Keith Haring Journals (9 page)

The destruction of this planet, this solar system, by human beings would not be an end to life. It would go on without us.

We have a choice, whether we wish to continue evolution on this planet or not.

I vote “yes.”

Everything in this notebook is subject to change.

When I re-read an idea two or three days later, sometimes (usually) I have a more defined, altered, or more simple version of the original idea, or a new interpretation of the idea, or a totally new idea that develops as a result of the first one.

This book contains thoughts that are spontaneous. Every day I think differently, re-evaluate old ideas, and express my ideas in different terms.

If I still believe any of the theory or philosophy I have written here next year at this time I will be surprised.

I’m waiting.

I’m waiting for the ink to dry.

I have just completed another landmark (for me, that is) painting. It is the first time I ever tried to utilize both arms to control two brushes. This afternoon I bought three brushes that are approximately three feet long. It is amazing to hold them in your hands and move them about. I feel like I am doing a “ceremonial stick dance.” They were very awkward at first. I tried to manipulate them several different ways: both working together side by side, both making the same motion while being held several feet apart, both moving simultaneously, moving alternately, and one at a time. When you fling ink on the paper by swinging them wildly, they make a wonderful “whooshing” sound as they cut through the air. It was a very intense experience. I found myself much more aware, more involved with every movement, especially with the left hand. Although I was making spontaneous gestures, the forms seemed to be somewhat contrived. It was frustrating not to have full control of my faculties. The first painting is understandably crude and experimental, but I managed to unify all the brush experiments in one total composition by repeating certain actions.

For me it has an interesting feeling of conflict. The left hand fights to be as controlled as the right. The right hand fights the left to make all of the important judgments of line. The two hands are constantly trying to work together, but because they are so distinctly different, they tend to struggle with each other to find common ground, to find unity/consistency.

When I have mastered the ability to use both arms interchangeably; when I can control each arm separately and perform different movements at the same time, as a piano player can; when I can unify my movements so that I can paint consistently at a very high rate of speed on a very spontaneous, natural, spiritual level; then perhaps I will have exhausted the possibilities of the kind of “body-involvement” painting I am currently involved in.

Probably by that time, if I ever reach that time, I will have many more ideas or possibilities for this kind of painting. The road is endless. There is no end, except an end of my physical capabilities. Unfortunately I will probably never have time to explore the possibilities of this “body-involvement” idea of painting because I frequently acquire new knowledge, new ideas, new theories, new approaches, and inevitably new priorities.

I feel in some way that I may be continuing a search, continuing an exploration that other painters have started and were unable to finish because they advanced to new ideas, as I will also, or perhaps because they were unable to carry out their ideas because of the cruel simple fact of death. It seems that artists are never ready to die. Their lives are stopped before their ideas are completed. Matisse making new discoveries up until the time he could hardly see, using scissors, creating ideas that sparked new ideas until death interrupted. Every true artist leaves unresolved statements, interrupted searches. There may be significant discoveries, seemingly exhausted possibilities, but there is
always
a
new
idea that results from these discoveries.

I am not a beginning.

I am not an end.

I am a link in a chain.

The strength of which depends on my own contributions, as well as the contributions of those before and after me.

I hope I am not vain in thinking that I may be exploring possibilities that artists like Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky have initiated but did not resolve. Their ideas are living ideas. They cannot be resolved, only explored deeper and deeper. I find comfort in the knowledge that they were on a similar search.

In some sense I am not alone. I feel it when I see their work. Their ideas live on and increase in power as they are explored and rediscovered. I am not alone, as they were not alone, as no artist of the brotherhood ever was or ever will be alone. When I am aware of this unity, and refuse to let my self-doubt and lack of self-confidence interfere, it is one of the most wonderful feelings I’ve ever experienced. I am a necessary part of an important search to which there is no end.

After experiencing the Mark Rothko retrospective I feel enlightened. I had seen Rothko’s work before, but the clarity and unity reflected in a retrospective exhibition gives each piece an added intensity. The first time I had really experienced his work was in the National Gallery in a room with eight paintings on paper from the “Brown and Grey” series. The grouping of these works in a single room concentrated their energy and heightened their impact. I stayed in that room for a long time becoming completely involved with his work.

I had a similar experience at the Guggenheim. Being in the company of such a large body of work provokes ideas and realizations that are not generated by a single painting. His work left little unanswered. It was a solid statement, perhaps taken to its fullest extent.

The development of his painting style can be easily traced back to his early figurative works. As early as 1938, rectangular considerations appeared in his work. Although they were merely backgrounds for his increasingly surreal imagery, there was a specific division of the canvas into rectangular planes. In a painting from 1944,
Horizontal Processions
, the influence of Gorky was evident. He appeared to be more and more making the bridge between surreal and expressionist imagery. Through the 1940s his interest in painting leaned more toward the quality of the brush strokes, his sensitivity toward composition, and the abandonment of line for more abstract solid fields of color. In 1946 planes began to dominate the paintings. There is a logic of layers. In 1947 the first painting appeared with the edges of the canvas treated as a frame. The use of the edge creates the sensation of colors floating above the surface. The use of color frame and field become more and more evolved through the remaining years. He works with a minimum of elements to produce maximum effect. The limitations he creates for himself by restraining his imagery to pure fields of color only heighten his creative powers.

The most prevalent feelings I experienced throughout the show was one of unity. The work presented spanned almost 50 years of his life. Looking at one piece, you realize that it is an essential step in the evolution of an entire body of work. Each painting builds upon the previous accomplishments. His work represents a commitment to an idea that he pursues to its fullest extent. It proves once again that there can be an infinite number of variations on any given idea. There is no end to possibilities. The only end is the physical one, which he chose to create for himself.

 

In the floor piece (sculpture) I am constructing:

To get maximum use out of positive/negative space relationships in this particular piece, keep this in mind: Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.

Shapes that have positive/negative relationships existing within their own structure (besides the obvious one: shape related to space as a whole) may be less functional when placed within the context of a multiple group of shapes.

Shapes that contain positive/negative components already may distract viewer from viewing piece as a whole, when this shape is set aside of another shape or in a large group of shapes.

a. Eye tends to be drawn to “individual” shapes instead of the structure created by an entire “group” of shapes.

b. If each shape operates only in a positive/negative relationship when viewed as a member of a group, the effect is one of more unity and more flowing movement. Eye tends to view as a whole, instead of grouping individual shapes.

Both of these principles can operate effectively on separate levels or on a combined level, but consideration of these facts is important.

To use these structures without any understanding of their specific effect is less effective and possibly confusing.

Drawing pictures in the snow is the most perfect example of my attempts to create a perfect form. Inevitably the snow is in constant change: There is no way to control its permanency or its form. Drawing in the snow is like trying to paint a picture that will record specific thoughts at a specific time. You draw fast and you are always aware that you are creating something very temporary, very auto-destructive, very instant. It goes quickly and there is not time to worry about it. It is important for the experience, for the time it exists and the time it has occupied in a never-ending process of creation /construction and destruction. A circle. It is possible to reach the highest levels of instantaneous response recorded in spontaneous method and representative of purest thought when you are working with the knowledge that the work you create is temporary, insignificant in a broader sense, significant in an immediate sense, a perfect representation of time passing, time existing. Then you realize you are reacting instead of acting. Responding instead of contriving. Art instead of imitation. Primal response. Humanistic attempts at succeeding time.

This, I feel, is the advantage to creating art at this point in time: When we realize that we are temporary, we are facing our self-destruction, we are realizing our fate and we must confront it. Art is the only sensible primal response to an outlook of possible destruction (obliteration).

An environment by definition is the assemblage of surrounding things, conditions or influences. The environment that I have created in the room at the School of Visual Arts Student Gallery on 23rd Street is composed of paintings that I have done since I have been in New York, as well as a collection of paper paintings from the Pittsburgh paper-constructed box environment. Some of these pieces were hanging in the room I first used as a paper environment. So, in fact, some of the paper in the New York environment is third-generation.

The first piece I created was in a small, all-white room in the basement of the Arts and Crafts Center in Pittsburgh. This room had several pipes running horizontally across the ceiling. These pipes hung at different levels and different depths across the room. From these pipes I hung (with string) several pieces of paper: wallpaper, lithographs, discarded paintings I had done and then ripped in pieces, telephone-book pages, drawings, photo-backdrop paper and small paintings I had done. The floor was then covered with paper, and tempera paint was squirted on the paper from squeeze bottles. The colors were bright and created wonderful patterns. The most important aspect of this piece for me was the fact that for the first time I actually was able to live out a long-time fantasy: to throw paint in a room without worrying where it landed.

After the paint dried I removed the paper from the floor. Then I hung four pieces of bristol board (20ʺ × 30ʺ) at eye level across the front of the space. This acted as a barrier in front of the painted papers. The bristol board had been painted previously with India ink in a tight, almost geometric style. They had been painted while placed side by side and functioned as one painting. However, when they were hung in the room there was two feet of space between each paper, so that the connection was less obvious, but discernible.

The pipes were arranged at different levels, so an interesting depth was created by the paper hanging on different “planes.”

There are no remaining photographs of this work.

 

The second paper environment was done in my one-man show at the Arts and Crafts Center. I constructed a wooden frame and put nails into each side. This frame was then hung from the ceiling seven feet from the floor. String was wrapped from nail to nail, creating a grid. Then heavy paper (bristol) was hung from the sides.

The piece was in the corner so only two sides were covered on the outside. The inside walls were covered with metallic paper on all four sides. There was a doorway in the front.

The remaining paper pieces from the first environment were then hung from the strings in the false ceiling of the paper box. Also new paintings and pieces of paintings were added. The floor was covered with red vinyl.