zugvogelblog

ONCE UPON A TIME

«A joyous mural born in an era filled with fear»  (D. W. Dunlap), Once upon a time is located at the second-floor men’s room of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, 208 W 13th Street, New York

The pleasure of painting… the pleasure of painting the pleasure… the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting…the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting the pleasure…the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting…the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting the pleasure of painting the pleasure…the

These art-murals that Keith Haring painted in 1989 take me invariably to my early childhood. It’s not that sex then was like that -certainly not as genital as Haring depicted it here, black on white- but there was a large quantity of it that still comes to my body whenever I look at these paintings by Haring in the shape of old, slow, soft waves of warmth.

Apart from sex, the main source of pleasure in my childhood days was drawing. I remember with elation my first proper drawing as vividly a I remember my first orgasm.

That «first» drawing -I will not take into account my early mural-paintings- was irretrievably lost. It was green within a circle, orange in a square and blue in a triangle. I remember the pleasure involved in filling in the circle and the polygones, trying to keep the colour of my pencil within the limits of the black line. I drew it when I was three as a test for a school.

 Not having kept my own childhood drawings, I have kept this one by my niece Teresa. She wasn’t still four when she made it while I was having tea with her parents. The legs of this table have become ever since a dear symbol for the unstoppability of pleasure and imagination.