The Wonderful World that Almost Was

The work of photographer Peter Hujar defined downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Paul Thek was an American sculptor and painter. Hujar and Thek met in 1956 and shared a strong intellectual and artistic connection that influenced the work of both artists. The Wonderful World That Almost Was follows the development of the intense friendship - and romance - between them, from their first encounter in Miami to the painful end of their friendship in the mid-1970s. It was during that period that Hujar and Thek produced some of their most famous and significant works, and this biography traces the ways in which these artists' work directly and indirectly influenced both one another and the wider cultural sphere, and features the large circle of friends and artists they shared, from Andy Warhol and Fran Lebowitz, to Susan Sontag and David Wojnarowicz.

The work of photographer Peter Hujar defined downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Paul Thek was an American sculptor and painter. Hujar and Thek met in 1956 and shared a strong intellectual and artistic connection that influenced the work of both artists. The Wonderful World That Almost Was follows the development of the intense friendship - and romance - between them, from their first encounter in Miami to the painful end of their friendship in the mid-1970s. It was during that period that Hujar and Thek produced some of their most famous and significant works, and this biography traces the ways in which these artists' work directly and indirectly influenced both one another and the wider cultural sphere, and features the large circle of friends and artists they shared, from Andy Warhol and Fran Lebowitz, to Susan Sontag and David Wojnarowicz.

"As official narratives everywhere strain and crack, Peter and Paul--and Durbin--offer a desperately needed alternative way of seeing and being." --Benjamin Moser, author of Susan Sontag: Her Life and Work, winner of the Pulitzer Prize "[Andrew Durbin] has made of these lives and these times a jam-packed poem in prose. It's like a trip with these guys, without pulling tight at the ending, just death." --Eileen Myles, author of A "Working Life " The cinematic, never-before-told story of two intimately entangled artists who redefined queer art. When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, he'd found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliation--an entanglement that changed American art forever. Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujar's profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberation--from artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world. Andrew Durbin's The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundaryburning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbin's book is an ode to a lost but still-living world--and two men who defined it.

"As official narratives everywhere strain and crack, Peter and Paul--and Durbin--offer a desperately needed alternative way of seeing and being." --Benjamin Moser, author of Susan Sontag: Her Life and Work, winner of the Pulitzer Prize "[Andrew Durbin] has made of these lives and these times a jam-packed poem in prose. It's like a trip with these guys, without pulling tight at the ending, just death." --Eileen Myles, author of A "Working Life " The cinematic, never-before-told story of two intimately entangled artists who redefined queer art. When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, he'd found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliation--an entanglement that changed American art forever. Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujar's profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberation--from artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world. Andrew Durbin's The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundaryburning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbin's book is an ode to a lost but still-living world--and two men who defined it.