017 - KEITH HARING

It’s hard to get people to read. My initial posts took too long to read and too long to write. The purpose of Fine, Art was to throw art onto your screen, but instead I gave you novels I couldn’t get my family to read.

I printed the words to give to my florist friend because he doesn’t have a phone and doesn’t use computers. The packet was thick. I printed it four pages to a side thinking about the trees. When I next saw Kevin, he shouted at me, “You gotta use your words more! Don’t focus so much on the history of the artist. People can figure that out on their own.”

So here we are. A new year, starting again. Less words, more art.

I introduce to you: Keith Haring

Once at a museum, I saw a patron wearing a Keith Haring t-shirt. It made me think: “How does that compare to someone wearing a band shirt to the band’s concert?” And then another occasion, walking in the street, I passed by a guy in a Keith Haring-collab jacket. “What the heck?” I thought. Are we interested in the artwork or the artist?

For me, at this point in my art education, the answer is both. Artworks make me feel, but oftentimes, the feelings disperse to different places and depths with knowledge of the person, time and place behind them.

So Keith Haring, a big-time, recognizable American artist. Maybe you’ve seen his work in a museum, on a t-shirt or printed on the deck of a skateboard. One lucky homeowner in New York City even found a mural of his painted on a brick wall in her condo during a remodel.

I like his work, even though it’s been blasted everywhere. It’s easy enough to punch into the brain calculator, yet produces a multitude of thoughts and feelings to evaluate. I find myself liking art I could do, but I’m quickly humbled and my career as an impactful artist is halted when remembering the difficulty is not in the lines, but in the birth and development of the idea.

When I first researched Keith, I learned his simple lines were drawn quickly because he was creating them uninvited on blank advertising spaces throughout New York City’s Subway system. He brought art to the people – all people – and did so feverishly knowing his time was limited. He was diagnosed with AIDS at 29 and died two years later at 31.

Last summer, I spent a week with my friend, Kali, in Vienna. Kali and his friends are retired artists and art-lovers and they spend the first few hours of their day talking shit at Einfahrt cafe in the 2nd district. Unfortunately for me, the banter was all in German. I couldn’t understand a word except a sentence that ended in “Keith Haring.” A man sitting solo at a table, two espressos down, chain-smoking cigarettes reminded them of Keith Haring.

Kali then told a story in English: “I was walking in Vienna in the 80s and I saw Keith painting alone on the sidewalk. I walked up to him and said: Keith, what are you doing in Austria? He didn’t look up from his canvas, but answered: "I'm working.” —Phillip Dillon