Freight + Volume presents Lucky Stiff, an exhibition of recent drawings by Anthony Haden-Guest. Lucky Stiff will be on view at the gallery’s 39 Lispenard Street location, March 14 to April 18, 2026. This is Haden- Guest’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Lucky Stiff, Anthony Haden-Guest presents a new series of Tomb drawings that unfold more like portraits than epitaphs. The cartoon ritualism formalizing the delivery of his not-so-ironic one-liners—“I’m not hurting anymore,” “I WAS JUST GETTING STARTED,” “I Have To Lose 20 lbs I Said Over & Over Now I Have”— carries humorous overtones, yet lands with the aphoristic punch of La Rochefoucauld without the moralizing. Fanciful in concept, but executed with wit and flair, these ink-on-paper works accumulate like scattered remnants from a deranged flipbook: part hitlist, part running monologue from a nameless cast of characters hurling insults at life from beyond the grave.

Borrowing from the storied lives he’s led as writer, reporter, art critic, poet, and socialite, Haden-Guest’s humor is never boring; when appropriate, it shades strategically into the mulch of deadpan sentiment. The insouciance of the lettering he scrawls over each tombstone spells out nuanced variations that make each grave the embodiment of a distinct character. With the physical immediacy of a comic-strip thought balloon, each inscription suggests a personality defiantly attached to the trivialities it once clung to—and continues to—in death as much as in life.

“I TOLD YOU IT WASN’T JUST A MIDLIFE CRISIS,” reads one gravestone beneath the glowering adumbration of a face, as pouty and ruminative looking as the joke requires. Another gravestone asks, “What do I miss most? Easy!!! My tattoos.” The fleshless skeleton that literalizes this last lament delivers in one stroke what more dissevering minds would parse into dialectics: i.e., the body’s stubborn claim to rot vs. the consolations of the soul.

Each cartoon speaks from behind a multiplicity of masks. The epitaphs are voiced by no one—and yet someone was once there and continues to be heard in the tonal afterlife of the artist’s own revisions and self-revisions. Whether melancholic (“BUT YOU PROMISED”) or urbanely tender (“Safe at last,” “DO NOT DISTURB”), death appears less as the final exit than as a chance for the ultimate punchline. Skewering any pretense to solemnity, mortality’s last word becomes just another flippant aside—a simple matter of timing.

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Born in Paris in 1937, Anthony Haden-Guest has spent decades at the epicenter of cultural movements, from the disco era of Studio 54 to the contemporary art world's most exclusive circles. As a frequent contributor to major publications including Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Esquire, Haden-Guest brings an insider's perspective to the worlds of art, society, and culture. His unique position as both participant and observer has made him one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary cultural criticism. Winner of a New York Emmy Award in 1979 for his PBS documentary The Affluent Immigrants, Haden-Guest continues to document the fascinating intersections of wealth, power, and creativity in modern society.