In Mavericks of Style, Uri McMillan tells the story of New York City’s downtown art and fashion scene of the 1970s through the lives and careers of experimental Black and Brown artists. McMillan focuses on model and musician Grace Jones, fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, fashion designer Stephen Burrows, and their orbit of friends, showing how they restlessly moved across genres and disciplines, transgressing boundaries between the commercial and the avant-garde. Bypassing the exclusive art world and cultivating uniquely personal styles, these artists thrived on friendship and collaboration in their experimental use of bold color, gold lamé, and Instamatic photography. McMillan transports readers to the spaces Jones, Lopez, and Burrows frequented and worked in, from hair salons, nondescript artist studios, and buzzy boutiques to funky discos and high fashion runways. By foregrounding their impact on the decade’s aesthetics, McMillan complicates and expands the understanding of these artists, offering a new vision of New York’s art world in sultry, bombastic color.

Uri McMillan is Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance.

Cast of Characters  ix
Introduction. Insurgent Aesthetics  1
1. Mundane Made Spectacular: Antonio Lopez  23
2. Neophyte to Muse: Grace Jones  75
3. Color That Moves: Stephen Burrows  121
Afterword. Style Is a Feeling  165
Acknowledgments  179
Notes  183
Bibliography  209
Index