On Art.sy

The Peter Hujar Archive is very excited to be a part of Art.sy's beta! If you haven't had time to catch up on all of the buzz surrounding this new free platform for exploring art, here are a few articles to help you catch up: 

Art.sy Is Changing The Way The World Views Art (Business Insider-Nov 7, 2012)

Art.sy’s Hairy Gene (GalleristNY -Oct 12, 2012)

Art.sy Launches, Unveiling Partnerships With the Armory Show and Design Miami (ARTINFO - Oct 9,2012)

Two Years In Coming, Art.sy Finally Brings Pandora’s Genome Project To The Wacky World Of Art (TechCrunch -Oct 9, 2012)

Online, a Genome Project for the World of Art (NYTimes -Oct 8, 2012)

Peter Hujar in New Orleans, 1980

Steve Turtell, who is working on a book about the influence of Peter Hujar's photography entitled, "Peter Hujar: Invisible Master," spoke earlier this year for the Camera Club of New York about his trip to Mardi Gras with Hujar in 1980.  Turtell also discussed this somewhat disastrous trip during the filming of the Peter Hujar Oral History Project.  The trip both complexified the relationship between these two young men, and revealed to Turtell some of the fascinating contradictions of Hujar's personality, which is often described as equally seductive and antagonistic.  

Only two of the images from Hujar's contact sheets were known to be printed by the artist during his lifetime.  Earlier today, however, the Archive released a number of contact sheets from this trip on the PHA tumblr page. Here are a few:  

Peter Hujar Oral History Project Wraps Up!

Last week the Peter Hujar Archive wrapped up its final interviews for an oral history project filmed and directed by the amazing True Life Media.  Our last interview was with Bruce de Sainte Croix, a friend of Hujar's who was a dancer in New York during the 1970s.  

In 1976 Hujar photographed de Ste. Croix with the intention of producing images for an upcoming exhibition of erotic art at the Marcuse Pfiefer Gallery.  During the interview last week, de Ste. Croix brilliantly elaborated on the resulting work from this photoshoot, describing the spiritual atmosphere created in Hujar's prints and the simultaneous vulnerability and courage captured in Standing Male Nude: Bruce de Sainte Croix.  Looking through the contact sheets from the photoshoot, de Ste. Croix recounted the casual, playful beginning of the shoot through to the dramatic act of masturbation, which Hujar boldly and emotionally captured. 

De Ste. Croix candidly discussed the significance of these photographs to him personally as well as their significance in the contexts of erotic art throughout history and of New York in the 1970s.  Among the issues touched upon in the interview are the expression of the body's own autonomous sexual forces, sexuality as a demonstration of freedom in the 1970s, and the nature of de Ste. Croix and Hujar's relationship.  

Soon all of the footage from the oral history interviews, including de Ste. Croix's, will be available online.  In the meantime, here are the iconic images printed by Hujar from the de Ste. Croix's sitting:

 Standing Male Nude: Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976

Seated Nude, Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976

Bruce de Sainte Croix Masturbating, 1976

Postcards From David

Currently, the Modern Institute Osborne Street in Glasgow is exhibiting If you don't like this book you don't like me, a collection of notebooks by Paul Thek that provide contextual information about the artist's life and works. Included in this exhibition are also photographic collaborations with Peter Hujar that demonstrate the importance of their relationship throughout both artists' careers. 

Here in New York at the end of 2011, the exhibition Influential Friends of Peter Hujar, presented at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, explored this same friendship as well as that between Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz. Archival materials from Influental Friends help reveal both the significant role these artists played in shaping the cultural downtown scene in New York during the 1970s and 80s, as well as the depth of emotional connections between them. Included in this show were a series of postcards sent by Wojnarowicz to Hujar from all over the world towards the end of Hujar's life.  As the late John McWhinnie writes in some of the text accompanying this brilliant exhibition, "[Wojnarowicz's postcards to Hujar] detail both the mundane and extraordinary of his travel experiences, but also provide a glimpse into the closeness of their bond." The last of Wojnarowicz's postcards was written just months before Hujar's death in November of 1987.  

Here are a few selections from this collection of touching notes, some with personal illustrations by Wojnarowciz. Highlights include, "P.S. I GOT POISON IVY + FOUND A MUMMIFIED SHARK," and Wojnarowicz's watercolor of a floating nose on the back of the reproduction of Man Ray's At the Hour of the Observatory. 

Hujar's "Piers" Images

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Piers were the site of much activity among artists and an emerging gay culture.   At the piers, gay men would congregate, sunbathe naked, and engage in sexual encounters.  Significant New York based artists explored this dynamic site, inspired by the mix of an emerging gay culture and the ruins of dilapidated New York structures.  Peter Hujar, of course, was there and his work is included in the "Piers" exhibition now on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

Here a few more photographs by Hujar taken at the New York Piers during the 1970s and 80s: