One day after work a week or so ago, I headed down to Thom Browne’s store on Hudson Street for the first time in my life. I never bothered to visit the boutique because I knew too well that I would never look even reasonably good in Mr. Browne’s clothing. What finally drew me to the stark mid-century space was a solo exhibition of artwork by Mr. Michael Hainey. The show, entitled Less Human/More Being, is the culmination of Hainey’s (who serves as deputy editor of GQ) development as a painter. He puts it best in a recent post on GQ.com. “I went through a long wrestling match with myself: You can’t paint. Who do you think you are? But I kept seeing my poem—“How I Learned to Pray”—as a painting. Finally one night I said, ‘Enough! This may be crazy, but I have to make this painting.’ I went out, bought the canvas and the paint, and locked the door. That was the beginning.”
