"The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself, and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work"
About this Quote
The subtext is anti-museum, pro-street. Haring came up in New York’s subway corridors and club ecosystems where speed mattered and surfaces were unpredictable. A drip on a gallery canvas reads as accident; a drip on a wall reads as time passing, bodies moving, the city insisting. By calling it “natural” and part of an “evolution,” he borrows the language of process and biology to legitimize what institutions often dismiss as sloppiness or vandalism. It’s a subtle rebuke to gatekeepers who confuse control with mastery.
There’s also a democratic ethic hiding inside the aesthetics. Haring’s iconography is built to travel - bold lines, repeatable figures, public legibility. Letting the work “develop by itself” suggests the artist as facilitator rather than dictator, closer to a DJ responding to the room than a solitary genius sealing off meaning. The drip, then, isn’t just paint misbehaving; it’s the artwork admitting it was made in real time, in a real world, with real forces acting on it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: The dripping… well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it’s a natural part in the evolution of the work. (null). The Keith Haring Foundation archive identifies this as “The Ten Commandments, An Interview,” by Sylvie Couderc, with the collaboration of Sylvie Marchand, dated December 1985. The quote appears there as part of the interview text, in response to the question: “Taking a close look at your drawings and paintings, one notices that you paint them with great freedom, integrating the drippings and the spots into them. Is this another means of preserving this spontaneity you just mentioned?” Based on the archival evidence surfaced, this is a primary-source interview from 1985 and is the earliest located publication/speaking context for the quote. I did not find a book page number attached to this source, and the archive page does not provide original magazine/journal pagination. Other candidates (1) Mixed Emulsions (Angela Cartwright, 2011) compilation88.6% ... The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just prove... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Haring, Keith. (2026, March 7). The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself, and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dripping-well-if-it-happens-it-happens-it-162257/
Chicago Style
Haring, Keith. "The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself, and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work." FixQuotes. March 7, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dripping-well-if-it-happens-it-happens-it-162257/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself, and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work." FixQuotes, 7 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dripping-well-if-it-happens-it-happens-it-162257/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.
