{"id":591847,"date":"2026-04-18T14:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591847\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T14:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:05:09","slug":"peter-hujar-and-paul-thek-revived-in-a-new-biography-by-andrew-durbin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591847\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, Revived in a New Biography by Andrew Durbin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek by Andrew Durbin <\/p>\n<p>Andrew Durbin picked a good title for his dual biography of the artist Paul Thek and the photographer Peter Hujar, sometime lovers and longtime friends. The Wonderful World That Almost Was is the story of their occasional work-life highs\u2014Thek\u2019s museum shows, Hujar\u2019s magazine work\u2014but also of the career costs of both men\u2019s dismissal of mere commercial success. To complicate matters, they were part of a now vanished downtown-Manhattan scene, where pleasures and distractions were plentiful\u2014sometimes too plentiful\u2014but money? Not so much.<\/p>\n<p>These days, Thek seems always on the verge of being forgotten. And Hujar has never quite gained the instant name recognition he deserves\u2014though a recent film about him might help. Peter Hujar\u2019s Day, directed by Ira Sachs, is based on a long conversation between Linda Rosenkrantz (played by Rebecca Hall) and Hujar (played by Ben Whishaw) in 1974. At Rosenkrantz\u2019s request, Hujar describes what he had done the day before, which included photographing a peevish <a href=\"https:\/\/airmail.news\/issues\/2025-9-27\/the-view-from-here\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Allen Ginsberg<\/a> for The New York Times and taking two naps. Granted, it\u2019s not Lawrence of Arabia, but thanks to Whishaw\u2019s sultry performance as Hujar, it\u2019s oddly absorbing.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"img-small\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/air-mail.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>      Enter your e-mail to read the full story for free<br \/>and to receive our weekly e-mail newsletter<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-5 text-center text-md\" data-paywall-capture-target=\"intro\">\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/airmail.news\/subscribe?from=Jghm89\" data-turbo=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe to AIR MAIL<\/a> for full access.\n  <\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-5 mb-0 article-card-text text-center\" data-paywall-capture-target=\"existing\">\n    Already a subscriber? <a href=\"https:\/\/airmail.news\/subscription\/sign-in?from=Jghm89\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign in here<\/a>\n  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek by Andrew Durbin Andrew&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[258348,258349,258350,62791,228,226,227,218630,7567,258351,229,258352,88,258353,2808,258354,258355,196663,36383,258356,258357,258358,2005,258359,258360,166926,258361,171351,258362,81424,258363,51388,12500,43269,258364,21286,258365,49825,258366],"class_list":{"0":"post-591847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-against-interpretation","9":"tag-allen-ginsberg","10":"tag-andrew-durbin","11":"tag-andy-warhol","12":"tag-arts","13":"tag-arts-and-design","14":"tag-artsanddesign","15":"tag-ben-whishaw","16":"tag-brooklyn","17":"tag-candy-darling","18":"tag-design","19":"tag-divine","20":"tag-entertainment","21":"tag-floral-park","22":"tag-florida","23":"tag-fran-lebowitz-capuchin-catacombs-of-palermo","24":"tag-hans-bellmer","25":"tag-ira-sachs","26":"tag-john-waters","27":"tag-lawrence-of-arabia","28":"tag-linda-rosenkrantz","29":"tag-meat-pieces","30":"tag-new-york","31":"tag-paul-thek","32":"tag-peter-hujar","33":"tag-peter-hujars-day","34":"tag-portraits-in-life-and-death","35":"tag-rebecca-hall","36":"tag-richard-lacayo","37":"tag-rome","38":"tag-salvador-dal","39":"tag-sicily","40":"tag-surrealism","41":"tag-susan-sontag","42":"tag-technological-reliquaries","43":"tag-the-new-york-times","44":"tag-the-wonderful-world-that-almost-was","45":"tag-west-village","46":"tag-william-s-burroughs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}