Finding a chronicler with the proper combination of familiarity and detachment can be like going on a series of bad Hinge dates, but in Gooch, Haring has met his match. Radiant, referring to both Haring’s recurrent drawing of a crawling baby and his own fast-burning star, is a faithful retracing of his steps, with over 200 people interviewed or consulted: devoted and probably definitive. (The word 'magisterial' is too stuffy to apply to its subject, who favored jeans, sneaks and bared biceps).

Gooch, a seventies downtowner himself and the author of a sensitive biography of Frank O’Hara, is superb on the textures of these New York years, when a young artist seemingly couldn’t cross the street without getting ideas.

Does exactly what biographies of the exceptionally famous should do: Gently, graciously, it reels in the myth, restoring the flesh-and-bone reality..

Not only gives us a much-overdue appreciation of Haring as an important artist. It also paints an exhilarating portrait of a young artist finding himself and his calling.

Gooch vividly evokes New York in the early 1980s, surely one of the most culturally exciting eras of all time, and Haring was right in the thick of it.

Not only a biography of the artist but a globe-trotting account of how Haring’s pictograms flooded the zeitgeist.

Radiant’s final chapter, which depicts the end of Haring’s life, is rich, emotional, and compelling, and also features the best writing in the book.

Brad Gooch’s thorough account of Haring’s brief time is mostly a tale of head-spinning ascent, until it drifts down into a melancholy twilight, though one made bearable by Haring’s refusal to let mere death get in the way of his life’s work..

Drawing on more than 200 interviews with Haring’s friends, family, and colleagues, Gooch captures the innovative, whirlwind creative spirit of the artist, who continued working and planning projects just weeks before dying from complications of HIV/AIDs at age 31. Shot through with details that bring to life the tumultuous social ferment of the era, this honors the inimitable spirit of a defining figure in the art world..

A sympathetic and well-researched portrait..