I've seen the future and I'm not going : AIDS, the art scene, and downtown New York in the 1980s

A memoir of New York in the 1980s and 1990s--a time of both enormous creativity and decadence--told by an artist who was at the center of it all, including the AIDS epidemic, and survived to tell the story. Peter McGough--half of the team of McDermott & McGough, artists known for their painting, photography, sculpture, and film--writes about the trauma of growing up gay in 1950s suburbia; about the East Village art scene of the 1980s when he knew Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel; and about his meeting David McDermott who would profoundly change his life by insisting they dress, live, and work like men in the Victorian era. From then on, wherever they lived--in New York City or in upstate New York--they lived without electricity or any other modern conveniences. Their art, called "Time Maps" was concerned with sexuality, bigotry, and AIDS, and their photography--using cyanotypes and platinum plates--had great success at major galleries and museums around the world. Eventually, however, McDermott's incendiary temper and profligate spending would bankrupt them: McDermott would move to Dublin, and McGough, trying to work in New York, would discover that he had AIDS. I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going is a poignant, often devastating, often humorous, entirely singular memoir. 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 naiveté 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 out 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. "Peter McGough--half of the team of McDermott & McGough, artists known for their painting, photography, sculpture and film--writes about the trauma of growing up gay in 1950s suburbia; about the East Village art scene of the 1980s when he knew Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel; and about his meeting David McDermott who would profoundly change his life by insisting they dress, live, and work like men in the Victorian era. From then on, wherever they lived--in New York City or in upstate New York--they lived without electricity or any other modern conveniences. Their art, called "Time Maps" was concerned with sexuality, bigotry, and AIDS, and their photography--using cyanotypes and platinum plates--had great success at major galleries and museums around the world. Eventually, however, McDermott's incendiary temper and profligate spending would bankrupt them: McDermott would move to Dublin, and McGough, trying to work in New York, would discover that he had AIDS. I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going is a poignant, often devastating, often humorous, entirely singular memoir." -- Provided by publisher