White Icons (Littmann PP. 172–173) by Keith Haring comprises of a set of five silkscreen prints that bring together Radiant Baby, Barking Dog, Three Eyed Monster, X-Man and Angel in an entirely white embossed format. Stripped of the vivid colour and contrast typically associated with Haring’s imagery, the portfolio reduces these iconic motifs to raised impressions pressed directly into the paper surface, allowing light and shadow to define the pieces.

Across the five works, the embossed contours emerge gradually depending on angle and illumination, causing the imagery to hover between visibility and disappearance. The absence of colour fundamentally alters the emotional atmosphere of the motifs, replacing the immediacy and visual noise of Haring’s brightly coloured subway-inspired imagery with something quieter, more restrained and unexpectedly meditative. Despite this reduction, each figure remains instantly recognisable, revealing the extraordinary clarity and strength of Haring’s symbolic forms.

Although formally minimal, White Icons remains deeply connected to the imagery Haring developed throughout the 1980s across subway drawings, murals, paintings and public projects. The barking dog, radiant baby, angel and other figures had already become central to his visual identity by the end of the decade, and their translation into embossed white relief demonstrates how effectively these images could function even without colour, text or surrounding context.

White Icons continues to be among the most formally distinctive and conceptually restrained portfolios from Haring’s later years. Through embossment, light and physical depth alone, the five works reveal a quieter dimension of Haring’s whilst preserving the immediacy and recognisability that made his imagery one of the defining artistic vocabularies of the late twentieth century.

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