gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

keith haring

Keith Haring was born in 1958. Arriving as a young, gay art student in New York in the late 70s, by the early 80s he was this hot downtown artist, hanging out with rock stars and all that. By the time he tragically died of AIDS in 1990 he was globally famous and a real icon.

I like his work, even if the older I get the less I think it will be remembered. He's always been a bit of an inspiration to me. Not so much for his actual work, his rock-star 80s-downtown lifestyle, or the fame and cash thing, but more as an example as somebody who just had a glorious time just doing his own thing. I think most artists would like to emulate that successfully.

When he started his now-famous drawing/artist schtick, it could not have been less fashionable and less likely to get the art world's attention. Screw it, he just went ahead and did it anyway. I admire that tremendously.

People got a buzz from his energy and his passion, and even if the work wasn't going to add much to the canon, they were attracted to it like moths to the light.

I used to think about joining the art world, a-la Haring. I dunno, every time I scoped it out I found it impossible to meet folk I liked or trusted enough to commit to it further. The average art-world conversation would get my eyes glazing over in under 3 minutes. I took that as a warning sign, and moved on.

It's not what business you're in that's important, but the relationships with the people in it. And a lot of artists starve precisely because they forget and/or ignore this, at the peril.

Posted by hugh macleod at May 8, 2004 6:03 PM | TrackBack