CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/4/2017

Jimmy Wright: Bathhouse, Meatpacking District and the Dream Cards

"Anvil #1" (1975) is reproduced from Jimmy Wright: Bathhouse, Meatpacking District and the Dream Cards, Corbett vs. Dempsey's new collection of the artist's drawings of the gay underground scene, 1973-1990. Wright arrived in New York in 1974—the apex of punk and disco, and a landmark era in gay history. He partook in the queer nightlife that was flourishing on the city's lower west side, drawing what he saw, "a participant observational artist very much in the same spirit as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge, James Ensor at the carnival in Ostend, or George Grosz on the streets of Berlin," John Corbett writes. "His eye is unflinching, but like David Hockney, it's also got a celebratory zeal, capturing something of the magic and mayhem of the activity."