Keith Haring Journals (32 page)

“Taking pictures of the sky
Naked on the sidewalk
The flasher rises in Kansas.”

—Allen Ginsberg, Sept. 11, 1987

 

 

Immediately after the photographers finished snapping, the gallery ladies were already running around talking about “preserving” it. The next morning I found it polyurethaned. It washed away part of the chalk, but was still visible.

This was my first collaboration with Allen.

Me and Juan get a ride with some college art boys to the hotel to smoke pot and see if Timmy Leary and Barbara have arrived yet. They haven’t. We smoke. Timmy calls, he came without Barbara. We agree to meet later for a drink.

We go with the kids to see Lucifer, an abandoned frat house covered with local graffiti. Scary place. Abandoned after a fire several years ago. We go to the reading late, after being at their house for some beer. They had a Free South Africa poster hanging in their kitchen. We see Jim Carroll read and leave again. Run into John Giorno. Back to hotel later to see Timmy in bar.

Next day we plan to go in search of skateboard hangout. After breakfast there is not enough time before Timmy’s lecture. I see a girl with my T-shirt on street and offer to autograph it, but she doesn’t believe it’s me. Timmy’s lecture is preceded by Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys, who has just been cleared in an obscenity case in L.A. over a poster by Geiger (the artist who designed
Alien
) that depicted various cocks and asses. Unbelievable story. The poster, inserted in the record, was nothing compared to some of the images I have created. The stories about the search, etc., are pretty scary. I wonder if there is any possibility of me being singled out.

He read a lot of provocative material and was really impressive. Timmy’s rambling lecture about everything from drugs to computers was slightly tired by comparison, but great. He offered some interesting ideas, and introduced me to the audience as the “future of American art.” I was wearing the “AIDS is Political-Biological Germ Warfare” shirt. Some woman came up to me afterward to discuss her findings (top secret) about the probable cover-up. She was a little too paranoid (can you blame her?) to tell me much, ’cause she didn’t know me, but we talked for about a half hour. Then I went with Juan and two college kids to find the skateboard ramp. We finally found it and I spray-painted some stuff on it. Unfortunately the ramp is in bad shape and will probably need to be refinished soon. I wonder where the painted boards will turn up.

We get to Liberty Hall in time for the 9:00 PM reading. John Giorno is great as usual. Anne Waldman was really good, too. William was William (always a treat), and Allen read “Howl” and sang two fun songs. This is the first time I’ve seen a group like this since the Nova Convention in 1979. Nova Convention changed my life. I got the feeling that this event was happening at an equally powerful and important time—not only in my life, but in history. The weekend was full of “historical moments.” Conversations with Allen and Anne at the hotel party afterward were invigorating.

Sitting in a hall in the hotel with Tim, Allen, several art boys and college students, some naked except for towels, running to the pool, it looked like a college dormitory party. Powerful moment. Met a guy from Detroit who had come with Jack Kerouac’s wife who told me an interesting story about an art history class lecture comparing me to Gustav Klimt. Another kid from Berlin had heard a “serious” lecture about me two weeks earlier in Berlin.

Gave out some of the AIDS shirts to Jello and the others. There was a 15-year-old cock-teaser who was rapping to everyone but making out with a 50-year-old bull dyke. This kid has serious problems. We moved the remaining party to our room about 4:30. Mostly college kids, confused art boys, etc. We (me and Juan) went to sleep at 6:00 AM.

Woke at 12:00 and went to William’s house. We talked about the paintings and drawings he’s working on. Shooting boards with paint cans on them and pictures. Some pretty interesting ones. Funny how the gunshots look so much like Brion’s drawings. Smoked a joint with William to aid in “seeing stuff in the paintings.” More people arrived. Matt Dillon, Jim Carroll, Terry Toye and Patricia, who drove down from Iowa. Most of us drive out to William’s friend’s house to shoot guns. I shot a handgun. Sort of fun, I guess, but too boring to shoot at targets. Talked to William about the Amazon, talked to John about AIDS, said goodbyes all around and off to the airport.

Last night during William’s reading he mentioned the AIDS paper about germ warfare. He had a copy of the same poster I took the caption off of for my shirt.

As usual, there was a lot of this “cosmic coincidence” around this weekend. Things just sort of fell in place without any effort. The “magic” is very real. Someone was discussing healing in the car today and said something about the only healing that will help the AIDS virus is “magic,” holistic medicine, visualization, psycho-medicine, etc. I hope my generation will be able to carry on the “magic” that this previous generation has excavated and gently tried to teach us. They have liberated a part of us that is too important to be dismissed and passed over. As the gems of our era (founding fathers) disappear, like Brion and Andy, etc., it becomes increasingly important to keep the fires burning and use their knowledge and experience to prepare the present and forthcoming generations for the world they are about to inherit.

For that reason and a thousand more this weekend was a very important stepping stone in my life. I’m happy I’m here.

I’m on a train leaving Zurich. When I arrived yesterday I slept a while and then went to the Trickfilmladen studio to start working on the animation. We had to start developing characters. The six one-minute spots are designed to teach children about home safety. It’s the first time I’m using my “cartoon” characters for an animated film. It’s funny to see these characters, most of which I invented when I was ten or eleven years old, turn into “real things.” It’s nice to be back in the house of Rolf Baechler where I did my first real animation three years ago for the store here called BIG. This time I’m sort of the art director and designer instead of having to do all the drawings.

Rolf and Yunia’s kids are all real happy to see me. It’s been three years and they’ve grown. Actually, that’s not true. I met them three years ago the first time, but I saw them last year in Montreux when I was at the jazz festival. They can’t stop climbing all over me and giggling a lot. Their father is always trying to get them to calm down and act normal, but they can’t help it. Especially Serafina, the little girl, who giggles even if you touch her with one finger! I’m sort of an honorary member of the family. Again, they told me the story of how the kids cried for three days after I left them three years ago. I seem to be adopting these little families all over the world.

Speaking of families: I’m sitting in an empty train car so I’m playing my radio real loud. I’ve got a tape on that Junior made me called
Paradise Lost
. It still hasn’t sunk in that the Paradise Garage has closed forever. Every time I hear a song that is a “Garage song,” I get real emotional. I can’t explain exactly why, but something about just knowing it was there was a comfort, especially when I was out of New York City. There was always something to look forward to immediately upon my return. In fact, I often scheduled my trips around the Garage, leaving on Sundays and returning before or on Saturdays. It was really a kind of family. A tribe. Maybe I should open a club, but I really don’t want to deal with that headache. This is the worst heartache I ever felt. It’s like losing a lover when everything was going just fine. It’s like when Andy and Bobby died. Maybe Paradise Garage has moved to heaven . . . so Bobby can go there now. That would be nice.

The last night was pretty incredible but not as sad as I thought it would be. People were sort of numb. It’s just so weird knowing that you’re not going to see a lot of these people again. There were a lot of people I only used to see there, a lot of them I never even spoke to the whole five years I went there, but I feel like I “know” them ’cause I shared something with them. Grace came for a little while, but didn’t stay long. Larry Levan played all night and all the next day till after midnight. I had to leave at midnight because I had work to do Monday morning to prepare for this trip to Europe.

The last couple of weeks have been really hectic. The mural in Philadelphia with City Kids, and then a trip to Kansas to see Bill Burroughs, to Detroit for an installation at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Cranbrook was pretty cool. I did probably my best painting to date! The room had 16-foot-high ceilings and the walls were 35 feet long. I did a fast Gysinesque color “calligraffiti” background with big Chinese brushes and then the next day painted with Japanese brushes with black (ink/paint mix) with different size lines and brushes. Each brush I used was nailed to the wall at the end of a line. The big Chinese brushes looked so cool after using them that it seemed like a good idea. I went there with no materials and decided what to do after seeing the space. So I bought all these brushes with Cranbrook money that weren’t very expensive and weren’t very reusable after the abusive painting of the color, so it seemed like a good idea and also, since this was a temporary installation, it was a chance to experiment. I’m obsessed with brushes, so somehow to sacrifice them to the painting was a kind of homage to the brushes themselves. The whole thing was a kind of sacrifice anyway. The room will be repainted in one month.

I took Kwong along to take pictures. Photography has become such an important part of my work since so much of it is temporary. It is, after all, the phenomena of photography and video that have made the international phenomenon of Keith Haring possible. How else would everyone in the world have plugged into my information? Most information about art is conveyed through pictures now. Sometimes that’s deceptive, but in my case it is the means
and
the end. Of course, the effect of scale is lost in photo depiction, but almost all of the other information is transferable.

My lecture at Cranbrook was probably the best I’ve ever done. The auditorium was packed. A lot of people there, in fact most of them, were not Cranbrook art students. Many people came from Detroit and a lot of kids from the private middle schools at Cranbrook. Somehow the words just flowed and I was pretty articulate. I’m anxious to hear a tape of the talk. Mobs of people afterward for autographs. My patience was even longer than usual.

Some girl brought a poster for me to sign which she said she got at the Tate in London. It’s really funny to me how all these museums sell poster and postcard reproductions of my art, but refuse to exhibit, collect or even acknowledge it within the museum. I bet they didn’t sell Peter Max in art museum bookshops ever. They want to play with me, but they don’t have the balls to stand up and support me now. Wait, everyone says, just wait and be patient. I should be glad, I suppose, that I am still outside of their acceptance. It gives me a kind of freedom and gives me something to work against. Does this mean I’m still avant-garde? Ha-ha, just kidding. I can’t believe that some people are so shallow as to worry about whether one person, like Saatchi, collects me or not. How can one person be an important determiner of what is good or not? In fact, if someone is trying to use their power or collecting to impose their taste and standardize the taste of the entire culture, then I think they are the most suspicious suspects of all. It’s all banking and investment bullshit at that level. Saatchi might as well be a bank. The art market is one of the most dangerous, parasitic, corrupt organizations in the world, next to the Roman Catholic church or the justice system in the United States. How naive of me to even think that art was an island of “purity” in this vast chaos of business and “reality.” The only time it remains pure is when you are doing it at a real public level without monetary compensation or when you do it totally for yourself in seclusion. Even now, when I draw in public, the autograph-seekers are sometimes motivated by the hope that my signature will be “worth” something instead of simply because they like it or admire it. It is, however, impossible to go backwards. I’m in this thing now and I’ve got to deal with it. I think I’m doing a good job of it so far.