AIDS
A N E N I G M AT I C , M Y S T E R I O U S T I M E
AMOS POE
It was the end of an era. A lot of our friends were dying of AIDS. People who stayed in that world versus people who got out of it. It’s hard to say why people like myself never got sick. SAR AH
Denial is a group of figures that I originally drew from a deposition painting—a Raphael painting. There’s a figure of a dead—it would have been Christ in the original painting, but I wasn’t making a piece about Christianity or Christ or anything like that; I was making a piece about death. Death was quite present at this time in the 80s. This was in the heart of the AIDS crisis. Friends were dying all around us. We were just having to face ... not mortality, but death of peers. It was a very painful period. AMOS POE
It was sort of an enigmatic, mysterious time, a transitional time. People are dying. And a lot of our friends are having kids. Richard Price and Judy Hudson on Great Jones and Broadway. Mel Kendrick and Mary Salter. Laurie Simmons and Tip Dunham. RoseLee Goldberg and Dakota Jackson. Alba and Francesco Clemente. I don’t think we ever spoke about children. But if there was ever anyone I was going to have children with, it would be Sarah. It was difficult. Leaving the dark side and getting into the family life. Both of us were struggling with our work and art. We were both relatively self-involved as artists, but at the same time we both tried our best. The children, home, stability, there was time for that. I don’t look back on it like we could have done anything else. I look back on it and I wonder myself how we got through. But we did.
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