as different objects.

From shop name to auction staple

Complete sets come to auction often. A market tracker records ten auction sales of the complete set since 2005, with hammer prices ranging from GBP 69,129 in October 2022 to GBP 98,025 in March 2022.

On April 16, 2024, a complete set numbered 149/200, framed and in very good condition, sold at auction in New York for $113,400 against an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.

Single sheets trade separately. A single Pop Shop IV print numbered 7/20 sold at auction in November 2017 for $12,500, just above its $8,000 to $12,000 estimate. For Plate I alone, the tracker records ten auction sales since 2008, with hammer prices in the past five years from GBP 14,519 in September 2025 to GBP 31,167 in January 2023. An April 2026 auction offered a single plate, number 43/200, with an estimate of $15,000 to $25,000.

After the shop closed

The New York Pop Shop outlived Haring by fifteen years. It closed in 2005, on August 28 by one account and in September by the foundation's own account, because rising rent outpaced sales. Its painted ceiling went to the New-York Historical Society, where it is installed in the entry.

In 2006 the exhibition Keith Haring: Art and Commerce examined the store's history, and in 2009 Tate Modern reconstructed parts of it for Pop Life: Art in a Material World. The Pop Shop print suites carried the store's idea into signed editions, and a market guide counts Haring's prints among the most sought-after multiples on the market.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper, set of four

Sheet size

About 13 1/2 x 16 3/8 in. (343 x 416 mm) each

Image size

About 11 3/8 x 14 3/4 in. (288 x 374 mm), per one catalog

Edition

200 sets, plus 25 artist's proof sets; 20 hors commerce impressions also recorded

Catalogue raisonne

Littmann pp. 146-147

Signature

Signed, dated and numbered in pencil; publisher's iguana blindstamp

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 and enrolls at the School of Visual Arts.

3. 1980

   He begins his chalk drawings on blank subway advertising panels.

4. 1982

   SoHo gallery debut; Documenta 7 in Kassel.

5. Apr 19, 1986

   The Pop Shop opens at 292 Lafayette Street in SoHo.

6. Jan 30, 1988

   Pop Shop Tokyo opens, by one account (the foundation gives 1987); it closes that summer.

7. 1988

   Haring is diagnosed with AIDS (autumn, per one account).

8. 1989

   Pop Shop IV is published: four screenprints in an edition of 200 plus 25 artist's proof sets, alongside Pop Shop Quad IV in an edition of 75.

9. 1989

   Haring establishes the Keith Haring Foundation.

10. Jun 1989

    Haring paints Tuttomondo in Pisa.

11. Feb 16, 1990

    Haring dies of AIDS-related complications at 31.

12. Aug 28, 2005

    The New York Pop Shop closes (the foundation dates the closing to September 2005).

13. 2009

    Tate Modern reconstructs the Pop Shop for Pop Life: Art in a Material World.

14. Nov 11, 2017

    A single Pop Shop IV sheet numbered 7/20 sells at auction for $12,500.

15. Mar 2022

    A complete set reaches a hammer price of GBP 98,025, the high in one tracker's record.

16. Apr 16, 2024

    Complete set 149/200 sells at auction in New York for $113,400.

The world in 1989

• Jan 20, 1989

  George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as president of the United States.

• Mar 12, 1989

  Tim Berners-Lee produces the proposal that becomes the blueprint for the World Wide Web.

• Mar 24, 1989

  The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing a major oil spill.

• Jun 4, 1989

  A military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing; the same day, Solidarity wins the first round of Poland's elections.

• Nov 9, 1989

  The Berlin Wall falls, a wall on which Haring had painted a mural three years earlier.

• Nov 1989

  The Velvet Revolution begins in Czechoslovakia.

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 IV (set of 4) is number 43 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 (59 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 so many copies of his work were circulating that he wanted people to know what the real ones looked like.
• The Tokyo Pop Shop lasted only from January to the summer of 1988; Haring blamed well-made fakes all over the city.
• The four Pop Shop IV images were also printed together on one 24 by 30 inch sheet, Pop Shop Quad IV, in an edition of 75.
• Haring painted a mural on the Berlin Wall in 1986, three years before it fell in the same year Pop Shop IV was published.
• The ceiling Haring painted for the New York Pop Shop is now installed in the entry of the New-York Historical Society.
• Dealers cannot agree on the suite's colors: descriptions include red, brown, yellow and black, and red, yellow, orange and black.