Keith Haring

I admire much about Keith Haring’s process, but I am most interested in his stream of consciousness approach. He attributes his style to a moment of inspiration when he discovered his artistic vocabulary: He borrowed a friend’s studio for a day and set large, 4-foot sheets of oak tag on the floor, and began to draw with black sumi ink. Letting his subconscious be his guide, he drew through his then recent abstract style into new and surprising images that would become a complete vocabulary. This kind of stream of consciousness artmaking reminds me of the automatic writing experiments of the Surrealists – experimental and improvisatory, but also fun and playful.

I also respect his conscientious form of activism. Graffiti art is often considered criminal and anti-social, but his take on street art was community-enriching. He created work rich in social and cultural commentary, and he engaged in conversation with the viewer both literally and through his artwork. He made his artwork in the middle of the day, in public. His work did not confront as much as question the viewer. He did not destroy public property, but repurpose empty advertising displays – urban blank canvases. And he was conscious not to emulate the graffiti artists (whom he respected and admired) but to create a new style informed by their aesthetic.

Haring’s images – crawling babies, flying saucers, vibrating dancers – seem to invite a variety of interpretations from social commentary to satire or even a spiritual or universal ideal. Whatever the interpretation, it appears to be rich in meaning, and his images represent a fully-formed iconography that must have been born of some postmodern analysis. Like Mark Tansey, who reappropriated images and themes from art history to comment on critical theory, or Cindy Sherman, who reinterpreted iconic images of women to confront gender issues.

It was surprising to me to discover that this was not the case. He discovered his iconography in an almost spastic burst of the subconscious. His oak tag experiments, which took place in one day, gave birth to his “entire future vocabulary.” “I have no idea why it turned out like that,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t a conscious thing. But after these initial images, everything fell into place.” He would come to use these figures to comment directly on social issues, especially in his placement of images next to (or sometimes on top of) subway ads, but it is astounding to think that such a rich iconography can be traced back to one potent spark of imagination.

My artwork looks nothing like Keith Haring’s, but we do both seek meaning in imagery derived from the subconscious. I like to explore images of dreams and mystery, contrasting images with obscure contexts that invite the viewer to connect the dots, to achieve their own meaning. Giorgio De Chirico has often been an inspiration, and I think the common thread here is a play on the innate human desire to make sense of one’s surroundings, no matter how little help you are given by the artist.

This is where the similarities end. I have to labor to reach that subconscious level, it does not always come naturally to me. Haring’s work was improvisational; I work and rework my compositions in sketches. Using white crayon on a fixed-location surface, he could not edit. I edit furiously. His work was public; mine is private. His work was extroverted; mine turns inward. Though it seems everything about our processes differ, I would like to work the way he worked. I am always looking for that kind of freedom, but perhaps it’s been in the wrong places.

Keith Haring died of AIDS in 1990. He would have been 50 years old this May. A wonderful collection of his images can be found at the Keith Haring Foundation website.