{"product_id":"pier-groups-art-and-sex-along-the-new-york-waterfront-9780271082172","title":"Pier Groups: Art and Sex Along the New York Waterfront","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1970s New York City, the abandoned piers of the Hudson River became a site for extraordinary works of art and a popular place for nude sunbathing and anonymous sex. Jonathan Weinberg's provocative book--part art history, part memoir--weaves interviews, documentary photographs, literary texts, artworks, and film stills to show how avant-garde practices competed and mingled with queer identities along the Manhattan waterfront.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArtists as varied as Vito Acconci, Alvin Baltrop, Shelley Seccombe, and David Wojnarowicz made work in and about the fire-ravaged structures that only twenty years before had been at the center of the world's busiest shipping port. At the same time, the fight for the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, spurred by the 1969 Stonewall riots, was dramatically transforming the cultural and social landscape of New York City. Gay men suddenly felt free to sunbathe on the piers naked, cruise, and have sex in public. While artists collaborated to transform the buildings of Pier 34 into makeshift art studios and exhibition spaces, gay men were converting Pier 46 into what Delmas Howe calls an \"arena for sexual theater.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFeaturing one hundred exemplary works from the era and drawing from a rich variety of source material, interviews, and Weinberg's personal experience, \u003ci\u003ePier Groups\u003c\/i\u003e breaks new ground to look at the relationship of avant-garde art to resistant subcultures and radical sexuality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eJonathan Weinberg \u003c\/strong\u003eis the curator of the Maurice Sendak Foundation and teaches at the Yale School of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eMale Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eAmbition and Love in Modern American Art\u003c\/i\u003e and a coeditor, with Alejandro Anreus and Diana Linden, of \u003ci\u003eThe Social and the Real\u003c\/i\u003e, also published by Penn State University Press. He is the lead curator for the touring exhibition \u003ci\u003eArt After Stonewall, 1969-1989\u003c\/i\u003e, organized by the Columbus Museum of Art to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots. His paintings are in many public and private collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penn State University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50662133793042,"sku":"9780271082172","price":28.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_66e48c74-16cf-4151-b67b-06625ccd792b.jpg?v=1733513703","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/pier-groups-art-and-sex-along-the-new-york-waterfront-9780271082172","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}