Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings

For the Book Launch of Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings, Visual AIDS and the New York Public Library host a discussion between Cynthia Carr and Carl George on the art and life of Hugh Steers. Moderated by Alex Fialho, Carr and George will consider the range of Steers' work as well as share personal anecdotes from Steers' rich life. A small reception before and after the discussion will celebrate the publication of this long-awaited monograph on the work of Hugh Steers.

 

Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings is the first monograph focused on the career of American figurative painter Hugh Steers (1962-1995), whose life was cut short by AIDS, at the age of 32. Committed to figurative painting at a time when it was out of favor with critics and collectors, Steers nonetheless gained appreciation for his expressionist-realist narratives of a life shadowed by isolation and mortality, yet infused with wry humor, camp, and what Steers himself called, a “gorgeous bleakness.” Unique among painters, Steers consciously brought AIDS, intimacy, and the body into the traditional vocabulary of painting.

 

Carl George is a collagist, filmmaker and curator. Hugh and Carl were best friends, art collaborators, sisters on the dancefloor and brothers in arms in the war on AIDS.

 

Cynthia Carr was a columnist and arts reporter for the Village Voice from 1984 to 2003. Writing under the byline C. Carr, she specialized in experimental and cutting-edge art, especially performance art. Some of these pieces are now collected in On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. She is also the author of Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Bookforum, Modern Painters, the Drama Review, and other publications. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. Carr wrote the critically acclaimed biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. Carr lives in New York.