In 'It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic' (Bold Type Books), writer and scholar Jack Lowery fully explores the history of Gran Fury, the activist-artist collective that cleverly incorporated advertising style into activist agitprop in the late 1980s and early '90s. Lowry not only discusses and fully explores the intent of the notorious posters that were wheat-pasted on buildings around New York City during the peak of the ACT UP's heyday amid the AIDS crisis.
He also dives into the collective's inception and their internal squabbles, relationships, losses, and eventual rise to fame with galleries in the art world. The book's title is derived from a quote by Gran Fury member Donald Moffat, who, when Lowery critiqued other sanitized depictions of the AIDS activist group, saying, 'What made ACT UP so effective was that it was kinda vulgar and raunchy,' Moffatt replied, 'It was vulgar. Sexy gay men making out wallpaper series However, following the kerfuffle, a video emerged of Chappelle leaning into the microphone and q uipping that was a trans man. Silence=Death, the Silence=Death collective, 1987 It was vulgar and beautiful.'įormed in 1988 by 11 artists, Gran Fury members included Amy Heard, Marlene McCarty, Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Donald Moffett, Michael Nesline, and the late Mark Simpson. Comedian Dave Chappelle sparked outrage online after joking that it was a trans man who attacked him onstage at the Hollywood Bowl.
