Keith Haring Journals (36 page)

I went to Tokyu Department Store to buy brushes for tomorrow. This store has everything you can imagine—including a Montreux Jazz Festival poster of mine from 1983. Also I went to Parco to see Bruce Weber’s show on Rio de Janeiro. Most of the photos were the same as in the book, but a few hadn’t been published. A picture of Eriksen (the kick-boxer) coming out of the water with a perfect outline of his cock. What a perfect human specimen. My “Eriksen” should be arriving any minute. Juan’s plane was supposed to land at 4:15, but it could take him a couple of hours to get here with the rush-hour traffic. Also saw Francesco Clemente’s book
India
, which is really beautiful. Also Michael McKenzie’s book about art in New York in the Eighties. I browsed it; some good stuff, a lot of shit. Cutrone cover and full of Kostabi bullshit. One major misquote I saw immediately: There’s a picture of the Houston Street mural, defaced, that says, “Unlike KH’s mural, which was commissioned, all of the others which ended up on top of Haring’s just seemed to appear there.” What bullshit. The real story concerning that mural is much more complicated. How dare he credit Tom Otterness with initiating that wall after we shoveled and hauled 20 or more bags of garbage from in front of it just to paint it the first time. We were never commissioned. I paid for the paint the first time, for all the subsequent repairs to it, for the second time when I applied a coat of silver paint to wipe out the defaced mess, and for all the paint for the graffiti collaboration by seven other artists that I initiated after. Get your story straight!

Juan is here, no more writing . . .

On the train to Tama. I was discussing with Seiko how much the fundamental difference between people here and in the West had so much to do with religion. Everyone here is born a Buddhist, whether they are actively practicing or not. The basic attitude toward the world and the concept of “self” is very different than the Western idea, most of which is a result of Christianity. Somehow I think Buddhism instills a basic premise of “peace” with the world and the self and a kind of respect for the individual as well as the “whole.” The basic general attitude of people here has a kind of intensity uncommon to me. The attention paid to details and aesthetic sensibility is an “understood” (unquestioned) fact. People do not think that “art” is a separate concept or pursuit in the same way as in the West. There is an unwritten understanding of respect and coexistence.

It is certainly not utopia here; problems exist at every level. There are many moral dilemmas and confrontations between tradition and behavior “standards” and “moral codes.” All I’m saying is that the underlying attitudes and aesthetic sensibilities seem to permeate every situation. The sense of “order” is not a thing that has to be “forced,” but something that is within everyone and everything. Standards are not imposed, but felt and unspoken. It is a “pleasure” to work here and a “pleasure” to follow rules because it seems to be something you do by your own choice, not only because you are told. It is a much more complicated situation than can be “explained” by these simple observations, but I think I have an idea of what lies within the complicated system.

We took the train to Shibuya and Juan and I went toward the hotel. We ran into some people I knew from New York. This guy that does a sort of drag show of a dead Marilyn Monroe. They told us about a cool bar. We ate and went to meet them there. It was the gay part of Shinjuku, but not a gay bar—sort of a “mixed” crowd and a great DJ. They had a Pop Shop poster at the entrance. It was fun because I was into it and was getting off on drawing strange and erotic things. We stayed till I got tired of signing things and left. We went to a gay bookstore and bought a magazine. There were some gross American tourists wandering around, one of whom was leering at Juan: “Hey, beautiful, can I get in your pants?” Give me a break.

It’s really amazing to work here, be here. It’s not like this for me anywhere else in the world. Even after working my ass off in New York for nine years, I don’t get the kind of respect or appreciation I get here from making even the smallest gesture of kindness. Here everything you do is appreciated, it seems. There is some connection I have to this place, and this culture, that is really hard to explain. Some kind of feeling as if I’m from here or something. Maybe I’ve been here before. Kwong Chi always says I used to be a Navajo Indian woman in my past life, but I think I might have been a Japanese painter.

The last two days have been so busy I haven’t had time to write. Major four-hour meetings on Monday and Tuesday with the Pop Shop staff of Tokyo. Going over all products to be made here and deciding what to send from New York. The most difficult thing is deciding what
not
to do, since there are so many possibilities. Everything seems to be going O.K. I met a manufacturer of eyeglasses that might be interested in having me design for them. They make great quality merchandise and they were very excited about working with me. We still have to talk about money, of course.

Somebody stole a Picasso painting today from a gallery on the Ginza. He killed the gallery owner to steal it and got away. Pretty incredible!

Today I went to a huge printing company to see what they could do. It was unbelievably big and capable of making anything I can imagine. Tattoos, pop-ups, holograms, vinyl bags, flip books . . . anything. It’s really exciting to see the quality they are capable of. I can’t wait to start.

I got up and went shopping for art supplies to work on my drawings Saturday. Kaz suggested I call Fran in New York to try to get a better understanding of what she was trying to explain. I did and it made more sense, although she agreed with several of my complaints. We went to the suburbs to see the place where we’re getting the containers that will house the shop. We redesigned the way we will construct the containers and decided on placement of windows, doors, etc. It’s all starting to seem very real now. Juan thinks people should have to remove their shoes before entering. At first I thought this was too much, but maybe it’s cool. I’ve got to think about it more. After we left the container place we drove back to Tokyo to see the place we can rent for our “disco” party for the opening of the shop. I want a place that will hold 2,500 people, but it seems that in Tokyo that is completely unheard of.

Then we went to Roppongi to have dinner with the queen who owns a whole building full of restaurants and discos. We had met him before when I was here with Parco. He owns a tacky laser disco. When we entered, one of the waiters was wearing a badge with my drawing and the disco’s logo. He immediately disappeared before we could question him and mysteriously the badge had disappeared when he returned. Kaz and I immediately got more suspicious and finally tracked down the manager just as the owner was arriving. The owner said he gave them permission to print it as long as they didn’t sell them. He says they only printed 50-100 of them. How dumb does he think I am? Who gave
her
permission?

The rest of the opening was rather comical and purposeless, with dinner in a funny Chinese restaurant in his building. The food was good but full of MSG.

He wants me to paint a disco he’s building in Hawaii. Don’t count on it, Mary.

The funny thing is, he’s a total queen, but he always has a doggy white girl with him. Really tacky and really Tokyo Pop.

Got up and went to Tokyu Hands department store to buy paper, then went to Sato’s office in Shinjuku to work on designs for Pop Shop. It was pouring rain, a perfect day to work. I spent seven or eight hours working on designs for phone cards, the new Pop Shop bag, stickers, shirt labels, and a sweatsuit design. Very tedious work to go over all the lines with a fine pen and white-out so that the lines would be perfect. The lines drawn with marker must be cleaned up, but the lines painted with brush, which I’ll do tomorrow, I leave untouched so you can see the brush lines.

Went back to the studio to work on the designs for Pop Shop Tokyo. I did some dragon drawings for a New Year’s card and a poster-style calendar. We had an incredible dinner with Eiko at an Italian restaurant. We talked about everything from her proposed collaboration with Grace Jones to fascism in art to the abuse of artists by Japanese corporations. She’s working on set design for a Philip Glass opera and a Broadway play (
M. Butterfly
). We had a very intense conversation about art and my relationship to Japanese culture. It was one of the most provocative and inspirational conversations I’ve had in a long time. We seemed to hit it off right away and it was very easy to talk together. She brought up a lot of interesting points about Japanese people’s idea and understanding of “art” as a concept.

Got up at 8:30 and went to the studio to work on ink drawings for shirt designs. I did a New Year’s shirt with dragon-skin sleeves (scales) and some patterns to use to make printed (all-over) long-sleeve shirts. They came out pretty cool. The only thing I’m afraid of is that there have been so many all-over pattern imitation shirts that I hope mine is going to look better than (or at least as good as) the fakes.

I started to do the color specifications for the artworks I’ve done the last two days, but before I knew it, it was 3:30 and time to taxi back to the hotel to meet Seiko.

Seiko arrived and told me the address and we left for the lecture in a taxi. We arrived at the American Center and I met the interpreters and put my slides in the carousels.

The talk went sort of weird. Everyone was
very
quiet and
very
serious. It took a while for people to ask questions, but after a while people warmed up and the questions got better. A little bit of doubt, though. Maybe I’m overestimating how much people here understand my art. One question raised was, do I think that since people in Japan have seen very little of my actual works, except from magazines and books, will they understand me opening a shop here—except as a fad or a trend?

I don’t know. My answer was, “Since I’ve waited five years to do commercial work here, people have had long enough to find out about me and most of them have a pretty good idea about the different kinds of work I’ve done.” I hope this is true. We will see. It’s too late to have second thoughts.

Afterward there were a few autographs and then I said goodbye to everyone. A lot of the volunteers who helped at Tama City came. Some brought photos they took of me during the days at Tama as presents.

I went to dinner with Seiko and the staff who organized the Tama project. One of the interesting discussions was of the original concept for the project at Tama City. Their original proposal was to do a land art piece using mirrors held by
all
of Tama’s residents between six and eighteen years old. Viewed from the air the image of my “crawling child” would be seen, photographed by plane and also by satellite. They had calculated the size that would be needed for it to be visible by satellite and everything! The image formed by sunlight reflecting off the mirrors would be photographed and “give the children of Tama City a sense of their place and participation in the Island of Japan and as residents of the Earth.” The “extended concept” was to do photographs by satellite like this all over the world. They said the NASA satellite they had researched was timed to pass over major cities in the world at 9:00 in the morning. Imagine my crawling baby . . . created by light from the sun in mirrors held by children in several different cities all over the world: Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, New Delhi, New York, Los Angeles, etc. My baby would actually crawl around the entire globe. Sounds like a great project . . . can you imagine the organization? Anything is possible. Or, is it?

Taxi back to the hotel in the rain. Now I’ve got to call Julia in New York and go to sleep so I can get up early tomorrow.