Brad Gooch talks about “Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring” a memoir based on his own experiences with the artist
The American writer BRAD GOOCH was part of the queer artist scene in NY’s West Village in the 70’s and 80’s . He wrote about this time there in his memoir SMASH CUT when he was working as a fashion model and living with his filmmaker boyfriend in the Chelsea Hotel. He was in the Village when the cut a vicious swath taking the lives of so many young queer men.
Brookner was one of them, so too was the artist/activist KEITH HARING who died in 1990 at only 31 years old. Haring whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s made an indelible mark on the city which seems just as relevant today. Gooch’s new biography “Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring” acknowledges the enormous impact Haring had in his day but how part of his legacy has been the major impact on the art world (and the activist one too) some 30 years later.
Queerguru talked with Gooch about his life then, and also the unquestionably importance of people like him bearing witness and recording our community’s history from a queer insiders viewpoint . Reading about Haring again reminds of us of all the remarkable human beings that were taken from us far too early, but at least Gooch, in making his book, has made a celebration of a life that would impact so many of us.
The interview was filmed in East End Books in Provincetown