{"id":530149,"date":"2026-04-14T11:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530149\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T11:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:05:08","slug":"they-accomplished-so-much-even-as-they-were-dying-the-groundbreaking-gay-art-of-peter-hujar-and-paul-thek-peter-hujar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530149\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They accomplished so much, even as they were dying\u2019: the groundbreaking gay art of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek | Peter Hujar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Durbin, author and editor-in-chief of Frieze Magazine<\/a>, spent almost five years writing The Wonderful World That Almost Was<\/a>. This dual biography of photographer Peter Hujar<\/a> and sculptor Paul Thek, two gay artists who made extraordinary work in the years before and during Aids, focuses on their friendship, creativity and collaboration spanning more than 30 years. They died within a year of each other, in 1987 and 1988, both from complications from Aids.<\/p>\n

The work and lives of Thek and Hujar have come storming back into the cultural conversation in recent years. Hujar was played by Ben Whishaw<\/a> in Ira Sachs\u2019s poetic 2025 film, Peter Hujar\u2019s Day<\/a>, and his images have been used as cover art for an Anohni and the Johnsons<\/a> album and Hanya Yanagihara\u2019s bestseller A Little Life<\/a>. Thek\u2019s equivalent moment has been slower; his most important works were large-scale installations in Europe, all lost, and which, as Durbin tells me, \u201ceveryone loved, but few could experience. And when they were finished, there wasn\u2019t much left to sell. But I think his moment is about to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I meet Durbin in Berlin in late March, he says he hasn\u2019t slept much in the lead-up to the book\u2019s release. After we chat, he\u2019ll speak at local gallery Gropius Bau, where an exhibit of Peter Hujar\u2019s photography<\/a> is running through 28 June. This is the first stop of his book tour, and he seems relieved to finally be talking about it. \u201cI wanted to show that they truly lived,\u201d he says of Hujar and Thek. \u201cThey accomplished so much, even as they were dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wonderful World That Almost Was is an important piece of literary recovery in queer art. To write it, Durbin had to race against the clock: many sources passed during the book\u2019s completion, including the executors of Thek\u2019s and Hujar\u2019s estates.<\/p>\n

Among the many cruelties of Aids<\/a> was the second erasure: families claiming their sons died of another illness, stripping their queerness from the record. The collections of many artists \u2013 even ones celebrated in their time \u2013 were scattered and lost. Such a fate might have happened to Hujar and Thek, too, if not for the people Durbin interviewed. His book extends that work, capturing the intimacy of a groundbreaking couple in 20th-century art.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lives of the artists who died of Aids have often been read backwards, through the lens of the disease,\u201d Durbin writes in the book\u2019s introduction. \u201cThey are seen as tragic, twilight figures.\u201d Working against that, the book centers their lives from 1954 to 1975, with their deaths in the epilogue. The result is a love story that feels messy and real.<\/p>\n

The cover of The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. Photograph: Farrar, Straus and Giroux<\/p>\n

Hujar first photographed Thek in Coral Gables, Florida, in about 1956 or 57, when they were in their early 20s. By 1960, they were neighbors on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and in love. When I ask Durbin about Thek\u2019s legendary magnetism (Tennessee Williams<\/a> and Gore Vidal<\/a> were among those who fell for him), he says: \u201cPaul was like a child. He was excited about the world. He was funny, he was playful, he made you laugh. He made you want to take care of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

A postcard sent to Hujar from Fire Island<\/a>: a crowded beach with a single figure circled by Thek\u2019s pen. On the back is written: \u201cA photograph of happy persons, except me, I am seen looking everywhere for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

While on holiday in Sicily in 1963, they descended into Palermo\u2019s Capuchin Catacombs, where photography was forbidden. Hujar, with his camera, ignored the rule. Paul reached into one glass coffin and picked up what he thought was a piece of paper. It was a bit of dried human thigh. \u201cI felt strangely relieved and free,\u201d he later said in a 1966 interview for Artnews. \u201cIt delighted me that bodies could be used to decorate a room, like flowers.\u201d Hujar\u2019s catacomb photographs would become Portraits in Life and Death (1976), the only book he published in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

For Thek, the afternoon seeded his \u201cmeat pieces\u201d: eerie sculptures of wax flesh in glass-and-metal cases that evoked Christian reliquaries. These made him, almost overnight, the art world\u2019s unsettling new star.<\/p>\n

Both men resisted being fixed in place. Thek often destroyed his work, intentionally misdating paintings and building fragile, ephemeral installations that left no saleable object behind. Hujar \u201cdidn\u2019t want to be known as just a gay photographer\u201d, Durbin tells me. Even as he tackled explicitly gay subjects like \u201cthe cruising grounds of the West Side, the parks at night, lovers, drag queens, out-and-open friends and artists\u201d, Durbin writes, Hujar felt that \u201claying claim to homosexuality meant binning your work in a subcategory most museums and serious critics would not touch\u201d. When he did photograph male nudes, including a series of erotic images of David Wojnarowicz<\/a>, he released them under an anagram of his name, Jute Harper, part of his longtime search for a good alias. Even so, his camera kept returning to iconic queer subjects like Candy Darling, Susan Sontag<\/a>, Fran Lebowitz<\/a>, Wojnarowicz, Jackie Curtis and John Waters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Peter Hujar, Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, from 1973. Photograph: The Peter Hujar Archive\/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026<\/p>\n

In August 1975, Thek sat for what would be his last photo sessions with Hujar. Their relationship had been fracturing. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a single moment when it began,\u201d Durbin tells me of their falling out. \u201cIt\u2019s a spectrum of experiences. A book can\u2019t capture that.\u201d The sessions resulted in some of Hujar\u2019s greatest portraits. \u201cIn the second session,\u201d Durbin writes, \u201cPaul\u2019s face wheels through all his feelings for Peter \u2013 his love, his envy, his dismissal, his misunderstandings, his wanting to forget, his wanting to forgive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last letter Thek wrote to Hujar is full of ideas and suggested photographs for Portraits in Life and Death, then in progress: \u201cA bush, a door, a gate, a road, a tunnel, pearls.\u201d He writes as if they are at the beginning of something, not the end. The last line: \u201cAny time you want to make love,\u201d he said, \u201cjust ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For queer readers who came after Aids killed a generation and buried how those men loved, worked and made things, The Wonderful World That Almost Was offers something rare: proof. \u201cI would love for them to read this,\u201d Durbin says of younger readers, \u201cand realise they can make art however they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s less possible now to have the careers Peter and Paul had,\u201d Durbin acknowledges. \u201cFew can live in [New York\u2019s East] Village now and be a photographer. The urban bohemia is gone. But some have living memory of it, and it is an acute, painful loss. We want a world where Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis are our neighbors. This is the New York<\/a> we want and miss. We want those bars where really cool people sit and drink beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linda Rosenkrantz, now 91 and one of the last surviving members of Hujar\u2019s inner circle, says that Durbin\u2019s book shines new light on the photographer\u2019s private life: \u201cI don\u2019t think I realized how major the relationship [with Thek] was in Peter\u2019s life,\u201d she writes. \u201cI suppose it was obscured even by me until Andrew [Durbin] explored it so fully.\u201d<\/p>\n

That reckoning is now at full speed: in New York there\u2019s a Moma screening series<\/a> running this month, Durbin\u2019s own exhibition<\/a> opens this week at Ortuzar Projects while Galerie Buchholz<\/a> opens a Thek show on 13 May with a major exhibition also planned at the Watermill Center later this year. \u201cThis is a big success in terms of an estate and legacy,\u201d says Noah Khoshbin, president of the Paul Thek Foundation. \u201cThis is an artist who did not have a single work in an American institution when he died.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1975, Thek wrote to Hujar: \u201c \u2026 all we wanted to do, want to do, is also add our names, almost like the lists of names on the tombs for the unknown millions, soldiers, etc, we\u2019d wanted to say I WAS HERE TOO!\u201d<\/p>\n

The spirit of The Wonderful World That Almost Was is a loud call for these artists to receive the recognition they deserved. \u201cI will love these artists until I die,\u201d Durbin tells me. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be talking about Peter Hujar<\/a> and Paul Thek for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wonderful World That Almost Was by Andrew Durbin will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 14 April in the US and Australia and by Granta on 23 April in the UK. Peter Hujar\/Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision is showing at Gropius Bau, Berlin, until 23 August<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Durbin, author and editor-in-chief of Frieze Magazine, spent almost five years writing The Wonderful World That Almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-530149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}