Author Description

"Mavericks of Style tells the story of New York City's downtown art and fashion scene in the 1970s through the lives and careers of the Black and Brown artists whose experimental and collaborative work has long been overlooked. These figures-including model and musician Grace Jones, fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, and fashion designer Stephen Burrows-often serve as "local color" in conventional histories of this period, which tend to privilege white artists, club owners, and scenesters. Uri McMillan gives these artists of color starring roles in his account of the creative explosion that overtook 1970s New York, highlighting their influence on the aesthetics of the period and on the art world more broadly. All three of these artists bypassed the exclusive art world and, instead, cultivated personal styles shaped by their diasporic, working class, and racially diverse backgrounds. They blurred boundaries, thrived on collaboration, and embraced commercial outlets for their use of bold color, gold lamâe, and Instamatic photography. By bringing these artists of color into the spotlight, McMillan seeks to complicate, undo, and expand the rote frameworks for understanding artistic practice and, instead, offers a new vision of the 1970s New York art world in sultry, bombastic color"--