Keith+Haring+Journals


 * Haring, Keith. __Keith Haring: Journals__. New York: Viking Adult, 1996. Print.**

p12 p13
 * "Art in 1978 has seen numerous attempts at classifying or labeling and then exploiting an idea until the idea itself is lost in the process, and now I feel it is time to come out against group mentality. I don’t know if this is a shared opinion, but by the lack of any existing movements or new movements or new directions, it looks and feels as though we are seeing individual artists, individual ideas. They have been influenced, of course, and many are probably not sincere in their endeavors, but this void of "group movements" after the over-emphasized, unquestioned "movements" of the last ten years that happened so fast--Pop, Conceptual, Minimal, Earth Works, post-this and anti-that--it seems like it is high time for the realization that art is everything and everywhere. That the conception of art occurs in every individual in day-to-day life in endless forms and ideas and is undefinable vecause it is different for each individual. That life is art and art is life. That everybody on every level identifies with art, regardless if they are aware of it or admit it or realize it."
 * "The Public has a right to art. The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists. The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a “self-proclaimed artist” to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses. Art is for everybody. To think that they—the public—do not appreciate art because they don’t understand it, and to continue to make art that they don’t understand and therefore become alienated from, may mean that the artist is the one who doesn’t understand or appreciate art and is thriving in this “self proclaimed knowledge of art” that is actually bullshit. Art can be a positive influence on a society of individuals. Art can be a destructive element and an aid to the takeover of the “mass-identity” society. Art must be considered by the artists as well as the public.” -p13