Free Keith Haring Journals by Keith Haring

artist leaves unresolved statements, interrupted searches. There may be significant discoveries, seemingly exhausted possibilities, but there is always a new idea that results from these discoveries.
    I am not a beginning.
    I am not an end.
    I am a link in a chain.
    The strength of which depends on my own contributions, as well as the contributions of those before and after me.
    I hope I am not vain in thinking that I may be exploring possibilities that artists like Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Alechinsky have initiated but did not resolve. Their ideas are living ideas. They cannot be resolved, only explored deeper and deeper. I find comfort in the knowledge that they were on a similar search.
    In some sense I am not alone. I feel it when I see their work. Their ideas live on and increase in power as they are explored and rediscovered. I am not alone, as they were not alone, as no artist of the brotherhood ever was or ever will be alone. When I am aware of this unity, and refuse to let my self-doubt and lack of self-confidence interfere, it is one of the most wonderful feelings I’ve ever experienced. I am a necessary part of an important search to which there is no end.

NOVEMBER 12, 1978
    After experiencing the Mark Rothko retrospective I feel enlightened. I had seen Rothko’s work before, but the clarity and unity reflected in a retrospective exhibition gives each piece an added intensity. The first time I had really experienced his work was in the National Gallery in a room with eight paintings on paper from the “Brown and Grey” series. The grouping of these works in a single room concentrated their energy and heightened their impact. I stayed in that room for a long time becoming completely involved with his work.
    I had a similar experience at the Guggenheim. Being in the company of such a large body of work provokes ideas and realizations that are not generated by a single painting. His work left little unanswered. It was a solid statement, perhaps taken to its fullest extent.
    The development of his painting style can be easily traced back to his early figurative works. As early as 1938, rectangular considerations appeared in his work. Although they were merely backgrounds for his increasingly surreal imagery, there was a specific division of the canvas into rectangular planes. In a painting from 1944, Horizontal Processions , the influence of Gorky was evident. He appeared to be more and more making the bridge between surreal and expressionist imagery. Through the 1940s his interest in painting leaned more toward the quality of the brush strokes, his sensitivity toward composition, and the abandonment of line for more abstract solid fields of color. In 1946 planes began to dominate the paintings. There is a logic of layers. In 1947 the first painting appeared with the edges of the canvas treated as a frame. The use of the edge creates the sensation of colors floating above the surface. The use of color frame and field become more and more evolved through the remaining years. He works with a minimum of elements to produce maximum effect. The limitations he creates for himself by restraining his imagery to pure fields of color only heighten his creative powers.
    The most prevalent feelings I experienced throughout the show was one of unity. The work presented spanned almost 50 years of his life. Looking at one piece, you realize that it is an essential step in the evolution of an entire body of work. Each painting builds upon the previous accomplishments. His work represents a commitment to an idea that he pursues to its fullest extent. It proves once again that there can be an infinite number of variations on any given idea. There is no end to possibilities. The only end is the physical one, which he chose to create for himself.
     
    In the floor piece (sculpture) I am constructing:
    To get maximum use out of positive/negative space relationships in this particular piece, keep this in