Keith Haring Journals (19 page)

I think public sculpture should aggressively alter our perception of the environment in a positive way. People love to interact with sculptures by climbing, sitting, touching and moving. For me, the most effective public sculpture would function as visual and physical entertainment. I think public art (unless there is a specific political or ideological message) should make people feel comfortable, and brighten their environment. These sculptures were designed to be played on . . . a kind of “adult-scale” playground.

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint.

I’d like to pretend that I’ve never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything . . . and then make something.

Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something I think about the person who made it.

Nothing is important . . . so, everything is important.

It has been such a long time since I last tried to write down anything about what has happened (is happening) in my life.

It has been moving so quickly that the only record is airplane tickets and articles in magazines from the various trips and exhibitions. Someday I suppose these will constitute my biography.

It is only now that I realize the importance of a biography. I mean I always have realized that I enjoy to read (and have learned many things from) the biographies of artists whom I admire. It is probably my main source of education. In the beginning of my “career” (what an awful word) I was misled by a teacher who thought the things I was writing to be pretentious and self-important. Years later, when I read those things I wrote in 1978, it didn’t seem so pretentious, for almost everything I wrote about “wanting to do,” I actually did in the four or five years that followed.

Now I regret that I didn’t continue to write constantly. Especially in the years from 1980 to 1985 when so many things happened that changed my life, and things happened so quickly that it became one big blur. When dissected and put in a logical order, the “rise to success,” as it is sarcastically called, is not as astonishing or “overnight” as it may appear.

The “social responsibility” that I find in my work is found in the LINE itself. The acceptance of my LINE is responsible for my acceptance as a public figure. The connection to “primitive” (I hate that word) culture is the key to understanding how and why my art became completely acceptable and quite natural in an age that finds itself technologically and ideologically very far removed from these so-called “primitive” cultures. “Art,” after all, is something that is at the very basis of human existence. The need to separate ourselves and connect ourselves to our environment (world) is a primary need of all human beings.

Art becomes the way we define our existence as human beings. This has a perverse air to it, I admit. The very idea that we are so different from other beings (animals) and things (rocks, trees, air, water) is, I think, a great misconception, but if understood is not necessarily evil. We know that “humans” determine the future of this planet. We have the power to destroy and create. We, after all is said and done, are the perpetrators of the destruction of the Earth we inhabit. No matter how slowly this destruction is occurring, no matter how “natural” this de-composition is, we are the harborers of this change.

We are not completely evil, however. There is a kind of excuse we conjure up for our destruction. We are human and we “understand” beauty. Jean Dubuffet delivered a speech at the Art Institute of Chicago that clearly explains the misconception of beauty embraced by the Western Culture. This speech, which I discovered in 1977 in Pittsburgh, I have read and re-read, and it is one of my favorite things written by another artist. This text and Robert Henri’s
The Art Spirit
are the literary references of my philosophy.

I’ve read many other things and many informative texts (i.e., Nole’s “Information Theory” and Eco’s “Semiotics,” etc.) but few have had such a simple, profound effect as these works by Dubuffet and Henri. Both were written decades before me, but each is relevant to contemporary art and, I presume, will be relevant forever.

Some things don’t change. Everything goes in circles and repetition is a law of nature. People are the same (or similar) all over the world. Religion is a response to existence that is common to all cultures and all peoples everywhere. People aspire to “believe” in something. People need this “belief” to explain and justify their existence. The different facets (or faces) of religion are different only because people are committed to the idea of “different” cultures and different “nationalistic values.” The common denominator is always the same. Whether voodoo or Buddhism it all comes down to the same thing, really.

The same is true of art and culture, obviously. There is a common denominator that runs through all time, all peoples.

LATER THE SAME EVENING . . .

I keep thinking that the main reason I am writing is fear of death. I think I finally realize the importance of being alive. When I was watching the 4th of July fireworks the other night and saw my friend Martin [Burgoyne], I saw death. He says he has been tested and cleared of having AIDS, but when I looked at him I saw death.

Life is so fragile. It is a very fine line between life and death. I realize I am walking this line. Living in New York City and also flying on airplanes so much, I face the possibility of death every day.

And when I die there is nobody to take my place. There is nobody working now who is even vaguely similar to my style or attitude or principles. I mean that seriously. I suppose that is true of a lot of people (or everyone) because everyone is an individual and everyone is important in that they cannot be replaced. But, right now, there is nobody in the world who can be put into a group with me and called a movement.

My movement consists of only one person. There are several people whose work has similarities to certain aspects or features of what I am doing, but nobody has all of them.

Even Andy Warhol, who I am often compared to, is in fact a very, very different kind of artist.

Andy has been a big influence as an example of both what to be and what not to be. I have learned a lot of things from Andy about how to deal with people and how to deal with “the public” and the public’s “image” of me.

Nothing is ever taught as a lesson, but by watching (observing) and quietly taking note. I have spent a lot of time with Andy watching and listening. Many of the lessons I have learned my whole life have been about what I don’t want to do or be.

I don’t really know exactly what I want to be, but I know what I don’t want to be.

I think part of the reason I feel I have a “responsibility” as a public figure is that I know that there are always people watching . . . people that look up to you in a kind of way, especially young people. I would love to be a teacher because I love children and I think that not enough people respect children or understand how important they are. I have done many projects with children of all ages. My fondest memories are of these experiences. When I was 21 I spent a summer teaching “Art” at a day-care center in Brooklyn. It was the most fulfilling summer of my life. There is nothing that makes me happier than making a child smile. The reason that the “baby” has become my logo or signature is that it is the purest and most positive experience of human existence.

Children are the bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form. Children are color-blind and still free of all the complications, greed, and hatred that will slowly be instilled in them through life.

I will never forget some of the adults who touched my life through my childhood. Sometimes very brief encounters have made an impact that is very lasting and very real. If it is possible for me to have that kind of effect on any children, I think that would be the most important and useful thing I could do.

Touching people’s lives in a positive way is as close as I can get to an idea of religion.

Belief in one’s self is only a mirror of belief in other people and every person.

I would love to do a book one day with photos of me all over the world with different children. Many pictures like this exist from every place I have visited. I always have had contact with children on some level during every exhibition in every country.

This is one of the things that I am thinking when I say there are aspects of my life and art that are not duplicated by any other artist that I know of.