Keith Haring Journals (10 page)

It was interesting because you could walk around within it and move the paintings and play with the motion, etc. The hanging papers would all move if one string were pulled, because they were all attached to the same string grid ceiling.

 

The New York installation is a combination of these two effects with a new approach. Instead of hanging the pieces from the ceiling, they are all attached to the walls. The walls are quite large, approximately 20 × 25 feet, and required the use of several large paper paintings. I used all of the large paintings I had with the exception of three. Some of the paintings were ripped in pieces to distribute the imagery more evenly. There was metallic and bright red tape applied at diagonals in some places. The form of the paper makes it three-dimensional.

After the walls were completely covered, the floor was covered with white paper. The next day I placed a video monitor in the lobby outside the gallery. An R.F. unit was attached so that I could record while the image was being shown live. Drew Straub worked the camera inside the room, while the monitor showed the picture in the lobby. I had four gallons of white latex that I put into squeeze bottles and painted the room. This was all recorded on video tape. A few days later I removed the paper from the floor.

 

The most important idea involved in these three works is the freedom of will to rip, alter, obliterate images that I had created. The ability to tear up my paintings so that they can better serve me. The only consideration while creating the environment is the environment itself. If I need to rip up a painting, paint over it, or destroy images I enjoyed before, for the sake of creating a new piece with a stronger effect, I will. The paintings are not final statements. They can be changed, reshaped, combined, destroyed. There were three murals I saved because they were important to me, personally, and were representative of the paintings I used in the environment. However, if I had needed them to fill the space, I probably would have used them.

The ultimate consideration is the maximum effect. There is, naturally, a great risk involved in sacrificing many works for the completion of one unified work, but life is full of risks. Risks are what make the difference between new ideas and re-worked old ideas. If there is an idea that I feel is worthy of my undivided efforts, I will use whatever I have access to. Nothing is sacred to the point of being unchangeable. If a piece is final, that implies that it is perfect, or the purest form attainable. I do not believe I am capable of imitating the perfection of nature. The work I create is of a different reality. It is not created as nature is created. It is created out of my own human attempts at creation, but can never reach perfection. Human beings are not capable of perfection. My work can only be a creation of the human mind and spirit. This act of creation or knowledge of creation changes with time. Nature is a constant. Human beings are in a constant state of change. At best, we can create works that represent our capabilities within a certain span of time. Granted, if they are representative of a specific time, then they are possibly the purest we are capable of at that point, but after that point we have already progressed because we learned something from the new piece.

Nature is operating in ways that, at least to our conception, are unchanged. It remains constant, with little variation that we can detect. Human beings can never imitate this or hope to achieve the same levels of perfection or timelessness. We are victims of change. We are constantly changing and evolving. At best, we can record that development through our art. Retrospective exhibits show this idea more clearly.

What I am proposing, or what I am practicing for myself, is a body of work that is in constant motion. I acknowledge the fact that my work builds upon itself, that it evolves and changes. I am eager to re-use a past work, re-interpret, develop further, build upon, change at my own free will.

There is no reason to limit yourself by abandoning old work or old ideas. Because even if you think you do, you never can. You can only build upon past experiences and past accomplishments.

Also, living under the threat of possible destruction in the form of nuclear war, etc., the most important thing to me is the present. Living day to day for each day as if it were the most important thing to think about. These environments were created to induce some reaction from the viewer. They evoke feelings, ideas, impressions. I want to let people experience art without having to feel inhibited. It can be touched, felt, manipulated, altered, experienced. It is art that is somewhat less “serious,” less untouchable (sacred). It questions the use of the immaculate canvas, the use of dangerously fragile materials. It is against art that frightens people by its state of “perfection.” It is against art that has a specific meaning of specific definition.

Its purpose, its meaning, is to communicate some feeling, any feeling. What that feeling is or how it is experienced depends on the viewer. The viewer should be able to look at art and respond to it without wondering whether he “
understands
” it. It does not aim to be understood! Who “understands” any art? If art is that easily labeled, then it is only existing for those who “understand” it and all the others are ignorant of it.

To define my art is to destroy the purpose of it. The only legitimate definition is “
individual
definition,” individual interpretation, a unique personal response that can only be valued as an opinion. Nobody knows what the ultimate meaning of my work is because there is none.

There is no idea.

There is no definition.

It doesn’t mean anything.

It exists to be understood only as an individual response.

These environments are not only for people who “understand” art. They can be experienced by anybody, anywhere. It is universal and is capable of reaching all levels of life. Every living organism responds to its environment. There is no previous knowledge of art necessary to experience the instinctive natural reaction that inevitably occurs when a human being is placed in an unfamiliar environment. It is spontaneous and automatic. The only possibility of a void of response is the possibility of a person stating that it did nothing or that they felt the same. This is a conditioned response of a closed mind, probably inhibited by the fear of being open because of the possibility of sounding unusual or ignorant. This attitude is very prevalent today and probably always was.

The attitude of artists and educators generally adds to it instead of trying to change it.

Art is for everyone.

To put abstract ideas into words . . .

After reviewing the ideas in this notebook there are several that I feel are characteristic of my feelings today. The one idea that I touched upon lightly, but never write in depth about, is that my paintings and my recent sculpture deal more with space than with pictorial concerns. The images are the results of movements, manipulation within a given space.

For example, as an afterthought, possibly the reason I insist on spending the first few minutes of a painting drawing a border around the area I am about to paint is because I am familiarizing myself with the scale of the painting I am about to paint. I am physically experiencing the entire perimeter of the given space. After I have marked the given space and created a border, or boundaries, I am physically aware of all my edges. I’ve created my boundaries and my space. I then proceed to work from an area and build upon that until I have filled or considered the entire space that I had previously mapped out.

This is, as I said, at this point an afterthought, but that does not necessarily mean I was not aware of it while I created the paintings. It will be interesting to see if my awareness of this will affect my use of it in future paintings.

My concerns in all of my work may be more complex than I am aware of, or perhaps I am just becoming aware of how complex the thought process is and how important it is to utilize space and movement in harmony.

As I learn more or understand more about art history, about science and nature, about myself, I am becoming more aware of what I am doing and why. That is my main question right now—why?

Questioning this is helping me to continue growing, thinking and inevitably doing more interesting work. My constant association with writers, dancers, actors, musicians, etc., forces me to see my intentions/concerns in relation to theirs. They are remarkably similar. I share the same concerns for space and movement and structure as contemporary dancers. I consider spontaneity, improvisation, continuity and harmony as musicians do. I feel a common bond with theatre people and performers as I do “painting as performance” (video tapes). I share visual concerns with film makers. I feel as though the arts have all gravitated to a central plane on which we all operate. The same (or similar) concerns apply to all of the arts.

My conversations with these people are helping me to understand my own reasons for creating art. The things that I am dealing with in creating images/objects are not new and they are not concerns that apply only to sculpture or painting. They are universal concerns that can be applied to many aspects of life.

One of the things that is an aspect of all forms of life, and that all art forms are derivative of, is structure. I was reading an interview with Douglas Dunn in which he is asked how much he wants his dance to be structure. This question seemed to me to be unanswerable. He said, “I think of everything I do about a dance as structure. By definition.” Structure is underlying everything. No matter how “abstract” a piece becomes, it is never unstructured. There is order/structure within all matter, all action, all thought, no matter how unstructured it may appear. Time itself imposes structure. One can work from a structured idea or format, or find structure within any given thought or act, even if it was executed with no preconceived ideas or structural format.

Nothing is chaotic. Everything has relationships within itself that reflect the underlying structures. The structures are becoming more obvious, more opaque in modern-day life. Reducing form to its essential elements. Clarifying order by making it either more obvious or less obvious!

Somewhere within these groups of words lie the ideas within my head fighting to get out and be clarified/understood.

I think there may be many more structural forces and un-obvious considerations going on within my own work. What I am attempting to do is to bring them to the surface so that they can be explored (developed) further.

I am not making pictures anymore.

My disinterest in finished products and “final statements” illustrates this idea. I am more concerned with becoming involved with the area that surrounds the physical reality of my human body. I am constantly being bombarded with influences from my environment. I only wish to throw some of them back. To create energies/influences that will affect others, as theirs affect me. My paintings, themselves, are not as important as the interaction between people who see them and the ideas that they take with them after they leave the presence of my painting—the thoughts and feelings I have evoked from their consciousness as a result of their contact with my thoughts and feelings as seen through the physical reality of images/objects.

I was most aware of the success of my intentions the several times I did large floor pieces in the 22nd Street sculpture studio. The building has huge doors that open up onto 22nd Street. They were originally used for a loading dock. I would work near the doors to take advantage of the sunlight pouring in. The traffic on 22nd is light, but many people would take time out to stop and watch, or at least look once, or discuss it with me, or tell me what they thought it was. It was wonderful to hear vastly different opinions, ideas, comments on the same piece of many different levels. The main thing that impressed me was the “kinds” of individuals who would stop and talk to me. They were
not
, for the most part, gallerygoers and not people who generally frequent MoMA, but they were interested. There is an audience that is being ignored, but they are not necessarily ignorant. They are open to art when it is open to them.

A few days after the last statement in this journal, I re-read much of what I had written and felt that it was not nearly accurate enough. It seemed shallow and understated. I was determined to throw away the previous pages. Instead, however, I just stopped writing in the journal because I felt certain that my efforts were destined to be fruitless, or at best would only hint at my “real” thoughts and motivations.

Tonight I re-read them again and found that some remain disturbing while others, much to my surprise, seemed to take on new meaning in light of my current thought and recently acquired knowledge.

The major influence, although it is not the sole influence, has been the work of William S. Burroughs. His profound realizations, which I encountered in radio broadcasts of the Nova Convention, and in the book
The Third Mind
by Burroughs and Brion Gysin, which I have just begun to read, are beginning to tie up a lot of loose ends in my own work and thinking. Conversations with Barbara Buckner, Lucio Pozzi, introduction to the work of Gertrude Stein and Meredith Monk, writings by Van Gogh, John Cage, Richard Kostelanetz, conversations with my friends Mary Gleasen, Drew Straub, Kermit Oswald, Brian Warren, Frank Holliday, Nina Renna, listening to music by Steve Reich and Brian Warren, working with words and images as related to muscle patterns with Ellen Webb, spending the days, intensely, with a port-o-pak, playing my two video tapes of “Sound Web” simultaneously and becoming instantly amazed at possibilities of sound and image juxtaposition, hearing poetry by John Giorno read through a tape-delay system, video class with Barbara Buckner: All of these things are accumulating and defining each other and being interchanged and compared to each other, and I’m finally starting to realize that it is all one unit and that dramatic changes (of awareness) are taking place in my consciousness; a new understanding and interest in tacit knowledge, attempts at beginning to think in images as opposed to words, new meaning to all the previously misunderstood associations made between my choice of imagery and Aztec and Egyptian and Chinese symbolism, new directions, more reflection, new understanding and many, many more questions. Still, when I re-read, this seems to only touch on the surface. It seems impossible to record efficiently what I am thinking.