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Anthony Haden-Guest is a writer, reporter and cartoonist. He was born in Paris, grew up in London and has long lived in New York. He won a New York Emmy for writing and narrating a PBS program about the coming of the affluent immigrants – aka Eurotrash – to Manhattan.
His books include The Paradise Program (William Morrow), Bad Dreams (Macmillan); True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World (Grove Atlantic); The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night (Morrow). He has published two books of cartoons and verse, The Chronicles of Now and In The Mean Time, and his cartoons have been shown at many venues including Deitch Projects in New York and Manolis Projects in Miami. He is curating a show which will open in New York at a date to be announced. The Further Chronicles of Now, a CD of Haden-Guest reading his verse, produced by Keith Patchel, can be found on his website, TheRealAnthonyHadenGuest, as can some essential teeshirts.
[…] Anthony Haden-Guest is currently curating an upcoming exhibition due to open in September. He also continues to write and draw, often melding the two media. Haden-Guest self identifies as a cartoonist rather than an artist. Of cartooning he says, “the moment a cartoon starts looking too mcuh like art it stops being funny. There’s no reason why a cartoon shouldn’t look good on a wall…but it’s got to make its point…it’s about delivering the content.” Haden-Guest’s work sometimes strikes back at what he sees as an art world turned corporation. Despite this, Haden-Guest does believe that this is a very good time for art. “Art is one of the rare activities…that will survive,” he says. Haden-Guest firmly believes that those who can work with images are well-equipped to survive in our modern times. Of his writing, Haden-Guest says he feels a kinship with the likes of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and other rhyming poets. Haden-Guest says that visual literacy has increased on the whole over the last several generations while poetic literacy has been on a slow and steady decline. Poetry, once the language of writing, is now often lost on the average reader. On the back of one of Haden-Guest’s many books is a quote from his brother that reads, “Boring, pompous, and a complete and utter waste of time, I don’t know what my brother was thinking.” This tongue in cheek “review” is an apt crystallization of Haden-Guest’s intelligent humor. To hear more about Anthony Haden-Guest and to hear live readings of some of his poetry, listen to the complete interview. […]