Keith Haring Journals (28 page)

Go to beach. Not unlike
Death in Venice
. Sitting on a towel near group of boys. Very content just watching. Wrestling, smoking, grabbing their cocks. Very sweet.

Call Jean Tinguely at The Hermitage, but he has checked out already. Dinner with Yves and Debbie and then go to Drag Queen Bar in Nice. Sort of boring, but interesting in the way that most provincial gay bars are interesting.

Yves and Debbie have a brunch to watch the Grand Prix. We are on roof watching and Yves is downstairs and runs into Grace Jones and Nicolo. We all watch race from roof and Grace comes upstairs. Race is pretty boring. Most interesting thing is when the maid drops a whole tray of champagne glasses. We go to Café de Paris with Grace after the race and run into Patrick’s (Bulgari) brother. We all go to Mexican restaurant near Nice and then to Jimmyz (boring disco in Monte Carlo). Crowd is very old, very bourgeois and very boring. Grace runs into (Princess) Stephanie. We get re-introduced, but she doesn’t remember me. But why would she? We only hung out one night at the Palladium two years ago doing coke and dodging Rick James. Juan and me split a half hit of Ecstasy Grace got from someone. She and Nicolo do one also. Return to apartment with Yves. Grace and Nicolo and me and Juan spent night in same bed, mostly watching each other. If we would have done more X anything might have happened.

6:30 AM: Wake up and do four drawings for Gallery 121. Get a ride to the airport in Brussels.

9:30: Flight to Hamburg (on tiny plane). On the plane we see a copy of
Stern
with pictures of Luna Luna. Also, buy a copy of
Actuel
with Pee Wee Herman on the cover.

Arrive in Hamburg and go to press conference—full of people. Kenny Scharf is at press conference. Gianfranco Gorgoni is here to take pictures for
Life
. We go to Luna Luna and get photographed and interviewed a lot. It rained almost the whole time. Luna Luna looks even better than I expected. Very professionally done. I also ran into a guy from
Schweizer Illustrierte
who says the cover with the girl from Monte Carlo is out. He leaves a copy for me at the hotel. We go to the hotel and have a sauna and swim. Magazine looks great. Kenny has a package from New York with new shirts, etc. Looks great. Call New York and talk to Julia. Back to Luna Luna to see it at night and then to an Italian restaurant with Gianfranco, Kenny, Juan, a lady writing for
Life
, and a girl Gianfranco fancies who wants to do a radio interview with me. After dinner, she interviews me.

Drive to Münster to install Red Dog sculpture. We meet truck, at a truck stop along the highway, that is carrying the Red Dog. It is still white, painted only with primer. With Klaus Richter and Juan and only one crane we manage to install it ourselves. Pretty amazing considering it is solid steel and weighs a few tons. It looks really cool. It seems a little small even though it is 15 feet at the nose. Amazing there is no rain in Münster today. Usually it rains.

Drive back to Düsseldorf and show Hans the Polaroids. Hans is leaving for New York to try to sell a Bacon painting. He’ll fly the Concorde and return Friday morning for the opening of his Lichtenstein show. Talk to Tony on the phone about the Warhol trade. He wants me to give him three drawings if I give Hans seven drawings for the Warhol. Seems ridiculous to me. The only reason I am involving him at all is because Hans suggested it and I have to respect his wishes. I’ll give Tony two and Hans eight, that seems more fair.

We go to hotel and I take a bath. Juan is watching TV—“The Night of 100 Stars” from Radio City. It makes me miss New York. I’d rather not be reminded of it. Funny, though, I miss it less now than I ever did before on one of these long trips, and this is the longest I’ve ever been away. We got out for a walk and visit the hustler bar and the train station and finally end up in the Gay Shop, an overstocked magazine shop with every
Wonderboy
ever printed. It’s amazing, the quality of sex shops in Germany. Somehow, all of this has gotten sort of nostalgic, though, I mean, there really can’t be any more anonymous sex or street “cruising” in the “original” sense of the word. Everything has changed quite dramatically. We haven’t had sex with anyone on this entire trip. I’m kind of proud of that in a funny way. Not even the safest sex. I only miss it sometimes. But I’ve always enjoyed fantasy almost as much as reality. Masturbation will never go out of style.

Return to Münster to supervise painting of Red Dog. We arrive in the rain and it is already half painted. We do some of the “grass replacement” around the sculpture and go to the Landesmuseum to look for Kasper Konig. The painters assure us they will paint the rest whenever it stops raining. However, in Münster one never knows when that will be. At the museum we don’t find Kasper, but see Matt Mullican and Daniel Buren. It’s always nice to see Daniel. Everyone else around this project seems a little cold. The guide (not catalogue) for the Sculpture Project is a bit disappointing. The explanation for my sculpture is not very explanatory and almost apologetic. I don’t honestly believe they really want me in this show. I think it threatens them in a weird way. Everyone is always on the defensive.

We return to Düsseldorf and I arrange to use the gallery to do the drawings for Hans. I buy some gouache and ink and set up an area near the window to work. The gallery is empty, ready for the installation of the Lichtenstein show.

I do 11 drawings. The girls working in the gallery invite some friends and one girl’s sister makes a video. A kid from the street passing by recognizes me and comes in to watch for almost the entire time. He’s a skateboarder and graffiti writer. After I finish I do small drawings for everyone that is there, with ink on cardboard. Everyone is happily amazed and they invite me to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Great dinner, really nice people. Afterward we buy some hash and go to Manuela’s apartment to smoke. She has a great fake Haring her friend made for her and a Free South Africa poster on her wall and a Warhol poster. They told me a great story about how they rented a street billboard space a few weeks ago for 100 DM ($50) and put my Free South Africa poster on it. I think that was really great. She said, “You have people working for you all over the world,” as if it was a matter of fact. And I guess it is.

Go to gallery at 9:00 AM to sign the drawings from last night, which look even better now, as is usually the case. I let Klaus choose a drawing for helping me with the engineering, production, installation, etc., etc., of the Red Dog. He chose my favorite one, but I’m glad. I go to buy the paint and brushes for the BBD&O mural with Achenbach’s assistant.

In the middle of Düsseldorf we saw a duck cross the road (at a red light, and between the lines of the crosswalk) in a relatively busy intersection all by himself. He was crossing from one side of a bridge to another at a small creek. Very funny.

The stretchers for the painting were late to arrive so I walked around, visited Hans, and went to see
Fantasia
(in German). At 5:00 PM I returned to BBD&O with Juan and helped them hang the huge (11ʹ × 25ʹ) canvas on the walls. After some difficulty with warping, etc., it looked fine. At 6:30 I started a kind of loose black “outline” painting of “media, communication, etc.” with several sort of cynical jokes hidden inside it.

In two hours I finished, to applause, and left so the paint could dry overnight. We went to the gallery to see the Lichtenstein show of “perfect” paintings and then went to dinner with Hans and his wife and friends.

Woke up at 8:00. Walk over to BBD&O to finish the painting. I decide to fill in the color fast and drippy instead of carefully. Sometimes painting around the preceding drips and leaving a lot of white space. I never did it like this before and it looks great. Very American, sort of hints of Stella scribbles and Frankenthaler drips and Warhol brushwork. Everyone seems pleased. I finish about 2:30 and go to gallery to leave leftover paint for Klaus. Tony has arrived, but is not in hotel. We talk on phone. I arrange to meet Tony to go to cocktail party this lady is having for a group of people on an art tour from the Guggenheim. Mostly boring New York people, some nice people like Joe Hellman and Joyce Schwartz and some people I never met. Everyone is polite, but I’m always suspicious.

We had a meeting with a man who wants to commission a project for his building outside Düsseldorf. Tony was sort of over-enthusiastic and took over the conversation. I think he would really rather be an artist than a dealer. It was a little annoying, although I know he means well. The project sounds interesting, though.

We take a taxi to see the mural and meet Achenbach and people from BBD&O to have dinner. Tony freaked out over the painting and says it is the best I ever did. Maybe it is. I always think the last thing I do is always the best, but that would indicate a progression of constant improvement. I think that is thoroughly possible. I think every time I draw I learn something new and at the same time draw upon everything I’ve already learned before. That would explain why each one would be better or at least more informed than the last. Maybe, though, that’s why people like old work, because it isn’t over-informed and too articulate.

9:00 AM: Flight to Geneva via Zurich. I hate flying at this time because it is full of boring businessmen. I detest businessmen.

We are picked up at the airport by Pierre Keller and (surprise) François Boisrond. He has a show in Lausanne. We check into hotel (Beau Rivage) and eat by the pool. Hotel is beautiful and is probably
really
beautiful when it’s not raining since it is on Lake Geneva. We eat and then have a sauna (private) which turns out to be a great place to fuck. Pierre

(as usual) arrives promptly at 4:00 PM for our scheduled meeting. I get photographed looking at François’ Lucky Strike posters and then I am released until our scheduled departure to François’ opening where we are to meet Jean Tinguely. We go to opening and I buy two small pencil drawings. There is a really cute kid hanging around me who, of course, turns out to be the son of the owner of the gallery.

Tinguely arrives very late, which makes Pierre very nervous, but he doesn’t get reprimanded by Pierre. Jean arrives with his new girlfriend and Jeffrey (the guy I met with Niki de St. Phalle in Munich). Jeffrey is really fun and really smart and sort of flamboyant in a very sophisticated way. We all go to dinner at the hotel. Pierre has, of course, arranged eating very carefully, but I am a guest of honor so I sit across from Jean and François and aside of Pierre and Jeffrey. Francis (the son of the gallery owner) is sitting all the way at the end of the table, but he continually catches my glance and acknowledges it with a smile or raised eyebrow. Dinner is interesting except my stomach is hurting really badly. We end dinner by autographing the nametags and menus. Francis gets a beautiful drawing from me and he wants me to send him some T-shirts and, of course, I will. I go upstairs to bed and try to sleep. In the middle of the night my stomach is hurting so badly that I have very little actual sleep.

I wake up with my stomach still hurting. I am scheduled to be picked up at 7:45 and taken to the bank, then to school (Gymnase du Bugnon) to meet Pierre. The bank is closed so I cannot deposit my money yet. I have dollars from the mural in Düsseldorf. We get to school at 8:30. I begin immediately to do the ink drawings for the Lucky Strike posters. Each poster must contain the logo (drawn) of Lucky Strike. I do nine drawings with variations of different ideas. They actually came out pretty cool—considering how miserable I was feeling when I started. The final drawing (No. 10) was a skeleton smoking a cigarette, which I gave to the school to be hung in Pierre’s classroom. The man from Lucky Strike was not amused, but I could care less. I had a quick meeting with him about the posters and, with the assistance of the students, chose four. Then, I picked the colors and made a drawing to explain the color specs and talked about payment. Also, I designed a button for the school. The students (some of them gorgeous) were pretty interesting and very interested.