Keith Haring Journals (29 page)

Due to complications we arrived back 15 minutes after we were supposed to have left for Basel.

Pierre was practically foaming at the mouth because we had upset his schedule. He moped all the way.

We arrive in Basel and go to the art fair opening. Meet Tony at Hans’s booth, which is the most impressive. Big installation of Andy’s
Last Supper
paintings, including my portrait of Jesus. It almost brought tears to my eyes. Andy looks better and better. I see some other great Warhols at Kluser’s stand.

Hans has two of my new(er) paintings and also two of the new drawings hanging on the outside of the booth between James Brown and Jean-Michel. They look really great there.

Templon has one of my paintings on the outside of the booth also.

I am very well represented, considering the best thing is to have as little as possible on view, at the most respected places, in the best company.

I also visit Lucio Amelio, still trying to convince him to do another show in Napoli. He has to get over his Salvatore Ala hang-up. I really love Lucio.

Wake up really early (5:30) and taxi to airport. Fly to Brussels. At 1:00 PM we get picked up and go buy paint and brushes with Emy Tob.

2:30: Begin painting mural on wall in cafeteria [at Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp]. Press opening for museum is ending, but some photographers arrange to return. The wall is very smooth and some of the paint is difficult. I have to get pigment and ink to add to the black paint for a more dense line. I finish mural in five hours. The lady working in the restaurant is amusing, but seems genuinely thrilled by the new addition to her cafeteria. She keeps offering me sodas and beer and food. I take lots of Polaroids and go to hotel to take a bath.

We get picked up by Monique at 10:00 PM to go to dinner at Emy’s house. Really nice dinner and great house with great collection of art. Have a nice talk with her son who just returned from school in London. Talking about media’s influence on our society and culture, the differences between America and Europe, the future, etc., etc. Nice to have an interesting conversation that is challenging for a change. Talk about Alechinsky, because they have a few of his paintings, and Japan and calligraphy and me. Nice evening and home to sleep.

Wake up, pack and get driven to Knokke. We see the place I’m going to use as a studio—an old tea-room called the Penguin. It is right aside the Casino, on the ocean with windows toward the street—perfect. The paint they have ordered is the same brand I tried to use yesterday on the mural and didn’t like, so we find another place (in Holland) to buy paint. Send telex to Tony about proposed paint project contract.

The man working in the house is stringing up a wild boar that Roger Nellens shot the night before—the biggest one he ever shot. They are skinning it while we eat lunch. It is really like a country house here and kind of timeless in a way. They grow a lot of food in their garden and the kitchen is the center of attention. The helpers are always busy cleaning, or making waffles. There is a huge juicer (restaurant size) that always has a huge basket of oranges beside it because Roger likes fresh orange juice.

There are so many birds here it is amazing. I am sitting outside on a table made by Niki de St. Phalle, which has two huge sculpture people sitting at it also. I am sitting across from the Dragon house, where we are living. It is really surrealistic. Writing quietly, listening to birds and looking at this dragon.

Wake up. Fresh orange juice. Tea and rolls with fresh strawberry jelly and eggs from the chickens in the backyard.

Make ten gouache drawings on handmade paper. Fun to do since it is quite systematic, but still an adventure. Lay down colors one by one working on all ten at once and then one by one “finish” them by adding Chinese ink.

Eat lunch.

5:00 PM: Drive to Antwerp to go to opening of the museum where I did the mural. It is opening with a Gordon Matta Clark retrospective. Meet several more people who say they have my pieces. Also, run into Jason (the kid I met when I was on Belgian TV), who has the copies I’d asked for of his baby picture. I take enough for ten drawings. I am thinking of using them for collages.

We return to Knokke and eat at the Casino. I call Tony and we argue about my telex to him. He is really adamant about his commission.

Tereza Scharf calls from London and says they’ll come here after Hamburg.

11:00 PM: Begin “The Story of Jason,” a series of nine drawings with Jason’s baby pictures. This is one of the greatest “groups” of drawings I’ve done in a long time. It turned into a kind of story about good/evil and Christ/anti-Christ, etc. It works like the old series of drawings that all refer to each other, but without any obvious order, specifically. Very much like the cut-ups, referring to many things at once at the same time and different times.

2:00 AM, go to sleep.

12:00 NOON: To casino to begin big mural. Wall is about 14ʹ × 50ʹ. I do drawing with black acrylic of detailed “gambling scene.” Big brush and pretty quickly. Very Dubuffet, or something, with a little hint of Stuart Davis. I finish at 3:30 PM to applause.

Return to Dragon and sign last night’s drawings. Write in diary and eat lunch. Begin more ink drawings. Monique Perlstein comes for dinner. Finish 11 drawings, including one of a dream from last night about me getting caught by my grandmother in her basement with two boys. Also do a portrait of Grace (from Casino program cover) and a self-portrait.

Wake up at noon. People are arriving for lunch. Some collectors, the guy who made the canvas for the Casino mural, some critics, etc. Everyone is in the Dragon looking at my drawings. I already feel like this is my apartment and feel trespassed upon. Sign drawings and have some trouble with the dried ink smearing. Lunch for 20: wild boar.

Go to Casino to finish mural with everyone from lunch. Fill in color inside all the black shapes—one color at a time. Very “Cobra” brushwork and very drippy. Finish around 9:30 with back hurting and smelling bad. Return to house to eat and call Condo in Paris and Claude and Sydney Picasso to invite them to come to Belgium Sunday. Also, I wanted to call home since I haven’t talked to them for a while so I did and my sister Karen told me Grandma died. They had just found out.

It was really strange since I had just made the drawing of the dream with her the night before. I talked to my sisters, Karen and Kristen, for a long time.

Funny, but having dealt with death up close it is not so hard to deal with it when it happens to someone who has had such a long life. I know she is in a better place, and she was lucky to have had a relatively long and peaceful life and lived to see her great-grandchildren.

Wake up at 10:00 and go to Casino to see exhibition space and organize studio. Begin to paint Xavier Nellens’s windsurfing sail and then his surfboard. The surfboard is Styrofoam and will be coated with hard plastic. Seems like a really cool way to make paintings. I want to try it. Call Alex Hernandez to confirm his arrival Saturday. Telex Julia.
Esquire
magazine of Germany wants to do a big story on me for their first issue. Paint in Penguin studio all day. David Neirings visits, also Viken Arslanian visits. Funny that my two biggest fans in the world both live in Belgium.

Wake up at 8:00 and write in diary. At 9:00 AM drive to Holland to buy brushes and then to the Penguin to start with black lines. Finish underside of surfboard. I paint all day. While I’m painting there’s a huge fire in the hotel near the Casino. I continue painting. At the end of the day Leopold, the mayor, comes by and I later find out he bought the painting I was working on. Strange painting . . . oil paint drawing—half abstract, but I am happy he likes it. It is sad to make all these things and then just sell them. I want to keep everything for myself. By the end of the day I finish six or seven paintings. At the end of the day, Monique cooks and brings food to the Penguin.

Paint all day. Finish all the paintings. Otto Hahn arrives and likes them. A lot of people coming by to watch now. I work, uninterrupted, all day. At 10:00 PM we all go to the house for dinner. Nice dinner, except I got stoned after I finished painting so I am a bit spaced-out. I don’t talk much during dinner. Also, during the day the doctor from Antwerp has visited and told me all blood, X-rays, etc., were normal. So I was O.K. till the phone rang and it was a “lady” from
New York Newsday
asking me to comment on the rumor that I have AIDS. I can’t believe this could have gotten so out of hand just from being out of New York for two months! I was nervous because I was tired from painting and stoned and I didn’t want to sound unsure of myself. I assured her I was fine and also assured her it was obnoxious of her to ask me in the first place. She kept persisting till I finally told her I had given her more than enough of my time and resumed my dinner. It put me in a weird mood, though. It seems strange coming at a time when I am working harder than ever before and doing some of the best work of my life, especially after feeling great after having had some doubts myself. People are too anxious. They can’t even wait till you’re sick! It doesn’t make me very anxious to return to New York!

9:00 AM: Tony arrives from New York. We go to Casino to begin to hang the large paintings. Everything goes very quickly. We return to the house for a lunch for the press—mostly local, but also an AP man. I spend extra time with him because it is important that people in the U.S. know what I’ve been doing for three months in Europe . . . not dying. Jason arrives from Antwerp by train. Everyone goes to the Casino to finish press questions. Also to Penguin to see the new paintings and sign some kid’s pants. He said, “I want a little man with a willy,” so I drew him a big willy.

Return to Dragon and write this and begin drawings. It’s a strange feeling to make this many things and hardly have time to really see them. I had a feeling while I was doing the big mural in the Casino that maybe I would make this my last show. I sometimes get really sick of the selling part. I would love to just make things and let them accumulate and pile up. I like to make them, but I don’t like to sell them. All the time I spend thinking of how much they should cost and what percentage I get and which ones I should keep and how many I should do, etc., etc., seems really counterproductive and anti-art. The reason I make art and the reason I became an artist was not for this.

It’s really satisfying to make the things and really fulfilling to see people’s response to them, but the rest is difficult. I tried, as much as I could, to take a new position, a different attitude about selling things, by doing things in public and by doing commercial things that go against the ideas of the “commodity-hype” art market. However, even these things are co-opted and seen by some as mere advertising for my salable artworks. I fear there is no way out of this trap. Once you begin to sell things (anything) you are guilty of participating in the game. However, if you refuse to sell anything you are a non-entity. My decision to come to New York and be a “public” artist was spurred by my desire to communicate and contribute to culture and eventually history. Once I decided to be “visible” instead of merely entertaining myself (masturbating) with my paintings then I entered the game. I always believed that if I maintained (and I have) my original motivation and integrity, then I could avoid being a victim and play by my own rules.

I have tried as much as I could to prove over and over that I was interested in a very sincere portrait and have tried to expose the system and politics of the art world by breaking as many rules as possible while at the same time building a stronger and stronger position as an artist in the world. Sometimes I have been successful, but overall I’m not sure if people really get the point, and in a way it’s like running on an electric treadmill.

It is impossible to separate the activity and the result. The act of creation itself is very clear and pure. But this creation immediately results in a “thing” that has a “value” that must be reckoned with. Even the subway drawings, which were quite obviously about the “act,” not the “thing,” are now turning up, having been “rescued” from destruction by would-be collectors. Possibly only the murals on cement walls that cannot be removed and the computer drawings, which can be rearranged at will, are free from these considerations. The problem is I actually enjoy making “things,” and I have always loved owning “things” and seeing “things” from other places and times. It is not a new problem, but there are new factors involved. The issues have become more complicated and history has defined the “value” of certain things in different ways: the value of something according to how much it has affected change and influenced the world, and the value of things in terms of monetary value. Also, the sense of time and the shortness of the moment.