Hilton Als

'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan 'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer 'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we're a series of mouths, and that every mouth needs with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love' White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Louise Brooks and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most highly acclaimed essay collections in years. 'A voice that's new, that comes as if from a different room. I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead 'Effortless, honest and fearless' Rich Benjamin, The New York Times 'Als is one of the most consistently unpredictable and surprising essayists out there, an author who confounds our expectations virtually every time he writes' David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times 'A comprehensive and utterly lovely collection of one of the best writers around' Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe

A New York Times Notable Book Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other blacks or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation. Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

In this brilliant two-part memoir, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Hilton Als distills into one cocktail the deep and potent complexities of love and of loss, of Prince and of power, of desire and of race. It’s delicious and it’s got the kick of a mule, especially as Als swirls into his mix the downtown queer nightclub scene, the AIDS crisis, Prince’s ass in his tight little pants, an ill-fated peach pie, Dorothy Parker, and his desire for true love. Always surprising and stealthily—even painfully—moving, Als plumbs longing: “I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn’t love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince—but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?”

The Pulitzer–Prize winning and Guggenheim-honored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing “the fierce style of street reading and the formal tradition of critical inquiry, reads culture, race, and gender” ( New York Times ) to the task.“The essay, like love, like life, is indefinable, but you know an essay when you see it, and you know a great one when you feel it, because it is concentrated life,” writes Hilton Als in his introduction. Expertly guided by Als’s instinct and intellect, The Best American Essays 2018 showcases great essays as well as irresistibly eclectic ones. Go undercover in North Korea, delve into the question of race in the novels of William Faulkner, hang out in the 1970s New York music scene, and take a family road trip cum art pilgrimage. These experiences and more immersive slices of concentrated life await.

Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his career, he made deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects--beginning with sinks and moving on to domestic furniture such as playpens, beds and doors. In the 1990s, his practice evolved from single works to theatrical room-sized environments. In all of his work, Gober's formal intelligence is never separate from a penetrating reading of the socio-political context of his time. His objects and installations are among the most psychologically charged artworks of the late twentieth century, reflecting the artist's sustained concerns with issues of social justice, freedom and tolerance. Published in conjunction with the first large-scale survey of the artist's career to take place in the United States, this publication presents his works in all media, including individual sculptures and immersive sculptural environments, as well as a distinctive selection of drawings, prints and photographs. Prepared in close collaboration with the artist, it traces the development of a remarkable body of work, highlighting themes and motifs that emerged in the early 1980s and continue to inform Gober's work today. An essay by Hilton Als is complemented by an in-depth chronology featuring a rich selection of images from the artist's archives, including never-before-published photographs of works in progress.Robert Gober was born in 1954 in Wallingford, Connecticut. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, most notably at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Schaulager, Basel. In 2001, he represented the United States at the 49th Venice Biennale. Gober's curatorial projects have been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Menil Collection, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

Peter Doig is well known for the exotic atmospheres and dreamy narratives that appear in his work. With an uncommonly rich color palette and a unique material sensibility, he has created some of the most resonant and evocative images in contemporary painting, placing him among the most inventive painters working today. But, as this extensive volume makes clear, he is also a sophisticated visual thinker, endlessly preoccupied with the process and history of painting. No Foreign Lands is the first publication to examine in depth the conceptual underpinnings of Doig’s oeuvre. Particular attention is given to the importance of motifs, themes and variations in his work, explored in over 200 paintings and works on paper from the past 13 years, among them new works never before published.Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Peter Doig was raised in Canada and spent two decades in London before moving to Trinidad, where he now lives and works. Doig graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art in 1983 and the Chelsea School of Art in 1990. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994, and was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In February 2013, his painting "The Architect’s Home in the Ravine" sold for $12,000,000 at a London auction. The exhibition No Foreign Lands , which opened at the Scottish National Gallery before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, showcases works created during the past ten years, much of which the artist spent in Trinidad. The Independent called the exhibition "a thrilling show," and The Observer praised it as "mesmerizing."

Hilton Als on Alice Neel's quietly political portraits of HarlemKnown for her portraits of family, friends, writers, poets, artists, students, singers, salesmen, activists and more, Alice Neel (1900-1984) created forthright, intimate and, at times, humorous paintings that both overtly and quietly engaged with political and social issues. In Alice Neel, Uptown, writer and curator Hilton Als brings together a body of paintings of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other people of color for the first time. Highlighting the innate diversity of Neel's approach, the selection looks at those often left out of the art-historical canon and how this extraordinary painter captured them; -what fascinated her was the breadth of humanity that she encountered, - Als writes.The publication explores Neel's interest in the extraordinary diversity of 20th-century New York City and the people among whom she lived. This group of portraits includes well-known figures such as playwright, actress, and author Alice Childress; the sociologist Horace R. Cayton, Jr.; the community activist Mercedes Arroyo; and the widely published academic Harold Cruse; alongside those of more anonymous individuals, such as a nurse, a ballet dancer, a taxi driver, a businessman, a local boy who ran errands for Neel, and other children and their families.In short and illuminating texts on specific works written in his characteristic narrative style, Als writes about the history of each sitter and offers insights into Neel and her work, while adding his own perspective. A contemporary and personal approach to Alice Neel's oeuvre, Als' project is -an attempt to honor not only what Neel saw, but the generosity of her seeing.-

African-American artist Kara Walker (born 1969) has been acclaimed internationally for her candid investigations of race, sexuality and violence through the lens of reconceived historical tropes. She had her first solo show at The Drawing Center in New York City in 1994 and, at the age of 28 in 1997, was one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. This publication documents Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker , a major series of graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper that grew out of Walker’s attempts to understand how interpersonal and geopolitical powers are asserted through the lives of individuals. In scenes that range from the grotesque to the humorous to the tragic, these works vividly and powerfully explore the themes of transition and migration that run through the African-American experience. The accompanying essays take us through Walker’s saga of American experience--the dual streams of renewal and destruction that trace parallel lines through the last century’s rapid urbanization and the complementary emergence of a “New Negro” identity. Fully illustrated with reproductions of the entire series, and designed by award-winning design studio CoMa with Walker’s close collaboration, Dust Jackets for the Niggerati represents a major contribution to the career of one of our most significant and complex contemporary artists.

Long awaited, the first survey of the work of one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers For almost 40 years, Catherine Opie has been documenting with psychological acuity the cultural and geographic identity of contemporary America. This unique artist monograph presents a compelling visual narrative of Opie's work since the early 1980s, pairing images across bodies of work to form a full picture of her artistic vision. With more than 300 beautiful illustrations and made in close collaboration with Opie, the book marks a turning point in the consideration of this artist's work to date.

What if life was a movie that you could edit yourself? Or a play that you could rewrite? Or a face that you will not forget, never, ever, it might be yours? What if culture was there for you to make sense of – all this? What if Hilton Als was a friend, a voice, a guide through the art that life is, with all his wisdom and warmth and wealth of – everything? What if he would tell About the greatness of Montgomery Clift, the spirituality of Nina Simone, the class of Dirk Bogarde, the lips of Jeanne Moreau, about Marlene Dietrich, Robin Thicke, Truman Capote, about a kiss, his uncle, Barbara Epstein? Life would be better!

In the heyday of Andy Warhol's legendary hub of art, subculture, and insanity known as the Factory, one performer made his mark like no Jackie Curtis. A wildly creative, avant-garde performer, poet, playwright, and longtime friend and collaborator of Warhol's, Curtis was well known as a cross-dressing phenom whose personal life went even further and was even wilder than anything onstage and onscreen. This limited edition book contains an essay by Hilton Als and a collection of archival photographs of Jackie Curtis interspersed with photographs Als took of Justin Bond, the creator of Kiki and other intriguing personalities. The parallels between Curtis and Bond are Bond, like Curtis (who died in 1985), is a man of many characters. He performs sometimes in light drag, sometimes in heavy drag, and when he performs in heavy drag favors frizzy wigs and glitter eye makeup and a certain air of debauchery. Like Curtis, Bond is an intelligent and subversive writer and a thrilling performer. So it is not strange that Als paired them. What is unusual is that, having made the connection between two of his favorites, he would write-and self-publish-a book about them and, more, about their importance to him. It's a very intimate, personal project in every the essay, the photos, the look and feel of the thing itself-Als had only a handful of copies printed.

Famed for her painted portraits, Elizabeth Peyton (born 1965) has also created a wide range of prints over the past two decades, including monotypes, lithographs, woodcuts and etchings. Experimenting with different techniques, she uses a variety of diverse paper stocks and handmade papers as well as various colored and monochromatic inks. In comparison to the diminutiveness of her paintings, the relatively large scale of these prints--in particular of the lithographs and monotypes--is remarkable. Her portrayed subjects here include historical figures such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) and Richard Wagner; visual artists such as Frida Kahlo, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe; pop stars such as Eminem and Kurt Cobain; as well as her friends. More recently, Peyton has turned to the genre of the still life to explore and renew its contemporary relevance. This monograph of Peyton's prints is the first in-depth exploration of the artist as a critical printmaker. It includes essays by Sabine Eckmann and Hilton Als as well as an interview with the artist conducted by Beate Kemfert. Featuring more than 70 of her prints in color, the catalogue also includes the first comprehensive index of her prints to date.

Hilton Als grew up in a corner of Brooklyn scarred by riots, racial segregation and sexual prejudice. As a young teenager, he began to glimpse possibility in the different cultures and ways of being he encountered through high school; in the black men and white men who found ways to be together. As a burgeoning writer in a Manhattan pulsing with new culture - with hip hop, Basquiat, nightclubs and new wave - Hilton at last came together with the gay family he had longed for. The timing was not opportune: reports of a 'rare cancer' were beginning to trickle through the press.Part autobiography, part reportage, part cultural criticism, I Don't Remember weaves the impossible story of queer America in the age of the AIDs crisis. It is an elegy like no other for an unsung generation of gay men: of heroic lovers and friends, visionary makers, artists and creators. By turns lyrical, wry, and exquisite in its poetic, rapid-fire storytelling, it sings a song of the necessity of connection, and the grandness of human endeavor, especially when it comes to loving, and being loved, in the face of social limitations, stigma, and unspeakable tragedy.