Keith Haring Journals

The ambiguity of Haring's dilemma is quite clear. An entry in 1987 is particularly provocative: "The length of time it takes for something to go through the process of consumption and acceptance and imitation has been getting shorter and shorter. . . . My works appeared on T-shirts and clothes in every continent of the world before I had even made one real KH T-shirt. Before I had even one museum exhibition. Before I was dead. . . . This is art of an Information Age that is moving so quickly that it may soon go beyond . . . and actually surpass itself, so that the popular culture dictates the actions of artists and makes an elitist separatist culture obsolete." He really did believe in a Pop-ulist culture but he also really wanted acceptance by an elitist culture. The problem was that the ubiquity of his images and the proliferation of his product, which satisfied the belief, frustrated the desire. What in 1980 was fresh and startling and charming had, by 1987, become formulaic and moribund. Haring's inability to discern how the daily reinforcements of his success (the swirl of movement in which he was caught, and his availability to the next project, the next deal) hindered his creative growth was his undoing. An indulgent entry from 1989 captures Haring's problem as an artist perfectly. "I feel like each thing I do has a logical conclusion and the entire process of arriving at that conclusion is the art itself. There is never a question of changing something or rearranging things. Some would say that is my biggest fault, but I think it may be my biggest asset. Most art is about striving to 'become' or 'attain.' I don't think it's about that necessarily. . . . I believe the process of 'making' is a complete thing in itself." Which neatly leaves out the process of self-reflection and elevates the act above the accomplishment of the act.

The hardest part of the book is, sadly, the most universal. It's not about art or making art; it's about being alone in a crowd and trying to stay alive. The way that Haring puzzles out the awfulness of it all is extremely tender. Here is someone who fought to stay young before he ever got a concept of what being old was, then suddenly, swiftly he's dying. An entry about a friend he has come to depend on gives some sense of the struggle of every young man or woman carrying the virus. "I have tried to accept the fact that sex of any kind is not part of this relationship. Except I've never had a relationship without sex before, and I've never loved someone so much without the reaffirmation of that love that comes from a physical relationship. I'm sure if I become an old man, I'd have to deal with the same thing, but I don't feel like an old man yet. I'm turning bald, which helps me realize I'm getting old, but inside I still feel like a kid. I don't know how to change." He was a kid and time, which is the only thing that allows for change, simply wasn't available. In the end, this savage, prolonged twilight that is the epidemic took him. And, like thousands of others before him, he left significantly more than a little behind. The journals are part of a larger legacy left by that galaxy of novas who only had the time to contribute the vigor of their intuition and not its refinement.