Keith Haring. Journals. Part Two

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Keith Haring
Journals
Introduction by Robert Farris Thompson
Foreword by David Hockney

Penguin Books Classics, 464 pages. 2010

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Two

[Original Version: January 2019 - New Version: April 2019]

Fig. 5) The entrance to the Albertina in Vienna, decorated with the  drawing "Without title, 1982" by Keith Haring, on the occasion of the exhibition "Keith Haring. The Alphabet", held from March 16th to June 24th 2018.

Go Back to Part One

It goes without saying that many critical interpretations have been given of Keith Haring's work, and sometimes very divergent among them. In the catalogue of the recent Vienna exhibition ("Keith Haring. The Alphabet"), held on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the artist's birth, his work was read by the curator Dieter Burchardt (1971-) in a rationalist sense. He was seen as a global artist, able to conquer the general public with a simple but effective treatment of images and colour; and above all, he was praised as the inventor of a figurative language of immediate and world-wife comprehension, substantially impermeable to cultural transfers, a sort of ideal predecessor of today's emojis. The exhibition aimed to explain and rationalise the ideogram-like language of the artist, as if it were a matter of revealing the intrinsic wisdom of a fascinating language, whose translation key had just been found (the catalogue contains a true ideogram-like dictionary of Haring's painting). Instead, reading the catalogue of the exhibition held in Munich in 1990, edited by Germano Celant (1940-), Haring's art was interpreted as an expression of a fully irrational vitality, like a labyrinth suspended between life and death, expression of a chaotic journey in the human condition [20]. With respect to these two extreme interpretations of Keith - the rational and irrational - what is the indication we can draw from the Journals? And in particular, what image of the young Haring did the first part of them (1977-1980) transmit us? I drew from the text – at the beginning of the memoirs – the idea of an anti-intellectual and naturally restless artist, who nevertheless was raising a series of fundamental questions for the development of his aesthetics. An exception to this irrational drive, however, derived soon from his interest in the writings of artists: by reading and absorbing them, he rationalized his thoughts on art. And his reflections on the theme of the form and structure of the work of art revealed an autonomous capacity for mental reflection on aesthetics still in his youth. At the end of the first part of the Journals, Haring was more and more interested in questions of philosophy and perhaps this was one of the reasons why he interrupted the diary, not considering himself more suitable for writing.

The Journals between 1977 and 1980

We have already said in the first part of this post that Haring's Journals covered two phases of his life: that between 1977 and 1980, when he was still a student, and the period between 1986 and 1989, when Keith was already a well-established artist. On what happened in between, we must try to draw information from other sources or try to read between the lines of the Journals, on occasions when the artist recalled the past. Between 1977 and 1980 Haring was still a teenager, and not yet the enfant prodige who passed most of his professional time together with established artists, critics, art dealers, gallery owners and other personalities (almost all older than him), traveling incessantly by plane between distant destinations. It should be added, again, that in this phase Keith was above all a drawer (in particular, he preferred small works on paper and did not paint on canvas, a technique particularly adverse to him in those years); furthermore, he had not yet received commissions to perform monumental murals that so much distinguished his art in the final years of his short life. Lastly, in those years many of his creations were still monochromatic.

Beginning to write the Journals, Haring emphasized the spontaneity, but also the provisional nature of his words: “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” [21].  During the following months, however, Keith read anew what he had written and discovered that, alongside serious weaknesses, there were also elements of reflection that continued to be valid. Here it is a page from January 1979: “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” [22]. 

Fig. 6) The cover page of the catalogue of the exhibition dedicated to Keith Haring at the Albertina in Vienna in 2018, with contributions of Dieter Buchhart, Marcel Danesi, Anna Karina Hofbauer, Elsy Lahner, Giorgio Verzotti (published by Albertina).

The journals of a restless teenager and a young anti-intellectual artist

Despite the sometimes adolescent-like tones of writing, the first part of the Journals should not be underestimated, because it was especially here Haring raised questions about art, its aesthetic roots, relationships with previous and contemporary generations of contemporary art United States and Europe, and on their visual preferences. Of course, the opening of the memoirs was typical of a nineteen year old youngster, in search of his own way, between moments of enthusiasm and uncertainty. “This is a blue moment . . . it’s blue because I’m confused, again; or should I say “still”? I don’t know what I want or how to get it. I act like I know what I want, and I appear to be going after it—fast, but I don’t, when it comes down to it, even know. I guess it’s because I’m afraid. Afraid I’m wrong. And I guess I’m afraid I’m wrong, because I constantly relate myself to other people, other experiences, other ideas. I should be looking at both in perspective, not comparing. I relate my life to an idea or an example that is some entirely different life. I should be relating it to my life only in the sense that each has good and bad facets. Each is separate” [23]. One year later, the existential reflections continued to be those of a young man looking for his own path: “Nothing is constant. Everything is constantly changing. Every second from birth is spent experiencing; different sensations, different interjections, different directional vectors of force/ energy constantly composing and recomposing themselves around you. Time (situations in a visible logical progression) never will and never can repeat itself. None of the elements involved in the experience of time will ever be the same because everything is always changing” [24].

Despite these expressions, as said typical of teenagers, in 1978 the Journals marked the direction in which Haring's art would move: on the one hand, the interest in the development of a set of serial icons, which would go beyond the simple graffiti and would directly transmit universal messages; on the other hand, a strong individualistic approach, contrary to the homogenization created by mass society, but also against the organization of artistic life in collective aesthetic movements. On the first point, Keith wrote on October 14:“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” [25]. It must however be said that he was convinced that the use of consistent symbols would not mean at all repetition: “I paint differently every day, every hour, every minute, every instant. My paintings are a record of a given space of time. They are recorded patterns of thought. Duplication is impossible without a camera. Repetition, without a camera (or machine) is not repetition. To paint differently every day makes it impossible to paint a consistent composition over the period of more than one session” [26].

 

Fig. 7) The cover page of the catalogue of the exhibition about Keith Haring held in Munich in 1990, with contributions by Barry Blinderman, Germano Celant, David Galloway and Bruce D. Kurtz (issued by Prestel).

And on the second theme, that of the role of the individual, Haring added, on the same occasion: “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” [27]. “Individuality is the enemy of this mass society. Individuality speaks for the individual and makes him a significant factor. Art is individuality” [28]. “No artists are parts of a movement. Unless they are followers” [29]. Haring quoted Matisse, as an artist model who had developed his poetics without group memberships. “Matisse had a pure vision and painted beautiful pictures. Nobody ever has or ever will paint like him again. His was an individual statement” [30].

It is interesting to note how this obvious dislike of any organized mass movement often led Keith to express, in the pages of the Journals, an atavic mistrust towards the Soviet Union (which in those years - should not be forgotten - was the rival US superpower). Nor, in the personal history of Haring, was there ever any sympathy for 'mass' gatherings, also for causes for which the critic had engaged as an individual: for example, in several artworks he underlined the risks of nuclear disasters, but hardly signalled any interest in participating in public protests in this regard. More generally, Keith never spoke in front of large masses, did not participate in collective actions, and was not the reference symbol of a movement; for example, Haring made no reference in the Journals to the huge pacifist movements (think of the big demonstrations in the eighties against the Euro-missiles in Europe) in those years. Personally, I am surprised that, in the period 1977-1980, he never mentioned the name of Jimmy Carter (President of the United States between 1977 and 1981), although the latter was a champion of many civil and social battles close to the heart of the painter (a reference, however, would be made in the second part of the Journals, on the occasion of Carter's visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum on 28 July 1988 [31]). Even more astonishing is that in all the Journals he never criticised Ronald Reagan, i.e. the US President between 1981 and 1989, (certainly on antithetical positions with respect to those of the artist). Keith's commitment to civil battles (against apartheid, against racism, against the nuclear threat, against the spread of AIDS) always started as an individual testimony and, if anything, became a 'mass' product only thanks to the immediacy of the images that he realized and their replication on T-shirts and gadgets.

Fig. 8) Keith Haring’s Authorized Biography, published by John Gruen in 1991 (Prentice Hall)

It is evident that all that has just been said shows the risk of an internal contradiction: on the one hand there was the commitment to providing 'art for all', on the other the fear of being involved in any form of direct relationship with the masses. How to reconcile the two aspects? Haring discussed the problem, on the occasion of the long writing on October 14, 1978 that he included in the Journals. On the one hand the painter wanted to create an infinitely reproducible pictorial language, in ever-changing variations, and which could be understood by everyone; on the other hand, he rejected any form of art that was not an absolute expression of individuality; his attitude towards the masses was, in short, suspicious. The quadrature of the circle was perfectly American: art exists as a right of individuals, even if considered collectively as "the public". “The public has a right to art” [32]. In artistic terms, Haring's affirmation was often linked to the slogan of the "Art for everybody" that had already spread in Europe - with an evident anti-aristocratic flavour - in the second half of the nineteenth century (in Paris it was the Art pour tous; in Vienna Kunst für alle) thanks to the development of low-cost graphic art production forms that allowed to lower prices and thus spread art on the walls of middle-class houses. The 'art for all' of the late nineteenth century, in iconographic terms, had also as a consequence the overcoming of history painting and the discovery of symbolism as a form that could convey immediate feelings to the public. There is certainly some relevance to Haring's intentions, and it is no coincidence that, years after, on July 9, 1987, Keith witnessed having been compared to Gustav Klimt [33]. In the period covered by the second part of the Journals, he executed this ideal by inaugurating a Pop Shop in New York (and then in Tokyo), to sell at affordable prices his objects and those of his companions of artistic path, Basquiat and Scharf.

Only the full reading of the text, however, may allow contextualizing the meaning of his affirmation on the right to the art of the public. In the first place, the public has the right not to be prescribed top down how to interpret artworks: this is therefore, in the first place, a right of individuals not to be imposed any definition. In this sense, the artist must not express expectations towards his audience: “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” [34]. A few months later, in December 1978, Haring reiterated: “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” [35]. I would like to point out - in this regard - the enormous amount of graphic art that Haring made in those years without attributing any title to it, as if proposing a name to a work could already be harmful to the freedom of the viewer, limiting it in some way in advance. 

Art for all must, first of all, set the goal of freeing individuals from social pressures. The thing is not so trivial, because in reality art can be used in two different ways: “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” [36]. Between the two possibilities, Haring evidently chose 'democratic' art, available to everyone, and not addressed specifically to experts. He decided to open up to the broadest possible sections of society, being able to attract their attention, but according to a logic that always remained liberal in the US sense: “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” [37]. Implicitly, Haring's critique turned to all forms of conceptual art, precisely because they were the bearers of a message that was not meant to be understood by the public.

Fig 9) The Dutch (1991 - Meulenhoff), German (1995 - Heyne) and Italian (2007 - Baldini e Castoldi) versions of the authorised biography of Keith Haring, written by John Gruen

In truth, the real distinctive trait that Haring wanted to communicate was the anti-intellectual nature of his art, as a necessary aspect to make it acceptable to the highest number of people: “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” [38]. Keith reiterated the idea of the artist as an intermediary (“The artist as a tool, a vehicle, a victim” [39]) in January 1979. I would like to recall how the same theme (the artist as a medium, typical of romantic tradition) was developed in those years by performance artists (see the memoirs of Marina Abramović and Jonas Mekas about the Living Theater in New York ).

Looking for roots in the history of art

The research of the young painter was not based solely on the discussion of some fundamental concepts. In reality, he also saw himself in continuity with some artists with whom he compared himself in the years of study. Here are some considerations in the Journals of November 1978, when he was studying at School of Visual Arts in New York. “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 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” [40].

Matisse thus confirmed himself as the noble father of Keith's poetics. As for Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky, they were rarely mentioned in the rest of the Journals. Years later, in 1986, Haring wrote that he had discovered the painting of the Belgian Pierre Alechinsky (1927-) by pure chance [41] and had met him in person only in 1985 [42]. More space was dedicated to the Swiss Jean Dubuffet, theorist of Art Brut: Keith quoted a passage from his 1951 "Anticultiral Positions" [43], or the transcription of a speech held in Chicago on “misconceptions of beauty embraced by the Western Culture” that Haring discovered when he was still living in Pittsburgh and considered one of his aesthetic gospels [44]. Years later - in 1988 - he read another work by Dubuffet, or "Asphyxiating Culture", a text of tough political-cultural protest of the society and institutions originally published in 1968 [45]. Only another short quote was dedicated to Pollock and Davis.

In fact, the main source for understanding the relationship between Keith's art and the four painters just mentioned is the conversations that the artist had with John Gruen. The result of those talks was the publication of "The Authorized Biography" in 1991 [46]. From the transcripts of one of the meetings, we learn that he started his thinking on those four artists in Pittsburgh, at least initially focusing on the issue of art techniques, and in particular on the choice of paper as a medium on which to make art. Then his interest moved to the problem of abstraction and finally to the pictorial techniques (The text of this passage is also available on the Keith Haring Foundation website) [47]: “At the arts and crafts center in Pittsburgh, I started to do printmaking… Around this time, 1977, I had a real obsession with paper. As I started to expand and do bigger things, I had this real aversion to canvas. I didn’t want to do things on canvas. I wanted to work on paper, partly because paper was inexpensive, but partly because it was interesting. Also, I felt this strong need to get to know what other artists had done. I spent a lot of time at the library and came across Dubuffet. I was startled at how similar Dubuffet’s images were to mine, because I was making these little abstract shapes that were interconnected. So I looked into the rest of his work. And I became very interested in Stuart Davis, because one of his teachers was Robert Henri, and also because he was interrelating his abstract shapes. And I began relating to Jackson Pollock – especially the early abstract stuff – and to Paul Klee and Alfonso Ossorio and Mark Tobey – and suddenly seeing the whole Eastern concept of art, which really affected me. Of course, at the time, I didn’t in any way consider myself an equal to those artists. But each of those painters had something I was involved with, so I investigated them, trying to find out who they were, so I could figure out who I was-and where I was coming from."

“Then, even more importantly, it was the time of the Carnegie International, which was this huge show given in Pittsburgh, at the Museum of Art at the Carnegie Institute. That year, in 1977, the show was an enormous retrospective by Pierre Alechinsky. I had never heard of him before, and all of a sudden there were something like two hundred paintings and drawings tracing his career. And there were videotapes of him working. And I didn’t know who that was! I couldn’t believe that work! It was so close to what I was doing! Much closer than Dubuffet. It was the closest thing I had ever seen to what I was doing with these self-generative little shapes. Well, suddenly I had a rush of confidence. Here was this guy, doing what I was doing, but on a huge scale, and done in the kind of calligraphy I was working with, and there were frames that went back to cartooning – to the whole sequence of cartoons, but done in a totally free and expressive way, which was totally about chance, totally about intuition, totally about spontaneity – and letting the drips in and showing the brush – but big! And this huge obsession with ink and a brush! And an obsession with paper! And all those things were totally, but totally in the direction I was heading. I went to that exhibition I don’t know how many times. I bought the catalogue, I read Alechinsky’s writings. I watched the videos of him painting these enormous canvases on the floor! For him, it was like an Eastern thing, with the importance of gravity having great meaning. And he had rigged up these boards in his studio so he could lie on top of them in order to get to the middle of these big paintings on the floor. Well, Alechinsky totally blew me away. From that point on, it changed everything for me” [48].

What I would like to stress is that, from the passage of the Authorized Biography just mentioned, it emerges that the encounter with the art of the painters of previous generations always included reading their written texts. The analysis of art literature as a method of study was also confirmed in the Journals: in 1979, for example, Keith, under the influence of Barbara Buckner (1950, -), one of his teachers specialized in video art, meditated on Van Gogh’s letters, read Paul Klee’s journals (of which he quoted some passages) [49], devoured impetuously Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art and the writings of Fernand Léger [50]. After all, even in the general anti-intellectualist intonation (as we have seen previously, he did not want artists to produce a 'definition' of the intentions of their art), Haring benefited from the production of written texts by the colleagues who had preceded him. It was undoubtedly a contradictory element, which would emerge fully on other occasions, when, to give an example, he filled dozens of pages of his Journals with philosophical quotations, without commenting on them.

Form and structure

For the catalogue of the exhibition held in Karlsruhe and Rotterdam in 2001 [51], Ulrike Gehring wrote an essay on "Drawing and Color: The Reconciliation of Two Rivals in the Art of Keith Haring", placing Keith at the end of a tradition that opened with Vasari, continued in the seventeenth century with the controversy between Poussin and Rubens, was renewed in the opposition between Ingres and Delacroix and found a new synthesis with Matisse [52]. I would advise everyone to read the essay for a better understanding of the formal aspects of Haring's art. From this point of view, the Journals showed how - in the years 1978-1979 - the prevalent theme of the artist's interest was the relationship between form and structure. The interest for colour would only come in the following years. Moreover, as already mentioned, a lot of Haring's production in those years was made with black ink, and mostly consisted of drawings and ephemeral art (plaster drawings in the subway, graffiti).

Fig. 10) The front page of the catalogue of the exhibition “Keith Haring: Heaven and Hell”, held in Karlsruhe in 2001 (edited by Götz Adriani and Ralph Melcher, and published by Hatje Cantz)

Nevertheless, a first interest in the link between form and colour already emerges on 12 November 1978. Haring was back from a visit to an exhibition by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) documenting fifty years of his art, whose unity struck him (The most prevalent feelings I experienced throughout the show was one of unity [53]), be it in the transition from its figurative phase to the abstract one. “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” [54].

But, net of these considerations, Keith did not feel in those days to be a true 'painter' (meaning as such an artist whose poetics is also inclusive of the use of colours), preferring to concentrate on the interaction between form and space: “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” [55]. On that occasion, Keith also specified his will to express, with his art, an orderly system: “Nothing is chaotic. Everything has relationships within itself that reflect the underlying structures” [56]. He repeated this on January 21, 1979, when he referred to some of his drawings which, although conceived as an ephemeral form of art, were part of a structured logical process: “The displacement of forms and the ability to change, rearrange, group, isolate and control form for an infinite number of effects—never ‘final,’ never ‘finished.’ The imposition of structure on form. Structure in human terms—grid or linear structure; this idea led to ideas concerning music, dance, etc. All things are measured by their adherence to or deviance from a given structure. Difference is measured by sameness. We ‘see’ in terms of associate and relative structures. The importance of these drawings at this stage is, for me, their dependence on a logical evolving process” [57]. In short, Haring suggested that, behind the image of the young man who was being recurrently arrested several times in the New York subway, while he was executing white chalk drawings on the black walls not yet occupied by advertising, there was actually an original formal reflection on art. There is no doubt that in those years the form was crucial for the painter: "My obsession with creating images and objects led me to different changes in the creation of images. My most recent activity is to dissect my paintings to get essential shapes that are interesting if taken individually. Working with the physical and painted forms allows me to explore their characteristics and symbolisms in depth. Try to understand the shapes. Explore the structure. Variations on each specific idea” [58].

The art world of New York and the end of the first phase of writing

On 17 November 1979 [59] Keith included in the Journals the first reference to Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), cited with the acronym SAMO. Three days later, he made the name of Kenny Scharf (1958 -), a great friend of his and another animator of the young New York art. A new reference to Basquiat was on November 30th. It is clear that the contacts between the protagonists of cultural life in the East Village were becoming more intense. And it is certain, moreover, that in those months the theme of sexuality was suddenly becoming dominating in the Journals, as revealed by its omnipresence since then in the texts of Keith, in a sort of totemic veneration of the penis.

In parallel, as early as September 1979, Haring followed Bill Beckley's classes on semiotics [60] (1946-). Bill was an important conceptual artist at the centre of the contemporary American art world (and, perhaps, he was as far as possible from Keiths’ anti-intellectualism) at the centre of the contemporary American art world. The Journals also displayed more and more interest for questions of semiotics and epistemology. A list of recommended readings (dated November 30, 1979), included Roland Barthes, Jean Piaget, Wittgenstein.

That the painter was increasingly influenced by a new language also emerges from a quotation dated 25 April 1980: “The question of whether or not there should be any texts or grammar to raise moral issues or make us define our values, is itself a moral question” [61]. It was the last quotation - written in a language that was becoming intentionally hermetic - before the writing was interrupted down in July 1980, to resume only in April 1986.

Why did the Journals stop? Haring certainly changed his life: he also broke his studies at the School of Visual Arts and increasingly engaged in individual protest activities (he started, for example, in December 1980 to produce thousands of drawings in white plaster in the New York subway, as a form of communication to the public. For this activity - prohibited in New York – he would often be arrested). From writing, therefore, he passed to action. Moreover - as I already mentioned - the success of Haring's art limited his availability of time: Keith was submerged by requests (even far from what was his world only a few years earlier, as when in 1983 he painted the interiors of the Fiorucci shop in Milan). Many have credited the idea that Haring's life became as disordered and unmanageable as to make writing impossible.

But perhaps the moment of the detachment of the pen, in July 1980, took place for very different – almost opposite – reasons. I cannot rule out that the growing intellectualization of his thought - under the effect of semiotics and epistemology - contributed to making it increasingly difficult for him to testify in writing thoughts and actions with the same straightforward style of the early notes. Perhaps he had become too much of a philosopher to continue keeping youth Journals.

End of Part Two

Go to Part Three 

NOTES

[20] Keith Haring (Art and Design), by Bruce D. Kurtz, David Galloway, Barry Blinderman and Germano Celant, Prestel, 1993, 208 pages. The text is available at the address

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/haring.html .

[21] Haring, Keith – Journals, Introduction by Robert Farris Thompson, Foreword by David Hockney, Penguin Books Classics, 464 pages. Quotation at page 27.

[22] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.43.

[23] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.1.

[24] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.9.

[25] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), pp.13-14.

[26] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.14.

[27] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), pp.14-15.

[28] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.15.

[29] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.15.

[30] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.15.

[31] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.296.

[32] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.17.

[33] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.228.

[34] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.17.

[35] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.37.

[36] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.18.

[37] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.17.

[38] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), pp.18-19.

[39] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.53.

[40] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), pp.28-29.

[41] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.140.

[42] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.317.

[43] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.101.

[44] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.129. Jean Dubuffet’s text is available at 

http://www.austincc.edu/noel/writings/Anticultural%20Positions.pdf .

[45] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.288.

[46] Gruen, Jean - Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, New York, Prentice Hall Press, 1991, 259 pages.

[47] See: http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/conversation-with-keith-haring#.W5YADs4za6J .

[48] See: http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/conversation-with-keith-haring#.W5YADs4za6J .

[49] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.58.

[50] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.57-58.

[51] Keith Haring: heaven and hell. Edited by Götz Adriani and Ralph Melcher, Hatje Cantz, 2001, 200 pages.

[52] See: http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/disegno-e-colore-the-reconciliation-of-two-rivals-in-the-art-of-keith-haring#.W5c5384za6I .

[53] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.30.

[54] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.30.

[55] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.38.

[56] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.40.

[57] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), pp.53-54.

[58] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.47.

[59] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.87.

[60] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.60.

[61] Haring, Keith – Journals, (quoted), p.95.