What do you think?
Rate this book
Unbuttoned: Gay Life in the Santa Fe Arts Scene
Where gays live, creativity thrives! For over 100 years, the Santa Fe/Taos region of Northern New Mexico has nurtured a rich gay culture, yet most people have no idea what an enormous impact lesbians and gay men play, and have played, in shaping the art and cultural mecca of the American Southwest.
Cooper’s unbridled memoir takes you behind adobe walls and plunges you into the queer world that was Santa Fe artistic life in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. It’s packed with LGBT history, camp humor, fascinating anecdotes, 80 photographs, and the author’s personal encounters with such cultural icons as Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Norman Rockwell, Buckminster Fuller, Tennessee Williams, Shirley MacLaine, and Elizabeth Taylor. But the heart of Cooper’s story spotlights the regional painters, potters, writers, poets, photographers, designers, tastemakers, and opera people he’s known and loved for 40 years.
Cooper gives voice to a dynamic LGBT community that helps make “the City Different” truly different. And who better to write an inside look at an untold story than a closeted copywriter who left a 10-year career in New York and Tokyo with advertising giant J. Walter Thompson, then bid adios to the ad biz, packed up his dreams, headed West, kicked open the closet door, and became a full-time painter and printmaker. Cooper’s artwork has been exhibited in major galleries and private and corporate collections. His work in graphic design includes book and record album covers, opera posters, wool rugs, greeting cards, and postage stamps.
As the overheated 1970s gave way to the sobering ’80s, Cooper’s candid memoir traces his journey from those high-flying years in New York and Fire Island to his new life as a painter in high-desert New Mexico during a time of great transition, when Santa Fe itself was experiencing a tectonic shift from a quaint art colony to a cultural boom town.
Written with wit and insight, Cooper describes his intimate journey of self-discovery, both as a gay man and a struggling painter. While striving to establish his own identity as a painter, he tells what it’s like to risk everything to be an artist.
“Perhaps only Walter Cooper could unfurl this marvelous, queer cavalcade that was Santa Fe in its halcyon, gay heydays, before Stonewall, before AIDS, before ‘gay pride’. Clearly, a great deal has been lost (dare we say ‘innocence’?) while much more has been gained.”
-------Jan Adlmann, art historian, author of "Contemporary Art in New Mexico."
Cooper’s unbridled memoir takes you behind adobe walls and plunges you into the queer world that was Santa Fe artistic life in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. It’s packed with LGBT history, camp humor, fascinating anecdotes, 80 photographs, and the author’s personal encounters with such cultural icons as Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Norman Rockwell, Buckminster Fuller, Tennessee Williams, Shirley MacLaine, and Elizabeth Taylor. But the heart of Cooper’s story spotlights the regional painters, potters, writers, poets, photographers, designers, tastemakers, and opera people he’s known and loved for 40 years.
Cooper gives voice to a dynamic LGBT community that helps make “the City Different” truly different. And who better to write an inside look at an untold story than a closeted copywriter who left a 10-year career in New York and Tokyo with advertising giant J. Walter Thompson, then bid adios to the ad biz, packed up his dreams, headed West, kicked open the closet door, and became a full-time painter and printmaker. Cooper’s artwork has been exhibited in major galleries and private and corporate collections. His work in graphic design includes book and record album covers, opera posters, wool rugs, greeting cards, and postage stamps.
As the overheated 1970s gave way to the sobering ’80s, Cooper’s candid memoir traces his journey from those high-flying years in New York and Fire Island to his new life as a painter in high-desert New Mexico during a time of great transition, when Santa Fe itself was experiencing a tectonic shift from a quaint art colony to a cultural boom town.
Written with wit and insight, Cooper describes his intimate journey of self-discovery, both as a gay man and a struggling painter. While striving to establish his own identity as a painter, he tells what it’s like to risk everything to be an artist.
“Perhaps only Walter Cooper could unfurl this marvelous, queer cavalcade that was Santa Fe in its halcyon, gay heydays, before Stonewall, before AIDS, before ‘gay pride’. Clearly, a great deal has been lost (dare we say ‘innocence’?) while much more has been gained.”
-------Jan Adlmann, art historian, author of "Contemporary Art in New Mexico."
380 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 17, 2016
3 people are currently reading
10 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 7, 2024
This was a wonderful book by Walter Cooper who started out as 1960s Mad Man in Manhattan and moved to Santa Fe to become an artist. His narrative is not well organized but it is fun to read. He discusses some of the leading lights of Santa Fe and conjectures whether or not Georgia O'Keefe is a lesbian. He also documents the scourge of AIDS on his dear circle of gay friends. He also goes well off subject for additional discourses like philosophy and scoliosis.
August 5, 2019
A fun read, especially for gay guys who, like me have fallen in love with Santa Fe. Much of it is about the Santa Fe of the 70s and 80s, but no less interesting for that. Full of name-dropping, but of course that's part of the fun.
July 31, 2016
This was a fun and quirky read. The book is filled with great stories and vingettes about a slice of gay life in Santa Fe mainly through the 70s and 80s. The author takes an irreverant crack at prevailing ideas of the city and what life in the arts community was like. It also paints a picture of what gay life was like in this smaller city between the rise of gay liberation movements and the difficulty of the 80s due to the decimation of such communities due to AIDS. It sounds like a moment that was not necessarily utopia, but had great benefits for those who lived there at the time. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in learning more about what life was like in Santa Fe during that period.
January 26, 2017
Interesting but I wish you and then went into more detail on some the lives of the artists also I don't understand why the ending was on a ship. I did enjoy the book and parts to my wife. e
I will lookup Cooper's other books at the library. I bought a paperback version as a present for our new Santa Fe neighbors, we have been comparing notes about 'Unbotton'.
I will lookup Cooper's other books at the library. I bought a paperback version as a present for our new Santa Fe neighbors, we have been comparing notes about 'Unbotton'.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews