Keith Haring Journals (7 page)

Some attitudes I see all around me are:

If I stand in front of my mirror and gaze at my image, I see an endless number of different conceptions of how I look. I feel as though I have many different faces. I put them on and take them off, and my conception of other people is the same. People look different at different times. I mean completely different. It may have something to do with how
they
feel, but more likely is controlled by
my
feelings, my emotions, my reality at the time I am looking at them.

Usually the underlying fact that change is reality, that we are constantly changing and constantly in difficult situations, different states of mind and actually different realities

Most simply, people know to some extent that they feel different at different times or look different to themselves different days, but few people really try to experience this or question it or really investigate its reasons or its implications. People tend to try to control this by living an opposite life pattern. It is like superimposing a grid on top of a patch of grass that is alive and constantly changing, and then trying to make the grass fit the predetermined design of the grid.

People, I realize, cannot live like a patch of grass. They could, I suppose, at one time, but we are so far removed from that time that it is hard to conceive. People can, however, live their lives with the realization that they are constantly changing, products of their changing environment and changing situations, and time. They can live, at least, in harmony with the knowledge and co-exist with it instead of working against it.

There is a point, I’m sure, where the modern man can confront this reality, question it, explore it, and live with it and actually become part of it and lead a much more comfortable life. To live in harmony with an idea. To live in harmony with an uncontrollable reality that we are subject to whether we choose it or not. There is no choice except the choice of how to deal with it.

I keep writing because before I try to explain how I feel I am living with this “reality,” I want to try to explain (to myself) that it really is a reality, that it exists, and that I’m doing things in a way that is not totally without reason.

To be a victim of your own knowledge is not understanding what your knowledge is and what its result is.

To be a victim of change is to ignore its existence.

To be a victim of “living by what you think” is to ignore the possibilities of “another way to live” or the possibility of “being wrong about the way it is” or ignoring the possibility of “not knowing what you think.”

Thinking you know the answer is as dangerous as not thinking about the possibility of no answers.

Poetic sentences that make no sense might as well be poems.

In painting, words are present in the form of images. Paintings can be poems if they are read as words instead of images. “Images that represent words.” Egyptian Art/hieroglyphics /pictograms/Symbolism. Words as imagery.

 

Can imagery exist (communicate) in the form of words?

Foreign languages, undeciphered alphabets can be beautiful, can express without a knowledge of the meaning of the words.

 

Looking at a book printed in Chinese can be as beautiful as looking at pictures. Images that represent words.

All of this in the context that everything is always changing. That is why, for me, painting, as I know it, can be imagery as words. Because I am different at different times. I believe I have never lived two days that were the same in
any
way. Similar, maybe, but not the same. I think, feel, act, conceive and live differently every day, every instant. And if I am different at different times, my imagery also changes.

I paint differently every day.

My paintings are a record of a given space of time.

To paint differently every day makes it impossible to paint a consistent composition over the period of more than one session.

It is done, but not without pain, needless changes, deevolution, false repetition (duplication), over-working, collage (piling different ideas on top of each other and calling them a “whole”), etc. Pure art exists only on the level of instant response to pure life.

I am not trying to say that art up to this point has been useless or any less pure than art done in this context. I am saying that art has evolved. Has changed faster than we have. Has been with humans from the beginning of time as a helpful companion. Each artist (person) of a given time has had a different life and therefore different attitude toward life and art. Although much art history is composed of “movements” and style unique to a
group
of artists, it always was and always will be a product of the
individual
. Even if a “group mentality” or “cultural grouping” of artists has existed, the act of art itself is individual or has (in collaborated efforts) an individual’s conception or a mixture of individual inputs toward a group effort.

However, after seeing these many “movements” and “group styles” and “periods” of art history, I believe we have reached a point where there can be no more group mentality, no more movements, no more shared ideals. It is a time for self-realization.

Being tested by the media and mentality of this anti-individual society, where stereotypes are the reigning power and overpopulation has forced us to believe that we exist as “kinds of people” or “types of people” or “generalizations,” has produced artists with the realization that individuality is still the base of it all. Individuality is the enemy of this mass society. Individuality speaks for the individual and makes him a significant factor. Art is individuality. I feel this is the underlying message of modern art. It is the lesson that must not be ignored. It is what modern art has been screaming at us since its beginnings. It is what
all
art has been saying since the beginning of time.

Where an artist has destroyed his own goals (or had them destroyed for him, and sat by and done nothing), is when he has let himself be part of groups, follow movements, make group manifestos and form group ideas. Matisse had a pure vision and painted beautiful pictures. Nobody ever has or ever will paint like him again. His was an individual statement. No artists are parts of a movement. Unless they are followers. And then they are unnecessary and doing unnecessary art. If they are exploring in an “individual way” with “different ideas” the idea of another individual, they are making a worthy contribution, but as soon as they call themselves followers or accept the truths they have not explored as truths, they are defeating the purpose of art as an individual expression—Art as art.

Art in 1978 has seen numerous attempts at classifying or labeling and then exploiting an idea until the idea itself is lost in the process, and now I feel it is time to come out against group mentality. I don’t know if this is a shared opinion, but by the lack of any existing movements or new movements or new directions, it looks and feels as though we are seeing individual artists, individual ideas. They have been influenced, of course, and many are probably not sincere in their endeavors, but this void of “group movements” after the over-emphasized, unquestioned “movements” of the last ten years that happened so fast—Pop, Conceptual, Minimal, Earth Works, post-this and anti-that—it seems like it is high time for the realization that art is everything and everywhere. That the conception of art occurs in
every
individual in day-to-day life in endless forms and ideas and is undefinable
because
it is different for each individual. That life is art and art is life. That everybody on every level identifies with art, regardless if they are aware of it or admit it or realize it. That the importance of the “individual idea” in a society of this size and mentality is the only reality. That it is important to the future existence of the human race that we understand the importance of the individual and the reality that we are all different, all individuals, all changing and all contributing to the “whole” as individuals,
not
as groups or products of “mass identity,” “anti-individual,” “stereotyped groups of humans with the same goals, ideas and needs.”

I am me. I may look like you, but if you take a closer look you will realize that I am nothing like you at all. I am very different. I see things through a completely different perspective because in my life I had experiences that you didn’t have, and I had feelings you didn’t have, and I’ve lived places and seen places and experienced life from a completely different point of view than you have. I may be wearing the same shoes and the same haircut, but that gives you no right to have any preconceived notions about what I am or who I am.

Art as a personal exploration.

Art as an end to the question “what is it?” or “what does it mean?”

The meaning of art as it is experienced by the viewer, not the artist.

The artist’s ideas are not essential to the art as seen by the viewer.

The viewer is an artist in the sense that he conceives a given piece of his own way that is unique to him.

His own imagination determines what it is, what it means.

The viewer does not have to be considered during the conception of the art, but should not be told, then, what to think or how to conceive it or what it means. There is no need for definition.

Definition can be the most dangerous, destructive tool the artist can use when he is making art for a society of individuals.

Definition is not necessary.

Definition defeats itself and its goals by defining them.

The public has a right to art.

The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists.

The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a “self-proclaimed artist” to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses.

Art is for everybody. To think that they—the public—do not appreciate art because they don’t understand it, and to continue to make art that they don’t understand and therefore become alienated from, may mean that the artist is the one who doesn’t understand or appreciate art and is thriving in this “self-proclaimed knowledge of art” that is actually bullshit.

Art can be a positive influence on a society of individuals.

Art can be a destructive element and an aid to the take-over of the “mass-identity” society.

Art must be considered by the artists as well as the public.

The public will not, however, say what they want for fear of seeming uneducated or not understanding art. Therefore, the responsibility rests predominantly on the consciousness of the artist.

The artist cannot, however, make his decisions without considering the public, why they won’t “come out” about the arts, why they need art, and how to help them fulfill their essential roles as viewers, how to experience art and why.

The decision is basically, is art for an educated few, or is art for all people of the time?

Is art successful without the input of the public?

If the public is afraid of art, should we be afraid of what we have done to make the public afraid of art?

Were they always? Do they matter? Is art for the individual, by the individual only for viewing and appreciation of the individual?

Is art for self? Is art simply fulfilling an artist-ego relationship?

I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring ideas together.

I have nothing specifically to communicate but this: That I have created a reality that is not complete until it is met with the ideas of another human being (or, I suppose, animal), including myself, and that the reality is not complete until it is experienced. It has infinite meanings because it will be experienced differently by every individual.