Keith Haring

Avenue D Mural

Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.

Naturally, I have to bring back Something I Saw with a little overshare.

As you might imagine, I haven’t physically seen all of the hundreds of artworks that I’ve shared since I started this newsletter back in April 2020 (eek!). In fact, this newsletter was made as a tribute to the works that I missed or hoped to see. Since it’s inception, I’ve aimed to build a compendium of works that I also hope that you — my dear readers — would also get to experience.

To celebrate this spirit, I want to make this space one where I talk a bit more about “the why” of this project and maybe even “the how” of seeing the things that I do.

I have to admit that in my own insecurities as both a writer and a curator, I’ve always been hesitant to foreground my own voice. I think this is because I have always believed that artworks can speak for themselves. And, when the artworks don’t speak, the artists who create the works can provide context, or mystery as they see fit.

In my humbled opinion, I find myself at the very bottom of that food chain. At this big age though I realize that the imagined food chain is counterintuitive to everything I know about art (sorry!). At this big age, I believe that artworks find us as much as we find them and that that story — that social history — is something worth documenting. So, this space will change: it’ll be more personal, more playful and I hope you’ll think about how to celebrate the *magic* that happens when art finds us.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a deep dive into the journals of Keith Haring, the actual subject of today’s newsletter.

In his journal, he writes:

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.

Let’s rid ourselves of the bullshit, fam.

x K