I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s

by Peter McGough

Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York's Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naivet� and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives.

Escaping the trauma of growing up gay in Syracuse and being bullied at school, McGough attended art school in New York, dropped out, and took jobs in clubs, where he met McDermott. Dazzled by McDermott, whom he found fascinating and worldly, McGough agreed to collaborate with him not only on their art but also in McDermott's very entertaining Victorian lifestyle. McGough evokes the rank and seedy East Village of that time, where he encountered Keith Haring, Rene Ricard, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Jacqueline and Julian Schnabel, among many others. Nights were spent at the Ninth Circle, Danceteria, and Studio 54; going to openings at the FUN Gallery; or visiting friends in the Chelsea Hotel. By the mid-1980s, McDermott & McGough were hugely successful, showing at three Whitney Biennials, represented by the best galleries here and abroad, and known for their painting, photography and "time experiment" interiors. Then, overnight, it was all gone. And one day in the mid-1990s, McGough would find that he, like so many of his friends, had been diagnosed with AIDS.

I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going is a compelling memoir for our time, told with humor and compassion, about how lives can become completely entwined even in failure and what it costs to reemerge, phoenix-like, and carry on.

Genres: Art, Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, History, New York, Biography

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2019

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm fascinated with Dandies, either from the past or contemporary times. McDermott & McGough are two artists that work as one, and their aesthetic is very much ignoring the 21st century and most of the 20th as well. I'm an admirer of their paintings as well as their obsession with the Victorian lifestyle. Extremism, as a choice has always fascinated me as well. By chance, I came upon Peter McGough's memoir, and it's a great piece of literature that places one in the world of New York City circa the 1980s and 1990s. I knew very little of their lives, and like Gilbert & George, the other art duo, their lives were an exciting mystery to me. The more I don't know about them, the more I find attractive. Still, this memoir is also about the art planet of that era, and McGough is an excellent and very straight forward prose stylist. A delicate and sometimes disturbing narrative, but once I finished the book, the mystery now exposed, is also put me in a state of admiring the duo much more. Although one can point a finger against McDermott in certain aspects of their lives together, it is also a vibrant life. "I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going" is a great companion piece to Duncan Hannah's "20th Century Boy, which is a flip of a coin. Soho, New York life, comes back to life (in print) and it's a scary but profound journey.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only had a vague idea of who the author and his artistic cohort, David McDermott, were, but having read a review of this, thought it would be an interesting glimpse into the NY art scene in the 80's and 90's - which it indeed was. A lot of the stories contained herein are fascinating and often quite humorous, with cameo appearances from all the usual suspects: Warhol, Haring, Basquiat, etc. It's also a bit of a sad cautionary tale, since the artists became quite the sensation, but then squandered the fortune they made, before descending back into relative obscurity.

[Koen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairy interesting read about two artists i hadn't heard of and did not know anything about. The title caught my eye and i thought i'd give it a go.

The book provides us with glimpse in to the lives of two eccentric artists in the 1980's downtown art world of New York. Narcissistic artists you could say. Even this memoir, written much later in life, is very self-centered and with both artists i get a sense of entitlement that sort of rubs me the wrong way.

They also seem to have been utter idiots. Ending up with nothing after making so much money seems ridiculous.

That doesn't per se make a bad book, i thought it was entertaining and interesting enough. I did not think it was as humorous as the blurb suggests and the writing style was a bit simple to me. "Then this happened, and then this happend, and then this, and, and....etc."

I guess what i missed most was any insight in the art itself. There's barely anything about their art, deeper insights, processes, meanings, etc.

All in all, an okay-ish book for me.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an electronic uncorrected proof of this for review from the publisher through Edelweiss. The photos in my copy were all gray-scale; I don't know if they will be in color in the published edition (I hope so...much of the art is lost without color.) The subtitle, The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s is what grabbed my attention. The title was pretty catchy as well.

Thanks to some self-education and a fractional exposure, I have more than a casual awareness of my contemporary art world, and, again thanks to that self-education, a much more than fractional awareness that my awareness is... fractional. So I admit never having heard of McGough (or McDermott), despite his apparent prominence in that subtitle scene. The names he drops! Warhol, Madonna (before she hit big), Michael Kors, Lagerfeld...

Some observations...

About McDermott, who he refers to both as Davis and McD:

He also told me, "Peter, you know I'm a genius." I'd never heard anyone say that, except for Truman Capote on some TV show.

Maybe when he was writing this, McGough really had never heard the Stable Jeenyus proclaim it.

On David,

David was generous but often lacked normal people skills. He would say whatever popped into his head with no filter: "You look so fat," or "You got old."

Throughout the entire memoir, that Davis was "on the spectrum" was obvious, but they didn't know it until the next to last page ("a few years back")

Another book, another jumping off point, McGough talks about a 1928 book titled "The Game of Life and How to Play it" by Florence Scovel-Shinn and the role some of it played in helping him keep McD on a keel of some evenness. His description sounds interesting and I can check it out from Open Library and as I typed this I went from next on the waitlist to it being available.

There's a lot of screaming. McGough says it - "I screamed" at someone, McD, people - a lot. He's open about his emotions. There is introspection: "Perhaps like most artists I was a mixture of absolute narcissism and crippling self-doubt, but I was eager to learn." Light bulb moments: "At the time I knew nothing about the art world and its intricate workings of collectors, agents, private dealers, art advisors, art critics, and the fine art of schmoozing." Oh, that last part!

When AIDS and untime (I took a liberty with "untimely") took some of their friend:

These three great friends and artists - Andy [Warhol], Jean-Michel [Basquiat], and Keith [Haring] - who were considered yesterday's news before they died, would all once again become best-selling artists, with Andy and Jean-Michel achieving auction records.

McDermott imposed an austere lifestyle of only wearing 19th century clothing, living without electricity, vegan diets, raw food diets, Christian Science (which would prove, as one would expect, nearly fatal).

Most of the people McGough talks about are described in terms of their attractiveness. "He was a beautiful boy" or "gorgeous" or "beautiful youth", "A rude Lauren Bacall came with a lovely Angelica Huston..." I don't know if it is deliberate crafted, affectation because of expectation, or a genuine component of his personality. It's a sad superficiality regardless of its source.

A lot of time in the past and given that subtitle, I should have expected that. The end compressed a quarter of his life into a handful of pages.

Despite the openness of his naivete, and vulnerable exposure of his many ups and down, I thought he was the most personal when he spoke of AIDS:

It's almost impossible to convey to a young person today what it was like then, when so little was known about AIDS.

I am happy for the person I never knew before reading his book that he finally saw reason and received the benefits of modern medication (McDermott was still screaming Christian Science.) He is alive with AIDS and still working.

[V. Briceland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter McGough is half of the partnership of McDermott & McGough, visual artists who rose to fame during the nineteen-eighties and nineties not only for their painting and photography, but for dressing in nineteenth-century garb and living without electricity and modern amenities in their many, many Manhattan apartments. McDermott followed a passion for living in a so-called time machine, adopting the dress and furnishing and work style of a previous, more permanent century; as his lover and collaborator, McGough was content to go along for the horse-and-carriage ride.

And what a ride it was—from obscurity and poverty, squabbling with Keith Haring for the right to live with three other men in a cold water one-room flat, to hobnobbing with wealthy artists like Warhol and Schnabel as the young pair’s McDermott and McGough photographs sold like hotcakes for a cool fifteen thousand each—and then back to poverty again when the pair had everything confiscated in the mid-nineties for ignoring their income taxes. (To be fair, I suppose the income tax was a twentieth-century invention.)

Yet even at their most successful, the pair were often at odds. McDermott's personality was volatile at best, violent in the worst of his mood swings; McGough could only keep him in check for so long with the tenets of Christian Science and reminders of gentility from a seventy-five-year-old manual of etiquette. McGough's memoir is a cycle of establishing success among prominent New York dealers, then having their achievements eradicated by one of McDermott's canvas-ripping, name-calling, reputation-ruining tantrums. At the peak of their success, McGough found himself being supplanted in the partnership by a younger, more handsome, opportunistic male Anne Baxter figure in a subplot straight out of All About Eve. The affair ends badly, of course, when McGough loses everything and is forced to confront a diagnosis of HIV.

When McGough's therapist diagnoses him as having PTSD, late in the book, McGough seems surprised. The reader certainly is not.

McGough's autobiography chronicles these peaks and valleys in a sympathetic and touching style, capturing not only the New York art world of the eighties, but its night life and hardscrabble downtown energy. As an AIDS chronicle as well, it moves relentlessly forward; McGough has a talent for pitilessly examining his reluctance to take medications for his infection following the bankruptcy of his partnership. Instead he relied on raw food and Christian Science until both nearly killed him. A careful memoirist, he lays blame only where it's deserved—and mostly upon himself.

I found myself moved by the realism of I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going's loving details, and in how sweetly the author evoked a vanished era in which anything seemed possible to two artists with purloined canvases and a dream of a time machine to the past.

[Mary Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty disappointed by this memoir. The title is excellent but, unfortunately, it is a lie: firstly, it suggests that the book will be amusing, which it is not, and secondly, it suggests that the book will be about "the art scene and downtown new york in the 1980s", which it is not. The book isn't about "the art scene," it is about the miserable trials and tribulations of two (and sometimes three) extremely petulant seeming people.
It also has the dullest, most plodding prose imaginable. First this happened, then this, and then this. Blah blah blah. Even when interesting and vibrant people do show up (Warhol and Basquiat, for example) they appear entirely flat and lifeless on the page.
For fans of McDermott & McGough's art, there are also no insights about their style, process, or philosophy. The most insight we get as readers is in sentences to the effect of "we thought, why not do this? and then we did it, and it was grand" which I found frustrating.

[Laura Feldberga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lai kā gribētos, tomēr neatklāšu, kurš un kādos apstākļos pasaka frāzi “I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going”, jo ceru ka vēl kādi no mana Goodreads draugu loka lasīs šo grāmatu un baudīs visus neprātīgi krāšņos piedzīvojumus kopā ar Peter McGough un David McDermott, kuri dzīvo un strādā, mīl un flirtē, pelna un notriec naudu 80. gadu Ņujorkas mākslas avangarda pirmajās līnijās. Visam fonā AIDS epidēmija, kura bez žēlastības pļauj Pītera un Deivida tuvus un tālus draugus un līdzgaitniekus. Māksla un dzīves baudas kopā ar pastāvīgiem nāves draudiem.

Grāmata ir Peter McGough rakstīts memuārs, viņa dzīves, mīlestības un mākslas stāsts. Apbrīnojami detalizēti atmiņu pieraksti, kurus iztēlē var skatīt kā filmu, jo Pīters apraksta notikumus, vietas un lietas tik trāpīgi, ka lasītājs gribot negribot pats nokļūst gan tumšos un bīstamos ūķos, gan glamūros mākslas elites tusiņos, un visā ir iekšā ar pilnu sajūtu buķeti, turklāt tērpies frakā un cilindrā (tērpu apraksti ir atsevišķa tēma, kuru varētu apbrīnot un analizēt šīs grāmatas sakarā). Līdzās ir mākslas grandi Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, un vēl daudzi citi diži radītāji, kā arī pavisam piemirsti mākslas gariņi. Mākslas galeriju īpašnieki, mākslas dīleri un kuratori, dizaineri, dragkvīnas, antīko lietu tirgotāji un milzīgs klāsts visādu dīvaiņu, kuri un ilgāku vai īsāku mirkli iemirdzas Pītera aprakstītajā Ņujorkas dzīves kosmosā.

Pīters un Deivids arī rada fantastisku dzīves performanci, atsakoties sekot laika garam un nemitīgai pasaules modernizācijai, un rada paši savu laika kapsulu, kurā ikdienu pavada tā it kā pasaule vēl arvien dzīvotu 19./20. gadsimta mijā. Pīters pats par to pastāstīs vislabāk. Viņš to dara tik pārliecinoši, ka rodas vēlme apturēt laiku vai vismaz to palēnināt. Patiešām, kāpēc vajadzētu kaut kur joņot uz priekšu laikā, ja vēl tepat tuvumā ir iepriekšējo paaudžu dārgumi un sasniegumi! Varbūt ir vērts kustēties lēnāk vai brīžiem pat apstāties.

Ar savu grāmatu autors radījis vēl vienu laika kapsulu, kurā burbuļo 20. gs. beigu mākslas zupa un top tie mākslas darbi, kurus šobrīd apbrīnojam muzejos. No nezināmības iznirst talanti, lai atkal nogrimtu aizmirstībā vai kļūtu par ikonām. Un ne vienmēr laikabiedri paši saprot, kas notiek. Piemēram, publikai kādā brīdī šķiet, ka Endija Vorhola darbi vairs nav aktuāli, un viņa glezna mājās pie sienas tiek uzlūkota kā kaut kāda atpakaļrāpulība un stila izjūtas trūkums.

Veiksmes un neveiksmes mainīgo dabu Pīters un Deivids paši piedzīvo uz savas ādas, bet beigās viņiem viss ir labi. Es to te pierakstu, jo tas nav nekāds spoileris. Abi mākslinieki ir dzīvi arī šobrīd, un šķiet, ka turpina radīt. Viņiem ir lieliski darbi! Iesaku, lasot grāmatu, gūglēt arī mākslas darbus, kuru radīšana stāstā aprakstīta. Būs sajūta, ka tas viss notiek šeit un tagad, acu priekšā.

Tātad īsumā – šī grāmata dodas uz favorītu plauktiņu.

[Simona Žeimytė · Rating 4 out of 5]

80s art scene, AIDS breakout and a story of an artist extravaganza.

[JabJo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly entertaining and gossipy. The writing is pretty simple (eg all caps if he gets really angry) and skims lightly across the surface (what someone wore, where they ate, etc.) which I found surprising for someone who was involved in this very intense and difficult period in NYC. You don't get profound insights into character or artistic motivation, other than the story of a person who went to the big city to have fun, get noticed, and get it on with fellow gays. And he did have fun. He seems rather passively drawn into relationships and events, and actually wound up showing in important galleries and making buckets of money which was all spent on antiques and home decor, mostly at the dictates of his partner.

(If I sound a little dissatisfied, maybe it's because I've also just finished reading Fire in the Belly, an in-depth account of the harrowing life of artist David Wojnarowicz, also working in the same time and location.) For someone who went through the horrors of AIDS, I would have expected something a little more reflective from McGough. One thing that did stand out for me was the compassionate character of Julian Schnabel, not one of my favourite artists, but evidently a caring and generous human being who made a real effort to help McGough through his awful illness.

Three stars because it does provide a snapshot the era.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting memoir by Peter McGough, an unusual artist, recalling how he left home as a young man and made his way into the New York art world. He and another aspiring artist, David McDermott, joined forces and created a very weird and interesting life together, living as though it were still the Victorian era. They used 19th-century processes in creating their art, both in painting and photography. They lived without using electricity, heat (except fireplaces) or anything plastic or 20th-century. They were part of a group of artists that included Basquiat, Warhol, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel, among others.

When they were selling art and making money, they immediately spent it on renting more art spaces and buying antiques, antique cars, and historic buildings. When their art wasn't selling, or when the IRS went after them, they lost it all and started over. And over, and over. As the author said in a NY Times Magazine interview, "I don’t care if I own anything. I care about the art — the paintings living on, being protected." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/t-...

They survived the years of homophobia, the AIDS epidemic (although many of their artist friends didn't), the stylistic and financial changes in the late 20th-century art world, and their personal and financial ups and downs as a couple.

The author certainly lived a unique life, and his story is strange and fun to read.

A quote from the book:
"After all the parties, collectors, curators, and critics, the only thing left is the work - that piece of art. All the personalities are forgotten. Art is History. Sure, it's great to be praised, but if one's in it for that, then there's no hope. It comes and goes and maybe comes back. The art world is a much bigger place than it was when I entered. I heard that Louise Bourgeois once said, 'Being an artist is not an enviable position'."

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Guileless, charming, and observant.

[Rob Schorr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting and touching. Highly recommended!

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading books about this time period and group of artists, and this was a really unique narrative. McDermott & McGough’s work is so concerned with time and aesthetic, it was interesting to read the author struggling with modern day concerns while ostensibly living in the early 20th century. His writing is honest and reflective - the book was a fulfilling trip.

[Steve Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning more about what life was like in NYC in the 80s.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent memoir. Peter McGough brilliantly describes New York City in the 80s and 90s, the intricacies of a career in art, and the turmoils, joys, loves and heartbreak that make up the human condition. McGough is truly a survivor and his story is utterly absorbing. Comprised of masterful prose, it is amazing to think this is McGough’s first book. Highly recommended. And Peter, if you’re reading this, more please!

[Jeimy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A memoir of the art and punk scene in New York in the 1980s through 1990, as seen by Peter McGough, best known for his decade-long collaboration with David McDermott. "Symbiosis" is perhaps a better word, because for McD, at least, their life was as much a work of art as anything they could put on a canvas. The charismatic, mercurial, larger-than-life McD believed the future was ugly, and that beauty could be achieved only by recreating the past. This went beyond dandyism in dress : it meant no electricity, no heat, no telephone, in the succession of apartments, studios, houses that they rented or owned, and a dedication to vintage photography techniques when the market for their painted canvases dried up after the 1987 market crash.

The fun part of the book is the name-dropping, the anecdotes about Julian Schnabel (described as a good, generous friend), Andy Warhol (whom they idolized), Jean-Michel Basquiat (first a luminary of the avant-garde, soon a drug-ridden hollow shell of a man), with walk-on parts for Madonna, Debby Harry and other 1980s big names. But otherwise I found the book rather thin. The writing style is flat, repetitive, and the chronology is not always easy to follow. Too many houses, too many apartments, too many studios ! So many dealers or would-be dealers who float in and out of the partners' lives, so many parties.... There are some themes of growing up gay in the 1950s, of diving into the downtown scene in Manhattan just when disco made way for punk, about the difficulties of living and working with McD, the fear (and ravages) of AIDS in the 1980s.... but all very superficially, in passing, as it were.

Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that the book is packed full of descriptions of what clothes the author and his friends wore to what parties or on what momentous days, and of the interiors that McD insisted on creating for their time-travel apartments. Lots of mentions of detachable collars and of period furniture, much less about art. I even got the impression that the author was surprised that Julian Schnabel, for instance, talked and thought about art all the time, or that the young Michael Kors, when a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, thought about fashion constantly. I closed the book feeling that this was more about a certain (vanished) subculture, the "downtown scene" and about visually pleasing details of everyday life, than about the creation of art.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was looking up something on Warhol trying to find information on John D. McDermott who was in Vinyl (1965) and couldn't find much of anything i came across another McDermott talked about in this book!

Strange stuff about making a joke about having some dink paintings and oh they're in the back of the gallery, not for public display, and Warhol wanting to see paintings that don't exist, and how the guy making the joke is going to explain there are no such paintings, so Warhol doesn't feel uncomfortable or something. And then stuff about going to dinner with a turkey dinner at a table that seats 80 people.

---

quote

“Not now, Andy—Massimo put them away. I’ll ask him to show you at the end of the opening.” I couldn’t believe McD was making this all up. As Andy was leaving, he came up to us and asked when he could see the penis portraits. I didn’t know how David was going to end this gag. Massimo came up to us and Andy asked about the paintings.

“What!” Massimo laughed, and in his broken English said, “Paintings of-a cocks?” Still laughing, he pulled us away to meet a collector. “Okay, Andy,” he said, “we get the cock paintings to-a you.”

The crowd thinned out, and we headed to a restaurant in the Financial District, an intact old German-style place complete with its entire original wood paneling, crystal chandeliers, and a mural of ancient Egypt. David ordered his favorite meal of a Thanksgiving turkey feast served with all the trimmings, at a long table for 80 people.

The art world was smaller then, and most of the people in it knew one another. SoHo became the Saturday place for going around to the galleries, and Sunday was for the East Village galleries. SoHo galleries were big and dramatic. East Village galleries looked dingy, and Massimo was criticized because his gallery looked more SoHo than East Village, with high ceilings, perfect white walls, and a polished cement floor. He was also criticized for being friends with such successful SoHo artists as Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel and their glamorous wives, Alba and Jacqueline.

---

feels like you're only getting half of the stories and you never know how anything ends

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild read.There were two Americas that existed in 1980s. There was the plastic Reagan Bush morning in America types (who never understood the lyrics to “Born in the USA”) and there were the rest of us. While the the first group could lay claim to big hair, large shoulder pads, bad sex and indifference to human suffering, the rest of us, if we were in the right place (and there were many) has a great if uneasy time. This unease was brought about by a certain fondness for nuclear war and indifference to AIDS.

This book chronicles the emerging Manhattan 1980s art scene. The author was part of a team that went from rags to riches and then during the economic downturn rags again. The narrative has a great deal of unconscious insight which I am not sure he was able to process fully. His 1982 observation that graffiti artists were suddenly not popular and suddenly not pulling in the same amount of money that they had seems never have signified for him. He was suddenly in the same boat ten years later. He seems not to have realized that the same thing could happen to him. And it did following an orgy of mad spending.

The art that he and his partner produced had a certain nostalgic aesthetic, which is what made it seem modern in the 1980s. This meant living in rooms lit only by candles and heated only by fireplaces. Wearing old fashioned clothes, riding around in Model A automobiles were part of the aesthetic. Ignoring modern medicine was also part of this, at least until he came down with AIDS.

At the end of the decade, absence of health insurance and being cut off from the news media proves hazardous and were it not for the efforts of Julian Schnabel (who comes off the best of anyone in this book) Peter McGough surely would have died.

There are also lots of descriptions of wild and eccentric parties and while I was never at any described in this book, I did get to sample the vibe back then. These are entirely entertaining, despite a tendency by Peter McGough to gush over the presence of Fiestaware (my everyday dishes).

This is a marvelous account of just how large life could be lived and certainly more authentic for me than “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

[Adam Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1970’s and ‘80’s downtown art scene was the era I romanticized from the Kansas prairie and prompted an early commitment to live and make art in the city. I arrived in 2008 to a city overwhelmed with bustling commercialism and an entire generation lost to AIDS; ghosts haunted the spaces I worked and traversed — the Ontological-Hysteric, Exit Art, LaMaMa, Dixon Place (the old DP, in Ellie’s apartment). I felt them, I knew them, they were what energized and empowered me, a lineage, an ancestry of familiars, of choice. The desire to live in another time, in a past cultivated as a future, is the singular mission of Peter McGough and his art-partner, sometimes lover, sometimes foe, but always confidante, David McDermott.

McDermott & McGough live within their project, creating the conditions of the 1870’s — 1930’s, forgoing electricity, computers, and any modern trappings for a full immersion in the past in the present. As challenging as it is to commit fiercely to a vision, and the scorn, revulsion, and debt that accompany it — financial, spiritual, physical — there are also the relationships tethered irrevocably in mutual respect and love. McGough’s relationship with Julian Schnabel and ex-partner Jacqueline Beaurang is incredibly touching — to read of an insanely successful artist supporting other artists, providing loans, spaces to paint, connections to dealers, audiences, and doctors. Although my tenure in the art world is…on pause, the spiritual connection to the family I made will never break, will always carry me through, even in absence.

The book is geared toward the art-world insider and the frenetic, gossipy quality left me sticky with warmth and glee. This is a beautifully produced book, a work of art in of itself, which I would expect no less from McGough.

[Leza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn’t describe this as “brilliantly funny” (see the blurb) but it’s definitely an entertaining read especially for anyone interested in creative eccentrics, New York and the 80s art scene. Lots of big names dropped like Warhol and Basquiat but totally relevant to the time frame. The communal movement of artists and performers around the lower east side to old lofts and squats is fascinating....and wistfully romantic reading it now in shiny New York where I’m living for a couple of years...amidst the rampant obliteration by developers of that area. There are still a few artists in rent control hanging on but that lifestyle has pretty much become impossible in modern New York. McGough and his partner David McDermott are contemporary artists and eccentric dandies moving from one derelict but often gorgeous property to another, “devinylising” them, wearing Victorian clothing and working together to produce some pretty interesting paintings and photographs (images included in the book). I’m English and they remind me a little of the English artists Gilbert and George though no similarity in their artwork. I really enjoyed the insight in to this period of the city; the iconic clubs, the gay scene, the squalor. The devastation of AIDS which predatorily tore through this society taking so many lives is well documented and poignant. I read it in a day and would recommend it.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's hard to give this book a rating, because it's not really a "literary" book. It's more like a person's diary. I was mildly interested in learning about the lives of these artists in NYC in the 1980's but I really couldn't relate to the materialism that they fell into when they got a lot of money. And there were a lot of things I wanted to know that weren't covered. And if you are into "functional" relationships as opposed to "dysfunctional" relationships, then you won't be happy with this couple's relationship.
Why does the author stay with someone who is so controlling and demanding? He never really fills us in. Why does he agree to wear the period clothing? Why does he succumb to his boyfriend's unique and very specific worldview? He never really tells us.
He is a famous artist, one whom I had never heard of before, but that's ok. I did like some of his art, especially the one with all the hateful words that he got called when he was growing up.
Really, the part about him growing up was almost the best part and that was really short.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not many chronicles of the 70s/80s art scene capture what this book does, but be warned: if eccentric painters who impressively rise to fame, then lose all their money buying eccentric real estate, antiques, livestock, horses and buggies, 50,000 dollar marble walls, travel expenses, period piece wardrobe and cars are hard to sympathize with, this isn't the book for you. Often the self-pitying adventures concerning childish spending and expense account damage are unbearable. The art is beautiful, the pretentious concepts behind a lot of it, not so much. There's plenty of name-dropping and luckily the personalities of everyone from Julian Schnabel to Warhol come through. The narrator's childhood and young adult years are equally vivid and funny. Once McGough teams up with his art partner, the lifestyle and physical appearance (see: wardrobe) of being a New York artist rob the spotlight from the art, and the book becomes less interesting. And this includes all the shopping followed by poverty followed by success followed by more shopping. The title is brilliant.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly fascinating account by McGough about his partnership with David McDermott to make art and a retro home life. The 1980s and '90s East Village art scene is recounted, including the rise and fall of galleries and makeshift event spaces.

While it brings up a whiff of nostalgia for this former downtown resident, other aspects left me befuddled. Why were McGough and McD (gay partners, albeit with an interloping protegee who nearly ruins their lives) constantly moving to different homes, apartments, at most times with little money? McD's lavish acquisition of farm houses, decaying lofts and mansions, even a stable of horses, inspire little sympathy for their subsequent financial losses (propped up by cash-donating pal Julian Schnabel).

Eventually, McGough does find success as a painter, and has endured. This very personal account offers one eccentric historic portion of an urban art revolution.

[Anne]

There was a lot of meat on this book's bones -- memories of downtown New York in the 70s and 80s (the blocks of rubble in Alphabet City), of living through the AIDS crisis and ultimately contracting HIV, of an intense and productive, but challenging (to say the least) relationship with a glittering, but difficult person, of famous artists and celebrities who have gone on to become household names (Basquiat! Schnabel! Madonna!). But the memoir often feels disjointed and haphazard in a distracting way-- lots of names and short anecdotes jumbled together into vague chronological order (although there is also a lot of jumping around). I think it's reasonably clear that McGough wrote this himself, which is to his credit, but I wish he had had a more engaged and thoughtful editor to inject some structure into the narrative for the sake of us readers.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter McGough, an adventurous but naive young man comes to NYC from Syracuse in the late 1970s and eventually conquers the art world with his partner in life and art, David McDermott. They live a dissolute lifestyle, dressing as Victorian dandies and creating interesting art. McDermott is the more problematic of the two - given to rages, wild bouts of spending and not paying debts. Late in the book, he was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome which explains much of his behavior. This is an amusing memoir until it all comes crashing down in the 1990s with their art not selling, colossal debts, foreclosures and AIDS. McDermott also moves away from their relationship adding a young man named Bastian who turns out to be a bad person in many different ways. I like Peter but somehow think he might have been better off as a solo artist. Highly recommend for Art World junkies.

[Elizabeth Frey-Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really almost a 3.5 stars. Full of art scene name-drops and memories of a gay community in crisis during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, McGough's memoir is both lush in its detail and sparse in its inter-personal moments. It is fun to walk down memory lane, remembering the seedy side of parts of NYC that have been Revitalized today. However, there apparently was a lot of screaming and screeching in the McD/McG households, and it was difficult to understand why. Perhaps the author also doesn't understand the motivations of that relationship's conflict? The book is definitely a quick and interesting read, and made me recall moments from my own youth fondly, as someone who admired/emulated this scene from afar, and imagined what participating would be like.

[Hansel5]

My friend Laura Blanco had read this book the previous year and referred to it as "the best account of NYC's art world/scene in the 80s and 90s."
What I found most amusing was reading about places and people I remember from my early days in NYC. Unlike the characters in the book, I was very sheltered and shy to partake in what was happening. Mostly, my participation was on the fringes, reading and watching safely from the margins.
What I found most disappointing was reading about the shallowness and superficiality of these very people. They come across as users while at the same time they were being touted as movers and shakers.

[Martin Pilkington · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess that I didn’t know much about the art scene in New York in the 1980s. Yes I recognised some of the names mentioned in the book, but a lot, including the author, I didn’t know.

The lifestyle discussed in the book would have driven me bonkers. The lack of planning of the two main characters and most of their friends, spending money on a whim, living in either quite, or very, squalid conditions feels so alien. I never knew a risk that I wouldn’t prefer to avoid! Clearly not how Peter McGough and David McDermott live their lives.

An interesting look at a community that was decimated by AIDS.

[Sharlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

wow, what a read, especially during these trying times. i have to admit i wasn’t very familiar with mcdermott & mcgough despite volunteering at the whitney, where they showed at three biennials. the fact that they survived the black monday of 1987, another stock market crash in 1992 and 2008 is quite a story of artistic resilency.

“it all may have fallen apart and come to naught, but what we did, when it has happening, was a great feat. it was beautiful and extraordinary.” - david mcdermott