š Free Worldwide Shipping on All Orders!Shop Now
The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek
The cinematic, never-before-told story of two intimately entangled artists who redefined queer art.
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
The cinematic, never-before-told story of two intimately entangled artists who redefined queer art.
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
$36.00
The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thekā
$36.00
Description
The cinematic, never-before-told story of two intimately entangled artists who redefined queer art.
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, heād found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliationāan entanglement that changed American art forever.
Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujarās profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberationāfrom artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.
Andrew Durbinās The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary-burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbinās book is an ode to a lost but still-living worldāand two men who defined it.
- Andrew Durbin
- 496 pages
- 6.5 inches W x 9.3 inches L
- Hardcover
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2026
- Art History
- Item #: 9780374609559
