Keith Haring Journals (42 page)

Baptiste [Lignel] calls. We arrange to meet at Beaubourg at 5:00. We arrive “almost” on time. With Baptiste, a friend, and his mother we go quickly to Hervé Di Rosa’s store at Galerie Beaubourg. It’s a sort of Paris Pop Shop
à la
Di Rosa. They have some of the stuff from my shop. We go next door to the gallery and run into Hans Mayer. Surprise. We talk, agree to meet later, and head to the museum. Immediately we run into Hans’s wife, Stephanie, and her brother, sister-in-law and mother, etc., etc. As I’m talking to them, Dino (friend from Zurich) comes up. It’s one after another and pretty amazing.

At the museum: Jean Tinguely’s show is remarkable. Unfortunately, Gil and I haven’t eaten and are famished through the entire show. It’s really incredible, though. A lot of new pieces made in 1988. It’s great to see this work since he was close to death a year and a half ago. It’s incredible what he has accomplished since then. Also great to see people’s reaction /participation to/with these pieces. Children are compelled to touch them and gaze in wonderment. It’s totally enchanting and accessible on many levels. Full of metaphors for everything from Life and Death to industrialization and its effect on the human condition. There were a couple of really frightening pieces. There was one made in ’88 that was really like some weird court of the devil with a kind of vision of this evil being overseen by a horned beast (bull skull). It had a moving metal “wing” and “court jesters” sitting in front on either side that looked like evil little sci-fi creatures.

There is this sort of naturalistic fantastical mysterious feeling of not knowing (or caring) from whence it came, but believing it is real. So real that it originated in your own dreams. It is of another place and time. To see only this piece in another context (outside of a museum or gallery) could evoke terror and displace even the “coolest” observer. Amid all the other works, which are sometimes overwhelming, it is difficult to separate feelings and reactions. It is a totally aggressive exhibition. The viewer is
forced
into submission. This is a rare instance. Most exhibitions only achieve this with an active permission granted by the viewer. You can “let” yourself be seduced. This work forces you (however politely) to see it, feel it, become it. Children’s reactions to it make its impact quite clear. I was watching faces of people looking as much as I watched the works. It’s a wonderful lesson. In some ways I always strive for this, but only occasionally achieve it. It is the ultimate reaffirmation.

There was a piece from 1967 called “Requiem for a Dead Leaf” that is a huge machine (a series of pulleys, wheels, belts) that is entirely black, intricately constructed, and serves the sole purpose of causing movement of a white piece of metal with a dead leaf (maybe cast) attached to it. The whole complicated mechanism exists for this one small movement. This piece really freaked me out because it is the closest manifestation I have ever seen to the “dream” I have had continually since I was a small child, often accompanied by a high fever or appearing in times of despair. I haven’t had it for a while now, but remember the feeling of isolation that accompanied it and of often going into this state of “leaving my body” during some intense moments. Last night, for instance, talking to Gil, lying in darkness, I start drifting off and the room gets bigger and bigger and I feel as if I’m far, far away. The dream used to begin with (as best I can put it into words) a kind of obsession with this huge, powerful, ominous
machine
. Very dark, loud, metal (heavy, overpowering metal) and constantly moving, turning. I always am aware of the motion of the machine and its power and then something strange happens . . . it produces or picks a flower (I think a daisy). I think sometimes it hands it to a small child (me?). But the overwhelming impression is of this huge thing existing for this small gesture. I don’t know what it means. I’ve never tried to figure it out. I just accept it. I never tried to paint it because my ability to explain it or imagine it falls short of the clarity I see in the dream. This sculpture is the first time I’ve seen anything that immediately brought me back to this dream. Incredible.

After the show we ate sandwiches and took the subway back to the hotel. As we entered Shirley MacLaine was leaving. Too cool!

Hans didn’t call. I call Lysa and agree to meet for dinner. The hotel operator wants an autograph. Ha Ha Ha.

Went to dinner with Lysa, Joanne and their friends. They were 45 minutes late, but we ran into Ara’s sister and brother at the restaurant so I talked with them while we waited.

Then on to a club. House music? The DJ is wearing a KH shirt from CAPC Musée in Bordeaux. We take mushrooms. Hang out—dance—meet the DJ, who is a major fan. Funny how all over the world I seem to have this connection to DJs. Something about rhythm?

We leave this club. One of their friends has a BMW bike and I ride with him. I love riding on the back of motorcycles, especially when they’re being driven by a big handsome French man. We go to Le Palace and hang out. Male model wearing a KH shirt. Big, beautiful and stupid. “He’s all in the Kool-Aid and doesn’t know the flavor.” Meet more people. Tripping nicely. Downstairs is another club—after-hours. We hang out there. Turns out Jean-Yves (Grace Jones’s friend from La Vie en Rose) is running this club. Big surprise. Dancing, having fun. Some asshole (6ʹ5ʺ and with glasses) is bothering the girls. I went to get a drink and came back to find Gil has just punched him in the face. The guy is bleeding. He’s real stupid and keeps asking for more until they finally throw him out. Gil is real cool about the whole thing.

We leave with the girls and go buy bread and pastries. Me and Gil take a taxi to the Eiffel Tower and walk around the park still feeling a little of the residue from the mushrooms and just sort of getting off on the whole evening. It’s incredibly beautiful, cloudy sky, people walking dogs and jogging. Watch some swans and ducks and take a taxi back to the hotel to look for Shirley MacLaine. Instead we have breakfast in the room and fall asleep. It’s too fucking perfect.

Woke up at 5:00 and went to Claude Picasso’s house. We went over our plans for Spain and looked at a map and discussed the exact itinerary. Went to meet Jean and Baptiste for dinner. At dinner Baptiste proposed that I rent his apartment in the Olympic Towers—$15,000 a month. Sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know, it could be quite funny. After dinner, he drove us to meet Lysa and the girls and we went to a tacky gay bar called Boy for tea dance. It was full, but somehow depressing. I just can’t handle these queens sometimes. Gil and I left and came back to the hotel to sleep. We have to fly tomorrow.

Fly to Madrid. Taxi to hotel. The meter was going a-mile-a-minute. I think it was fixed. We’ve taken longer rides since then for one-third the price. Oh well . . .

Christopher Makos is in the lobby and we find out where the Matisse and the Magritte shows are. We arrange to meet for dinner. The Matisse show was great—some rarely seen paintings from a collection in the USSR. Some great paintings he did in Morocco.

We go to the hotel and meet Christopher for dinner. Unfortunately he’s traveling with Mark Kostabi, one of the few people I truly dislike. “Nauseating” is to put it politely. I knew Kostabi was going to be here, but I didn’t want to have to see him. I successfully avoided talking to him and walking next to him and sitting anywhere near him, but it is impossible to avoid his constant haunting stare. That is really the reason I couldn’t stand him in the first place. Even before he tried to be an artist, he was always this “face” in the crowd at openings and events in New York. He’d just stand near you and stare at you. He used to do it to a lot of people. It gives me the creeps. And even now that he thinks he’s a “famous artist,” he still does it. I can’t stand it and worse yet he’s a terrible artist. Yeccch! Anyway . . . we also ate with the designer Moschino from Milano and some other friends of Christopher. We decided to go to a club afterward and it was a disaster—horribly pretentious with bad music. We asked some American girls there for other possibilities and they gave us two more names, but they didn’t seem too hopeful considering it was Monday night. The first one we tried was closed and had a few people outside, but nobody knew where else to go. The other place was supposed to open at 5:00 AM. We decided to go home to sleep and get up early.

Ha Ha—early? We got up around 4:00 and did our (soon to become a daily habit) push-ups, sit-ups and leg lifts. I’m actually starting to show a little muscle. We got to the Prado by 6:00 and had enough time to get totally blown away. I immediately went to see the Hieronymus Bosch painting
Garden of Earthly Delights
. I have a book with reproductions of the details of the entire painting, and I look at it periodically, but it is incredible how intense it is to be seeing the real thing. It just opens up your senses in a way that is remarkable. Later, discussing this painting and the other we saw there I was explaining to Gil that I was amazed by the sense of hyper-reality in these paintings. It’s hard to imagine (since we live in the age of the photographic image) what it was like to see and think like this in the 1500s. Before the camera replaced our idea of reality with a tangible frozen-moment of realtime that we now consider reality—before that—this is all there was. Paintings. Now people have this concept of reality as a “fact.” A rational, tangible thing that can be recorded—proven—calculated. The “reality” in these paintings is an imagined or highly aestheticized reality—almost hyper-reality. The reason has something to do with the amount of time encapsulated in this stagnant image. (Condensed-time.) Each face is made of many faces. The distortions (anatomical and conceptual) of the bodies and the use of light make these things have their own reality in a way that a photographic image never can. If we ever find a way to give these aesthetic qualities to photographically recorded images (photos, film, video) after they’ve been recorded or during the process of recording them, and find a way of manipulating the rational, scientific “reality,” maybe we will achieve something similar to these paintings. It has to be done with some kind of computer that rearranges “reality” and imposes its own sense of aesthetics into what is actually being physically “seen.” This will likely be possible sooner than we think. For now, we have totally lost this sense of hyper-reality and are lost in what we are convinced is “real.”

We left the museum and went to see ARCO (the Art Fair), which happens to be in Madrid now. It is totally boring and has the exact opposite effect on me of the Prado.

We return to hotel, eat (bad food) and meet Christophe again to go to some party for a Spanish pop star, Bose. It is full of paparazzi, none of whom recognize me, of course, and lots of boring people. Gil and I leave for the club we tried last night that was closed. Tonight it’s open, but totally empty. The bartender says it’s too early. We give up and return to the hotel. Ah well, Valentine’s Day. I’m happy, but I can’t explain why. I’m constantly reminded of “reality” by taking my AZT and Zovirax every four hours, but somehow the time in between seems totally magical. I have a really good time with Gil. We seem to be able to make the best out of even the worst situation. I’m writing now, watching him do his exercises, listening to an old Juan Dubose tape, and feeling very content. I still find it hard to believe that Juan Dubose is really dead. I kept thinking about it . . . seeing the funeral and remembering. I suppose I’ll always remember these things along with all the good stuff I can remember. The one thing he left forever was his spirit through the music. Even in these tapes of other people’s music, somehow his presence is there. It’s strange. I remember Valentine’s Day one year when we wore matching white suits (running suits) and sneakers and stuff for this party that Deb Parker had. We used to be really into that . . . matching clothes. It really was great for a while. Nothing ever seemed to stay the same, though. Everything changes. Always. Right now I’m not sure if I understand anything anymore.

Yves has disappeared. He was supposed to be driving to Madrid to be at the last day of ARCO, which was yesterday, and now it is Wednesday and he hasn’t arrived yet. Debbie called to see if he was here. I was worried yesterday, but I didn’t want to call her in case he was messing around with somebody. Now it’s a little weird, though. We’ll see . . . I hope he’s O.K.

We got up early (relatively). I went to get my tickets for Barcelona at the Iberia office downstairs and there was a big demonstration going on outside the office. After, we had breakfast and took a taxi to see the Magritte show. It was pretty incredible. There were several paintings I had never seen before. Funny how after a while the shock of his imagination wears off and it seems almost like a “formula.” The way he substitutes things, omits the expected, and inserts the unexpected, becomes a kind of predictable process. His painting style remains interesting throughout, though, and often is even more interesting than the subject he is painting.