        |
Keith Haring: JournalsIntroduction by Robert Farris Thompson Preface by David Hockney Published October 7 by Fourth Estate, London, £20. Note: The information on this website is presented for
educational purposes and This document was provided by Keith Haring (1958-1990) is considered by some to be one of the most important and popular artists of the 20th century, whose work is still as historically and socially relevant as when he died with an AIDS diagnosis six years ago. The publication of his journals this month has given NIGEL EDWARDS a chance to assess the significance of the artist's contribution to the HIV/AIDS debate, measured against Haring’s understanding of his own role as an influential artist.
Haring wrestling with his deepest thoughts on the power of art in society, and his role as an artist in possibly influencing changes in society, is one of themes that makes the most impact on anyone reading his journals. The entries begin in Pittsburgh on April 29, 1977, a few days before his 19th birthday and as he anticipates hitchhiking to a Grateful Dead concert in Minnesota. The last, on September 22, 1989, five months before his death, is written in Milan by someone who is himself as internationally famous as any rock star and who is about to set out for Pisa to create a fresco on a 1,000- year-old building. The pages in between, filled somewhat sporadically with his intimate and professional reflections, chronicle a career that started out as a graffiti artist in the New York subways, drawing with white chalk on the black paper pasted over unused advertising spaces. His subsequent work is in the permanent collections of museums around the world. Haring’s artistic style and legacy is probably better known than Haring himself, something which Haring was certainly aware of and which serves to remind us of the power of art when it seeks to convey ideas and influence people. The 21-page introduction to the journals by Robert Farris Thompson spells out plainly what is perceived to be Haring’s artistic contribution in the HIV/AIDS field. "Never knowing, after 1988, when AIDS might take him, Haring painted in the late Eighties to save others and keep himself alive," he writes. "Characteristically, he enriched the documents of alarm with variations of astonishing strength." Thompson relates how Haring’s first paintings and posters were straight-forwardly activist, such as the 1989 Silence=Death composition, in which a pink triangle is filled with ghostly silver figures, covering their eyes or closing their ears. The Haring "probes the terror in extreme promiscuity" with a graphic image of "beings who have fucked themselves to death." Haring’s most significant statement is where he "dared to personify the virus – as demonic sperm" which "bursts from an egg, like a giant horned insect. Its horns break the frame of crimson, as if escaping from the paper. Haring locates the lairs of the virus: drug addicts’ needles, uncovered penises and vaginas." And Thompson concludes: "If this series is important, it is because the artist expressed the presence of a killer by a radical combination of elegance and shock." Thompson, of course, views all this as the strength of Haring’s claim to artistic immortality. "He shows that in the spirit of his art, not his doomed body, his durability must be sought." But the tragedy of Haring is that not only did he fail to live up to his own aspirations, so clearly expressed in memorable passages throughout his journal, but that he completely failed to recognize that he was failing. For it is clear that Haring accepted and purveyed a scientific view of HIV and AIDS that he never once appears to have questioned. Haring believed that HIV was a virus that inevitably led to AIDS and death. This was despite the following journal entry of June 26, 1987: "Contemporary man, with his blind faith in science and progress, hopelessly confused by the politics of money and greed and abuse of power, deluded by what appears to be his ‘control’ of ‘the situation,’ etc., etc., believes in his ‘superiority’ over his environment and other animals." Haring goes on to assert that, because of this, it is "so important" for artists to "interfere" with established ideas about the purpose and meaning of life and to change them "through the insertion of aesthetic manipulation." So Haring sought to influence the world towards accepting viewpoints and concepts regarding HIV and AIDS that he himself had never properly explored and challenged. His own acceptance of the inevitability of his own death is graphically illustrated merely by noting the frequency and length of his journal entries. Before 1987, these are very uneven. After, we become aware of a Haring who, conscious of limited time, seeks to leave his literary and philosophical legacy along-side his artistic contribution. He adopts what can best be described as the politically correct attitude towards HIV and AIDS of the average gay American of his generation. He records how he wore safer sex T-shirts, flirted with the concept that HIV might be a biological weapon developed and covered up by the US Government, considered ideas for designing condoms, and reacted angrily to attempts by journalists and friends to inquire into his HIV status. A phone call from New York Newsday asking him to comment on the rumor he had AIDS wascondemned as "obnoxious". But while he tries to get on with life without dwelling on it, he notes on Valentine’s Day 1989 that he is "constantly reminded of ‘reality’ by taking my AZT and Zovirax every four hours." As a self-acknowledged influential artist who came to believe he had a personal right to pronounce on HIV and AIDS it is ironic to read (June 26, 1987): "Art is important, and important artists (respected ideas) are important because their ideas and creations are widely discussed and dispersed. The responsibility that carries with it is, for me, mind-boggling." |