Keith Haring Andy Mouse Portfolio For Sale: Facts | Meaning | Market Demand

Andy Mouse is Keith Haring’s tribute to Andy Warhol, drawn as Mickey Mouse: four large screenprints made in 1986, each signed by both artists. The two had known each other since 1982, and Haring recalled in a 1989 Rolling Stone interview how it began: “Before I knew him, he had been an image to me.” Christopher Makos brought him to the Factory, and after Warhol came to Haring’s show at the Fun Gallery the two started talking, going out and trading works.

Warhol had declared that “Business art is the step that comes after Art”, and the dollar sign runs through the series, a fitting tribute to a friend who made money part of his work. Haring was generous about what he owed him, writing in his journals that “Andy set the precedent for the possibility for my art to exist”. Of the print that puts Warhol on a dollar bill he said it treats him as part of American culture, as Mickey Mouse was, a “sign for something complete, universally understandable”. The cartoon half of the character came from Haring’s childhood: his father, an amateur cartoonist, taught him to draw, and Walt Disney was among his earliest influences.

The series was shown at the B-1 Gallery in Santa Monica in June 1986, and Warhol died in February 1987, soon after it was completed, which gives the two signatures on each sheet a poignancy of their own. Andy Mouse is among the most sought-after portfolios in Haring’s catalogue, and for collectors it combines two of the best-known names in Pop in one affectionate, funny and unmistakably Haring image.

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