When You Finally Get Art
specifically Keith Haring
A balloon swells in my heart, or maybe my heart is a balloon, or maybe, just maybe, it’s a little trick of too much coffee this morning. I have no direct landing spot for this sensation, pearl flung memories with no thread to tether.
So I’ll start at the beginning:
I was a baby
by all accounts I had a short stint as a child
before jumping into teen waters
as for my 20s—everything started at 23
Never mind, I only have you for a short time and a synopsis seems trivial in light of all our lives lived before and after. Yes, I’m asking us to agree on some form of reincarnation. Maybe that’s a tall order. But we can all agree the sky is blue, the sun is white hot, the body is bone and blood, stillness and movement as one.
There goes my balloon heart, growing again, filling with something, maybe love.
My coffee cup prints tan rings on the windowsill, I’m working on a clover shape. It’s nice, but I won’t let that be my legacy, I’ll wash it away before I go to bed. It’s not like I’m molding concrete. Whoever invented concrete must have been pretty proud. That’s a legacy worth having.
A few weeks ago I went to a Keith Haring show at The Broad—my dad wanted to go and I wanted to make him happy. I’d only seen Haring printed on t-shirts, mugs, socks. Nothing from the digitally manufactured merch made me ache for a whole show of pointy shaped dogs and simple baby outlines. But I showed up at the museum because I love my dad and my dad loves art—and of course I love art, let it go on record.
The show started in a small room popping with pink and orange striped wallpaper, centered around a life-size statue of liberty. Gown a bright tomato red, traditional copper skin replaced by a furious neon green, head to toe tattooed in the signature Keith Haring scrawl. Not one for loud colors—I recently told someone my favorite color is cream—I took a sharp breath, preparing for an entire show of overstimulation.
My dad was thrilled.
We entered the second room and I was relieved to find a wide open gallery. Space to roam felt like a gift and I sought out the small framed pieces, little spaceships beaming up dancing figures, the clay vases covered in a language of repeated images. Haring Hieroglyphics, recounting the myths of our people—a closed loop of experiences we can’t seem to quit.
That’s when I turned to the 15 x 15 ft tarp of two men hoisting a bright red heart into the air. You know this image, it’s everywhere, hiding in plain sight on desk clocks and dish towels. Just yesterday, at a party in Toruń, Poland, I saw a girl wearing socks bearing the exact image.
But the miniature form doesn’t serve up the same impact as the full scale thing. The ruby red paint of the oversized heart begs you to reach out and touch. If only for a second, hover your unsteady fingertips to see if the sealant is still wet.
Stop! This isn’t some casual studio visit, this is an Institution! We have to admire from a distance. I planted my feet before the painting, breath suspended, under a spell. Observe how Haring moves across the canvas with confidence. The drips dropping from his lines just add to the motion. The trance broken only by a woman posing under the two figures, smiling at her boyfriend through his iPhone lens.
I sunk deeper into the exhibit. Intricate tapestries plastered the walls, large sheets of paper glued together, each one a world within a world within a world. You could spend a whole day just examining one painting, getting a feel for the multitudes, learning the pace of each motion.
At first glance, his more complex paintings are pure chaos, a jumble of characters, accent marks and scattered symbols. But look closely and you find well proportioned space between each brush stroke. The squiggle waves didn’t just arrive randomly above the barking dog, right next to the broken t.v. screen and under the train of three radiant babies. Haring put each of them exactly where they needed to be. If there is ever a chance to believe there is divine order in chaos, you can find it in a Keith Haring.
Maybe you already know this. Maybe you would also elect Haring to the office of God, seeing as he understands the big picture and holds reverence for the small details. I know I’m not making any major discoveries. But I’m saying I was humbled by context.
How you receive impacts what you perceive. The extends to every corner of our existence.
You can easily develop a crush if you meet someone on a rickety bridge. This is proven psychology, so cancel your date at that regular old cafe. Years ago, I went on a date with a messy but cute scientist, literally rocket scientist vibes. I thought it went well: I was charming, listened, nodded. But no second date. A little later I discovered the why through the grapevine. The scientist didn’t find my intellect to be on par for a second date. I think the exact term was “not smart enough”. Now, this is probably true (remember, committed rocket scientist vs. whatever-the-fuck-kind-of-artist I was that week) but would our love story ended differently if our first date was an ultimate rollerblading experience? I think the overpriced pancake breakfast on Melrose might have contributed to the fault in our stars. That and the parking ticket he got after misreading the meter—you might be a rocket scientist, but at least I can figure out LA parking rules.
Anyway, it’s all about context.
To stand across from a canvas is to stand across from the artist, to trick time and fold our moments together. Step closer, look at the lines etched by the trailing brush fibers, watch the cosmic play of characters looping into transcendence, only to fall down a rabbit hole, tumble into a mouth of a monster and if you’re lucky, get beamed up by an alien.
Haring offered salvation of another kind, illustrating love as the most powerful antidote, as long as love is shared freely, in accordance with its boundless nature. Other landscapes warned of the hungry ghost, feeding off our greed and fearful tendencies. In the world of Haring, humanity is celebrated, even within the systems of power that try to siphon every ounce of our light. At our core, we’re all radiant babies, a simplistic outline that I overlooked in the context of graphic print tees and coffee mugs. But here in a painting, sharing breath with the canvas, I am mesmerized by the crawling rounded figure, inching forward, beaming. The small being finds its own path through the maze, ever luminous.
I lean in, reminded that we all start here, we all have the capability to find a sense of wonder in the unpredictable terrain. It’s nearly impossible to communicate this through a pair of socks or a pixelated screen.
Keith Haring made work for his community, for the people he saw at parties, for the commuters on the subway, for his fellow artists. His magic is most palpable in context, at scale. Today, it takes a real bit of hard earnestness to make work for the real world. There is so much to be felt beyond our fingertips tapping on a smooth glass screen.
The exhibit closed with a small painting in a small room. The canvas was encased in glass, making its presence feel fragile. Here, Haring lets us peek behind his self-made curtain of brave faces, bright hues and bold brush strokes. A square canvas bares a maze of purple and black, its trajectory blotted out by a white expanse. When I read the little placard, its title “Unfinished” I was crushed, surprised by my own tears. During Keith Haring’s final years, death was a daily context as AIDs spun out of control. Haring turned his attention to creating awareness around the crisis, but suffered intimate loss from every angle. Death operates in surprising ways: Andy Warhol was taken by a heart attack following a routine surgery and one year later, the world lost Jean-Michel Basquiat to an accidental overdose. Haring almost winks at us with “Unfinished”. Death was on his heels, but he wanted to have some say in the matter.
I wiped away my tears but they kept flowing. For the rest of the day, my chest ached heavy. A good legacy will do that. It flies ribbons into the sky, lets them twirl and twist in the wind until someone plucks a shimmering strip from the air. We trade pearls, mine become yours until we cannot tell the difference. Unseen funnels into unseen: the caressing impact bounces from one mortal to another. Some legacies are so great, they create their own context.
After the show, I started to seek out the context of real life. It wasn’t conscious at first. To show up, to look across from someone and see their mouth curl into a half-smile, watch their body hold its place or (like me) shift weight from one hip to another, shimmy an ache into comfort. Sitting next to someone, you share a point of gravity, you part the sea of recycled symbols, clashing words and jumping characters. You feel their answers as much as you hear their words. The outcomes are unpredictable, sometimes you get nowhere. Sometimes you give your number to the Polish dad/businessman sitting next to you on the plane because you can’t figure out how politely decline and there’s still 90 minutes left on the flight.
See the city coming into focus? Feel the clouds rumble in the belly of the plane? Altitude shifts, the dad/businessman plugs his nose, closes his eyes and pushes breath into his cheeks. A trick from his 10 year old son.
As we prepare for landing, please return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright position. Make sure your seat belts are securely fastened. Stow any carry on luggage underneath the seat in front of you.
We know you have many choices when flying the friendly skies and we thank you for choosing Now is Good. On behalf of everyone on the crew, welcome home.
new favorite of yours!