Search results for ""Author Brad Gooch""

Ray Johnson (1927–95) was a seminal Pop artist, a proto-conceptualist and a pioneer of mail art. Always one to throw sand in the gears of art-world institutions, he tended to circulate his work either in truly alternative spaces (like sticking up out of the uneven floorboards of a warehouse downtown) or through the US Postal Service. Throughout his life, Johnson sent collages, drawings and less easily categorized forms of printed matter to friends, colleagues and strangers. Already in 1965, Grace Glueck described Johnson as “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” Though his work resists efforts to pin it down, Johnson can be said to have found a particularly useful medium in collage. Collage allowed Johnson to reflect—but also to participate in—the modern collision of visual and verbal information that only became more frenzied as the 20th century wore on. This volume collects 42 collages made by Johnson between 1966 and 1994, most never exhibited or published before, with a new essay by writer Brad Gooch, who first came into contact with Johnson when he began receiving unsolicited mail art shortly before the artist’s death. The collection of works in this volume shows the artist at his most expansive, combining art history with celebrity, word with image and the personal with the universal.

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The author of the acclaimed City Poet returns with a searing memoir of life in 1980s New York City-a colorful and atmospheric tale of wild bohemians, glamorous celebrity, and complicated passions-with cameo appearances by Madonna, Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs, and a host of others legendary artists. Brad Gooch arrived in New York in the late 1970s, yearning for artistic and personal freedom. Smash Cut is his bold and intimate memoir of this exhilarating time and place. At its center is his love affair with film director Howard Brookner, pieced together from fragments of memory and fueled by a panoply of emotions, from blazing ecstasy to bleakest despair. As both men try to reconcile love and fidelity with the irresistible desire to enjoy the freedom of the age, they live together and apart. Gooch works briefly as a model in Milan, then returns to the city and discovers his vocation as an artist. Brookner falls ill with a mysterious virus that soon has a terrifying name: AIDS. And the story, and life in the city, is suddenly overshadowed by this new demon plague that will ravage a generation and transform the creative world. Gooch charts the progress of Brookner through his illness, and writes unforgettably about endings: of a great talent, a passionate love affair, and an incandescent era. Beautifully written, full of rich detail and poignant reflection, recalling a time and a place and group of friends with affection and clarity, Smash Cut is an extraordinary memoir and an exquisite account of an epoch. Illustrated with 30 black-and-white photographs.

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The ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born more than eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers in America as well as around the world. Rumi has been compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and St. Francis of Assisi for his spiritual wisdom. Yet his life has long remained the stuff of legend rather than intimate knowledge. In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face to the name, Rumi, while at the same time vividly coloring in his time and place--a world as rife with conflict as our own. The map of Rumi's life stretched over 2,500 miles. Gooch retraces this epic journey from central Asia, where Rumi was born in 1207, traveling with his family--who were displace by Mongol terror--as they settle in Konya, Turkey. Pivotal was the disruptive appearance of Shams of Tabriz in the 1240s, who taught Rumi to whirl and transformed him from a respectable Muslim preacher into a poet and mystic. Their vital connection as teacher and pupil, friend and beloved, is one of the world's greatest spiritual love stories. When Shams disappeared, Rumi coped with the pain of separation by composing joyous poems of reunion, both human and divine. Ambitious, bold, and beautifully written, Rumi's Secret reveals the unfolding of Rumi's devotion to a "religion of love," remarkable in his own time, and made even more relevant for the twenty-first century by this compelling account.

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“It’s all here: the grade school Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; the adolescent acid trips; the fondness for Post-it notes and flying saucers; the long tails of Dubuffet and Burroughs; the encounters with Madonna, Warhol, and one game-changer of a subway Johnny Walker Red poster. Brad Gooch takes us deep into Keith Haring’s imagination while somehow managing to fix the aura and energy of the 1980s New York art scene to the page. A keen-eyed, beautifully written biography, atmospheric, exuberant, and as radiant as they come.”—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Revolutionary: Sam AdamsA stunning life of the iconic American artist, Keith Haring, by the acclaimed biographer Brad Gooch.In the 1980s, the subways of New York City were covered with art. In the stations, black matte sheets were pasted over outdated ads, and unsigned chalk drawings often popped up on thes

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Turtle Point Press is pleased to introduce the Divining Poets Quotable Deck Series. These elegant, boxed sets of seventy-eight cards à la tarot decks feature short quotes meant to inspire, provoke, and guide users—to contemplate, memorize, or answer life questions. We begin with the great Rumi, in fresh and wonderfully accessible translations. Persian speakers often tell their fortunes and seek life advice by randomly choosing lines from their classical poets. Brad Gooch discovered why as he worked on Rumi’s Secret, his biography of the wisest poet of all, as well as his forthcoming Everyman's Library collaborative book of translations, Rumi: Unseen Poems, and his popular Twitter feed, @RumiSecrets. Speaking soul-to-soul, with cosmic intimacy, Rumi is always urgently telling us what we need to know on the journey of our lives in haunting, divine, radiant words. The set includes a display stand, plus an instruction card with tips on how to use the deck. This is pocket-sized wisdom to give and to keep, here in perfect time for the holiday season.

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