Keith Haring Journals (44 page)

Two days ago we buried Yves. Well, not buried, really. Here they put people in a kind of mausoleum. (Family “plots” that can hold four or five stacked on top of each other.) The only coffin inside before was Yves’ grandmother. His grandfather, who is 91, was there to watch Yves go into the chamber. It’s funny, ’cause his grandfather had always joked that he didn’t want Yves to be buried with him in the family plot because Yves was so “agitate” and “funny” and he didn’t think he’d have any peace with Yves near him. Now, quite probably, Yves will be right in between his grandmother and grandfather.

There was a simple service in a chapel (no longer used as a chapel) that was all painted white inside and lit like a gallery with track lights. Several people got up and spoke about Yves. Most of them only spoke in French, however, and I was compelled to say something in English. It came to me much easier than I expected. I simply spoke from my heart. It’s true I loved Yves from the first day I met him. He taught me a lot about life and how to enjoy it and “accept” it. The night before, I had painted the coffin. It was the first request his mother had when I arrived in Monte Carlo. Everyone was sure it is what he would have wanted. Painting the coffin was an incredible (to say the least) experience. It was effortless, also, pouring out of my heart and hands. I painted with silver enamel on the shiny black Spanish coffin. Originally I intended to do just the angel, which he had adopted as his “sign,” but found it necessary to complete the whole thing.

 

At the bottom was a mother and child. And then I wanted to write FOREVER + EVER, but because the R didn’t fit, it turned into this: FOR EVE R AND EVER

I think Yves would have liked this the best. It was totally “accidental” but definitely a powerfully “directed” accident. He loved these sort of word-plays and twists of fate. This was an intense experience. I’m totally without any more emotions. I’ve been totally emptied. Cleansed. I have to start over and figure stuff out again for myself. But I have to continue, have to keep on keepin’ on. Have to be strong. This is not the last trial and tribulation I will have to endure and it’s not the first. Each time makes me a little bit tougher, a little smarter and a little bit more gentle. Life is a challenge worth taking. I wouldn’t expect it to be any other way. The pain defines the pleasure. The wonderful thing is that it goes on and we adapt. Somehow there is always this human capacity for adaptability. As long as I can, I want to be a good person and be a good friend. I learn more about how to do that every day. I want people to be able to say about me what I said about Yves—that every day he lived to the fullest and his life (our life) was and always will be complete. I’m content every day. I do what I can, I accept what I can’t. I’m as happy as I can be and as compassionate and loving as I think I can be.

Barcelona is a lot more easygoing than Madrid and seems to have a much more active street life. We went to an Acid House club the first night we were here. Maurillo, a guy I know from Plastico in Milano, told us where it was. It’s incredible to me that all over the world people are listening to the same music and sharing this sort of “world culture.” Yesterday we went to see the cathedral that Gaudí was in the process of building when he got hit by a train. We climbed the stairs to the top of the highest tower. It’s pretty incredible and hard to imagine how it must have been received at the time it was being built. It still seems sort of out of place with the architecture that was around it and that has been done since. His use of intuition instead of strict pre-planned architectural drawings in building is still unheard of. Someone told me that there is a group of people who are trying to finish the construction of the building. This seems ridiculous since he left no exact architectural plans for the completion. His whole concept of “how to build” was important to the production itself. It’s kind of like trying to finish an unfinished painting after a painter’s death.

Last night we went to an opening of “new” Spanish artists that had been traveling from Germany. It was pretty boring. The only interesting thing was it really made me think about how little I have to do with what most people consider to be the basic concept of “painting.” I think somehow I start from a completely different premise. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but it has something to do with the reason for making a thing and the ritual of the process of making. Somehow so much of this stuff looks completely pointless and lost in some kind of search without an end. 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 think it is interesting to see the result of someone’s “struggle,” but it is also interesting to struggle with the results from someone’s pure expression. I believe the process of “making” is a complete thing in itself. We went to the Miró Foundation today and I noticed in one of the paintings that he had painted out one of the lines with white. It looked wrong to change it somehow, when the thing itself is supposed to be an expression of the subconscious. A lot of the paintings utilize drips and splashes. I think the painting would have been as good (or better) with the line left in. But who am I to say?

I met Syndria downstairs and went to get the paint, batteries for the radio, brushes, etc., and got to the wall at exactly 12:00. The wall had been prepared (cleaned) and people were waiting. I started almost immediately. There was already press arriving, mostly photographers and one TV crew. The red paint (acrylic) went on really easily because the wall was really smooth.

The painting went really easily. I had a rough idea of what to paint and it all worked out pretty well. The neighborhood kids were all over as usual and acting pretty much the same as kids anywhere (trying to get as many buttons as possible). A lot of media showed up—all three TV stations—two local and one national. A person from ARS was making a tape for me. Lots of photographers from newspapers and magazines. Even Spanish
Vogue
was there. Montsey was pretty well connected to drum up this much press in only two days. (We really only decided to do this on Saturday morning.)

One of the proprietors of a local whorehouse was protesting that this mural will only hurt the neighborhood because people will think there are a lot of drugs there and the police will close the bars. That’s ridiculous, however, because everyone already knows how bad the situation is in the Barrio, and the mural is only an attempt to reach out to the people who actually live there and are affected by it every day. The message was one of education so that people will be more careful and conscious of AIDS and hopefully avoid it. The mural only had the word SIDA at one place to make the message absolutely clear and at the other end it said in Spanish, “TOGETHER WE CAN STOP AIDS.” The painting took about five hours, as I predicted. The wall had a strange slant to it, which made it awkward to paint on, but one of my favorite things about painting murals is the amount of adaptability (physically) you must put up with to accomplish the task. I found positions that were new to me to balance and keep the consistency required. Some of the best photos of this painting are of the body language and posture.

There was one kid about ten years old, David, who adopted me. He stayed close by the whole time and kept the other kids from bothering me. At the end, he kept insisting on being in all the photos with me and helped me clean up. The day after the mural, when I returned to photograph it, David had left a present of a pencil-holder and a pencil with one of the neighbors to give to me. He was in school and had wanted to give it to me if I came back when he wasn’t there. That was probably the highlight of the whole two days.

 

Tuesday was the last day. Now that the media knew I was in Barcelona, the phone didn’t stop ringing with requests for interviews, TV appearances, and stuff.

I kept telling people I was leaving and didn’t really have time. We went to the Picasso museum. It was pretty incredible. We also went back and photographed the finished mural. There were a bunch of people who had heard about it on TV taking photos and looking at it.

We left for London the next morning. It was sunny and warm when we left Barcelona and cloudy and cold in London. Oooh, I love this country!

George Condo is staying in the same hotel. We visit him immediately. He had some weird thing happen in his room the night before and had broken two mirrors and Anna got a bad cut on her head. This hotel is full of antiques, so the mirrors are supposedly worth a lot of money. Also, they let the bathtub overflow and owe money for water damage to the room below. We hang out in his room for a while and then go downstairs to order food. The room is really like a little apartment with a kitchen and stuff. There are fresh lilies in two rooms so the place smells great all the time.

We hang out, work out, and then meet Denise (who we met in Monte Carlo) to go to dinner at a trendy little restaurant in the neighborhood. Sean Connery is there. We had a nice little dinner and came back to the hotel to crash. Jason and Liz Flynn have arrived and left a curious message I didn’t understand.

Wake up and eat breakfast and talk to Roberto Castellani on the phone about Pisa project.

Jason and Liz and Liz’s sister come to meet us and show us (sight-seeing) around London. We go to all the obvious places. Jason is hysterically taking photos of everything and acting like a typical American tourist. We walk around a long time. Liz’s sister has a two-year-old boy who is a real trouble-maker and great fun. We eat awful spaghetti and return to the hotel.

Woke up late. Went to see Condo’s show at Waddington. It’s really amazing. I truly enjoy seeing things that knock me off my feet like this. It is totally inspirational and makes you want to go home and work immediately. Curiously, Gil had almost identical reactions to some of the works. He instinctively liked certain works, which later George told me were also
his
favorites.

There was a little painting called
Madonna and Child
with the most mysterious light emanating from it. At a distance it appeared carefully constructed, but under closer observation was completely loose and intuitive. The genius of it is its ability to mask reality and induce the viewer to fill in all the gaps. The viewer finds himself constructing a “pretty” picture in his head from a chaos of seemingly unrelated shapes and colors. It is almost comical; but the joke is not on George. You want to laugh out loud sometimes. Some drawings are downright ridiculous, but somehow they become transformed by all of our “knowledge” and preconceived ideas and
remembrances
of “art” and we invent a new thing in our own heads that combines our expectations with what is before us. He walks a very thin, but very important, line.

Leaving the show I said to Gil how it makes sense that “these are the paintings of a man who could break mirrors in his hotel room and flood the bathtub causing extensive water damage” without even noticing it.

The large painting at the entrance (which is also the cover of the catalogue) is remarkable. It combines dozens of already great drawings into a college of drawing and painting that truly exceeds the sum of its parts. The thing that always intrigues me about George’s things is how they grow on you and keep changing. When you see them months later, you remember things you saw the first time and seek them out, but also you are overwhelmed by new things you hadn’t noticed the first time. They really have a life of their own.

Wake up at 2:30 and smoke a joint. I go to the Leonardo da Vinci show myself, ’cause everyone else is going record-shopping. The exhibition was even more magical than I imagined it would be. After the mastery of technique was achieved he had an entire universe to explore, pick apart, and explain. His imagination always kept him ahead of himself. His comments on painting and nature and science and their interrelation make his position quite clear. The simple, logical truths he reveals seem timeless and profound. His universe was one of total harmony and compatibility, with man drawing all his knowledge and power from nature and creating in the same way that nature creates. Everything had an explanation or a relationship that could be logically deduced. Yet with this rational approach to “reality,” he constantly interjected the irrational and the imaginative.