keith haring: journals

Acaba de ser lançada pela Penguin nos Estados Unidos a nova edição (a primeira e única precedente foi a de 1996) do livro «Keith Haring: Journals», com um prefácio assinado por Shepard Fairey.
Sobre ele disse Madonna: "I've always responded to Keith's art. From the very beginning, there was a lot of innocence and a joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world... The fact is, there's a lot of irony in Keith's work, just as there's a lot of irony in my work. And that's what attracts me to his stuff. I mean, you have these bold colors and those childlike figures and a lot of babies, but if you really look at those works closely, they're really very powerful and really scary. And so often, his art deals with sexuality — and it's a way to point up people's sexual prejudices, their sexual phobias. In that way, Keith's art is also very political."
David Hockney, disse-o antes assim: "These diaries give an account of [Haring's] professional activity, and reveal, like most artists, his strengths and insecurities. Like most artists, I'm often surprised by the insecurities of others or the way they see them... [Haring's] great strength was that his art worked outside galleries and museums. It did not need them, they need it... He left his mark everywhere. A very generous life."
Em resumo, na nossa opinião este "diário" de Keith Haring é um objecto de grande simplicidade estética, mas suficientemente ilustrado e elaborado para nos seduzir enquanto objecto de consumo. E é abordável também. Mas muito mais importante do que isso, de forma simples e completa ele concede-nos a possibilidade de conhecer com maior intimidade o que um simples álbum de imagens, mais ou menos comentadas, não consegue. Revela-nos Keith Haring no período de 1977 a 1989 (ano anterior à sua morte, ocorrida precisamente há 20 anos, a 16 de Fevereiro) e vai mais além revelando o que entre 1990 e 2009 foi acontecendo com o seu legado.