RADIANT
The Life and Line of Keith Haring
Brad Gooch with Christopher Makos
Paolo Gallo – stock.adobe.com
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Time: 10 – 11:15 AM
Milford Theater – ticketed event
Nothing is more exciting than when art and literature come together. This insightful conversation between Brad Gooch and Christopher Makos is about the time when Keith Haring was leaving his indelible mark on America through his art. His simple, charming, laughing dogs and his colorful murals adorned the sides of buildings all over New York City for all to enjoy.
Brad Gooch
Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer whose previous ten books include Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller; City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; and the memoir Smash Cut. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, and lives in New York City.
Gooch is one of a group of notable artists, writers, performers, musicians and intellectuals who defined New York’s inimitable and electrifying cultural scene of the late 1970s and early ’80s. As T Magazine’s editor in chief, Hanya Yanagihara put it in an article “They Made New York,” “These are the people who came to, and stayed in, New York when it was at its worst, and in so doing, created what was arguably the most important multidisciplinary artistic movement that the city has ever seen.” Gooch wrote about this period in his memoir Smash Cut; the memoir also describes Gooch’s relationship with his late partner, filmmaker Howard Brookner, who knew Haring. Their connection was mutual admiration for William Burroughs, about whom Howard had made a documentary. When Howard died in 1989, Keith attended the funeral, held on the date of Howard’s thirty-fifth birthday.
Christopher Makos
Christopher Makos was a close friend to and important influence on Andy Warhol in the 1970s and 1980s and his work documenting the eclectic world surrounding the “Factory”, and the vibrant New York social scene of that era, have been featured in scores of exhibitions, documentaries, and publications, including the recent critically acclaimed Netflix documentary The Warhol Diaries from producer Ryan Murphy. His new exhibit presents Warhol away from the Factory, away from New York, enjoying a restorative and deep engagement with the natural environment, at the beach, in the woods and in the Colorado mountains. The exhibit challenges the caricatured image of the commercial Andy Warhol, often seen as a plastic figure obsessed with consumerism, advertising and shallow society.