The last pictures by Dorian Gray

Photo by Danny Fields
Duncan Hannah was cool his whole life, which is pretty impressive considering most people aren’t even cool for a year. He also stayed cool while living in Connecticut, which is a bit like breathing on the moon.
I first met Hannah on a snowy morning in 2018, during a bitterly long New England winter that would last through May. I was at his home in West Cornwall, a short walk from the covered bridge, to interview him on the release of “20th Century Boy,” a published collection of the personal diaries he kept from 1970 through 1981.
In old photos next to Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol, Hannah appears as the portrait of effortless youth; smooth chest, bedroom eyes, a cigarette dangling from his lip. When not painting, he lived it up among the luminaries of New York’s grimiest decade, bumping shoulders in the dirty downtown bathrooms of Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, The Mudd Club. “A great cross-section of lunatics and rock stars,” Hannah told me.
At 65, layered in a pink button-down, olive sweater vest, and corduroy suit, he had settled into the out-of-time style of the old prep establishment, just the kind he had bucked against. There was a playful wit to this later life style (perfectly captured in a 2019 Esquire Magazine spread) a puckish nod to an Anglo-mania academia dress code that doesn’t exist anymore — least of all in today’s prep school teachers.
We sat in striped club chairs against walls lined with hardbacks, Saki and The Secret History, Tom Wolfe and Tom Swift. Hannah showed me a fan letter he had received from a girl at Phillips Exeter Academy. She had read his diary excerpts printed in The Paris Review that autumn.
The entries start in 1970 when 17-year-old Hannah was a real life angel-faced Holden Caulfield, flung out of his private boys’ academy and into the hallways of a Minnesota public school. He grows out his hair and distributes his own dirty 'zine, records all he takes in: the concerts, the albums, the film — The Stooges, David Bowie, “Chloe in The Afternoon.” He gets into Bard and discovers de Kooning, gets hit on by Allen Ginsberg, loses 20 pounds and fakes a lurid gay life to dodge the draft, struggles with his art professor’s criticism, meets many girls, and has sex the way no one born after the mid-80s has sex anymore, which is to say, thoughtfully. "We get horizontal, a nudging cunnilingus, she tastes like the sea," he wrote in 1973.
“I was thinking, it’s so funny, " Hannah told me as we talked about the fan/love letter, "she knows better, but she thinks she’s writing to the 20-year-old kid.”
What’s so obvious to me now is exactly why the girl at Exeter was swept away by the diaries, that voyeuristic view into the inner life of the ghost of a boy long gone. No 21st Century boy could write the way Hannah did, because no one has a private life anymore. Our diaries exist online, soullessly and self-consciously curated, eager to be discovered by an audience as we posture and pretend. If you don't take photo of yourself reading Keats, did it happen? But in sharing so much, we have lost the personal connection to ourselves. The dangerous thrill the girl experienced was reading secret, literary, lively written by a boy her age, lustfully connected his life, to himself, to his inner world of screw-ups, eroticism, beat poetry, and artistic discovery, none of it ever meant to be shared.
“Duncan Hannah finds himself in the very modern predicament of painting pictures that seem infuriatingly attractive. He has been called “the Barry Manilow of the New Wave” and the prophet of “the Age of Valium,” Glenn O’Brien wrote in the Summer 1984 issue of ArtForum. “He makes beautiful paintings that, like beautiful boys and girls, look like they should be popular. If he’s the prophet of anything it’s that living and painting well is revenge enough.”
His titillating oil paintings were as sincere as his diaries, Hopper minus event a hint of loneliness, a subdued pastel playground of coy pleasure, gamine elegance, and an endless array of perfect breasts — the dreamworld of a dreamboat.
Hannah died this year of a heart attack at 69. When I heard, I opened my copy of “20th Century Boy” and found a piece of hotel stationery he had slipped in, telling me to go read Tim Dlugos.
Dlugos was an openly gay young poet in the 1970s New York scene who continued to write as he died of AIDS complications at the end of the 1980s. In his most famous work “G-9,” named after his hospital room, Dlugos writes, “Duncan Hannah visits, and we talk of out-of-body experiences. His was amazing.” He recalls Duncan’s drunk nightmare in his dormitory at Bard, waking to find an imagined naked boy sleeping on the floor. “He struggled out of bed, walked over to the youth, and touched his shoulder. The boy turned; it was Duncan himself.”
“Collected Works by the Late Duncan Hannah” is now on view at The Cornwall Library in Cornwall, Conn., through Nov. 27.
Photo by Danny Fields
Photo by Danny Fields
Photo by Danny Fields
On Saturday, Sept. 6, from 12 to 5 p.m., Rock Steady Farm in Millerton opens its fields once again for the third annual Farm Fall Block Party, a vibrant, heart-forward gathering of queer and BIPOC farmers, neighbors, families, artists, and allies from across the Hudson Valley and beyond.
Co-hosted with Catalyst Collaborative Farm, The Watershed Center, WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village, and Seasoned Delicious Foods, this year’s party promises its biggest celebration yet. Part harvest festival, part community reunion, the gathering is a reflection of the region’s rich agricultural and cultural ecosystem.
Rooted in justice and joy, the event will feature over 25 local vendors and organizations, live performances, healing workshops, family-friendly activities (yes, there’s a bouncy castle), and abundant local food. And while the festivities are certainly reason enough to show up, organizers remind us the purpose runs deeper.
“This isn’t just a party. It’s a place to build the kind of relationships that keep our food system alive,” said Maggie Cheney, Rock Steady’s co-founder and worker-owner. “We’re creating space where farmers, growers, families, and community organizers can connect, celebrate, and support one another.”
Proceeds from the event support Rock Steady’s POLLINATE program for queer and trans BIPOC beginning farmers, as well as Catalyst Collaborative Farm’s food justice initiatives. With sliding-scale tickets from $5 to $250, the organizers aim to make the event accessible to all, including free entry for children under 12 and volunteer options for those who want to pitch in.
For those who’ve attended before, it’s a welcome return. For newcomers, it may just feel like coming home.
More info and tickets: rocksteadyfarm.com/farm-block-party
Waterlily (8”x12”) made by Marilyn Hock
It takes a lot of courage to share your art for the first time and Marilyn Hock is taking that leap with her debut exhibition at Sharon Town Hall on Sept. 12. A realist painter with a deep love for wildlife, florals, and landscapes, Hock has spent the past few years immersed in watercolor, teaching herself, failing forward, and returning again and again to the page. This 18-piece collection is a testament to courage, practice and a genuine love for the craft.
“I always start with the eyes,” said Hock of her animal portraits. “That’s where the soul lives.” This attentiveness runs through her work, each piece rendered with care, clarity, and a respect for the subtle variations of color and light in the natural world.
After painting in oils earlier in life, Hock returned to art when she retired from working as a paralegal with a goal: to learn watercolor. It wasn’t easy.
“Oils and watercolor are opposites,” she explained. “With oils, you build your darks first. In watercolor, if you do that, you’re in trouble.” She studied online, finding instructors whose approach clicked, and adapted to the delicacy of the medium.
“When I’m working, everything else falls away,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on in life. While I’m painting, time disappears.”
Her studio, formerly a home office, is now her sanctuary and the pieces in this exhibition are the result of three years of that devoted studio work. While this is her first full public show, Hock previously tested the waters at a small fundraiser at Noble Horizons, where one of her pieces sold. That experience — and the consistent encouragement from her family, especially her husband — pushed her to pursue a full exhibition. With gentle encouragement from her husband and family, Hock reached out to the Town Hall’s curator, Zelina Blagden. “My husband kept saying, ‘You’re as good as all those other people out there, why not show your work?’” And so, here it is.
All paintings in the show are for sale, though Hock admits a few are priced high — not because of their size or complexity — but because she’s not quite ready to let them go. “There are a couple I’ve priced high because I’m not sure I want to part with them. But we’ll see,” she laughed. “It would be nice to support the habit a little bit.”
As for aspiring artists or anyone hesitating to begin something creative, Hock’s advice is simple: “Go for it. If it fails, toss it in the basket and start over.”
The exhibit will be on view at Sharon Town Hall through Oct. 31 with an opening reception on Sept. 12 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.
Carissa Unite, general manager of Oblong Books in Millerton.
Carissa Unite of Millerton, began working at Oblong Books 16 years ago as a high schooler. She recently celebrated her eight-year anniversary as the general manager.
Unite’s journey at Oblong began even before she applied for her first position.An avid reader from a young age, she was a frequent customer at the store. During those years, Unite bonded with a former employee who encouraged her to apply for a position after connecting over their shared love of reading.
As a teenager, Unite enjoyed reading Ellen Hopkins, John Green and Ann Brashares. With the busyness of adulthood, she now favors the convenience of audio books. In the past year, however, she has made it a point to read more physical books.
With a preference for contemporary fiction, she raved about “Atmosphere” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The story, set in the 1980s, follows two women who become astronauts at a time when women were not widely accepted in the field. A beautiful love story emerges between the two characters. Unite described the writing as sensational and commended Reid’s ability to tackle complex themes without them being muddied.
Unite has developed a deep appreciated for classic literature. Her two favorites are “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. She was amazed by the philosophical nature of both words and the way their dialogue challenged her perspective.
In an effort to read beyond her preferred genre, she recommends the following:
“Some Desperate Glory,” by Emily Tesh, “Midnight Rooms,” by Donyae Coles and “Clear” by Carys Davies.
For Unite, the beauty of reading lies in its power to develop perspective, empathy, and compassion. Through books, readers learn that everyone is fighting different battles and no two stories are the same. She encourages people to choose kindness because you never know what someone else is facing.
Above all, reading brings Unite peace. If offers transcendence to another world, a pause from outside noise, and for Unite, it is where she feels most at home.
For anyone hesitant to being reading, Unite suggests: just do it! Read 10 pages a day and find the book that speaks to you. Any Oblong staff member would be happy to offer recommendations.
Oblong is located at 26 Main St., in Millerton and 6422 Montgomery St. in Rhinebeck.