Borofsky’s ‘Running Man’

In your front-page photo montage (Aug. 12), “Berlin Wall--25 Years of Infamy,” you refer to Jonathan Borofsky’s “Running Man” as graffiti. It is not graffiti, even in its recently elevated status in the art world. It is environmental art. You should have consulted with your knowledgeable art critics. They would have told you that just because something is painted on the wall it is not necessarily of the “graffiti genre.”

In fact this “running man” is part of Borofsky’s iconography and he has used this same image in various contexts and settings, most recently in Los Angeles in May, 1986, at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

He considers all his images self-portraits to some extent and many are motivated by dreams, as was this. Its first appearance was on a small drawing in 1973, which included the words: “I want to run away.”

This particular “Running Man” image on the Berlin Wall came about in connection with his installation called the Zeitgeist in West Berlin, October, 1982. Outside the exhibition building, he made a wall drawing of the “running man.” In this context this image is more universal-psychological and political. This has not always been the case.

In Portland the “running man” became Bigfoot for most people, because of the local legend of the giant running through the woods. In other exhibits, with our recent interest in physical fitness, “running man” has become a jogger.

In a recent Borofsky catalogue essay, Mark Rosenthal writes: “Borofsky’s drawings almost always have subjects, for he wants to make a statement, to take a political stand. In place of what he calls coolart, he seeks connectedness to society. A child of the 1960s, he recognizes about that period a shared emotional upsurge, in which people were solicitous of one another. To participate in the world, Borofsky hopes to depict subject matter of universal consequence. Toward that end, he has developed a pattern of recurring, generalized themes that are often highlighted by archetypes and archetypal situations. It should be understood that often a theme or an archetype may have multiple, sometimes even opposing, meanings, much as an experience in life may have varying connotations.”

This is definitely not a graffiti artist’s way of working, neither his concept nor his process.

JOYCE A. HELFAND

Tujunga