Martin Wong got in with the graffiti writers in the early 1980s at Pearl Paint, the long-gone Canal Street art supply store, where he had a job in the canvas department. Wong would slip them markers or cans of spray paint or sell them supplies on deep, unsanctioned discounts, which …
Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78. His …
Felice Picano, who in the 1970s and ’80s helped usher in a golden age of gay literature as the author of groundbreaking novels and memoirs and as the publisher of dozens of books by gay writers, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 81. The cause of his death, …
Barry Michael Cooper, who was one of the first journalists to explore the crack epidemic of the 1980s before turning to Hollywood, where he made his mark with screenplays for gritty films like “New Jack City,” died on Jan. 21 in Baltimore. He was 66. His death, in a hospital, …
Stylish and sharp-witted, Scott Burton’s sculptures of the 1980s doubled as chairs, benches or tables. When they appeared in urban plazas, college campuses and corporate lobbies, they messed with conventions for public art, provokingly and delightfully. A fresh wind blew in stale places. But a stealth polemic lurked: Burton also …
