Chances are you will have seen a photograph of David Wojnarowicz even if you’re not familiar with him, or his work. With a long, narrow chin, steely gaze, prominent eye circles and a plump, sullen mouth, the New York artist made a striking subject. Most famously photographed by his friend and mentor — and one time lover — the masterful Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz’s intense and unforgettable glare embodies the fire and fury of ’80s New York; a time when the AIDS crisis was ripping through America and entire neighbourhoods and communities were collapsing. Working in the East Village from the late ’70s up until his untimely death from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 37, Wojnarowicz was not just an enigmatic face for the era, but an artist of extraordinary talent and diverse creative sensibilities — he was a photographer, painter, musician and filmmaker as well as an articulate writer and speaker, and fervent poet. Last weekend, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night — the first retrospective of this inimitable artist since 1999 — opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, paying heed to both the complex, heterogeneous nature of his art, and the bold, unflinching vigour of his politically-charged output.
In conjunction with the opening of the deeply personal and electrifyingly political exhibition, SLEEK sits down with the exhibition’s co-curator, David Breslin, to gain a comprehensive insight into what we need to know about this fearless artist — what makes his work so necessary — at this particular moment in time.
1. He existed on the margins
Wojnarowicz’s status as an outsider informed his work from the beginning. Associated with a long history of outsider artists — those on the margins, and separate from the commercialism and constraints of mainstream culture — Wojnarowicz was attune to things that others might take for granted; he was interested in the “miracle of the everyday”. His outsider identity was on account of a difficult upbringing: his parents abandoned him as a boy and he spent his childhood in and out of temporary homes, and hustled for a living as a teenager. In an interview with the journalist Matthew Rose, Wojnarowicz says that when he first arrived in New York in the late ’70s, he slept in doorways in Times Square before “living with several ex-convicts in a halfway house”. According to Breslin, it was his interest in avant-garde writers such as Jean Genet and Arthur Rimbaud that allowed him to “find a way into the world” (the influence of the latter was most famously seen in Wojnarowicz’s photographic series Arthur Rimbaud in New York, where the artist photographed himself wearing a mask of the French’s poet’s face against the grim, grey sites of the city to emphasise their similarities). “He didn’t go to college, he barely finished high school. He was a true autodidact, but he was really learned”, explains Breslin. “I think in this way he found people like William Burroughs, Genet and Rimbaud to be completely influential in figuring out a way into a world where imagination and sex and visual language could all be put together.”
2. He was a true artistic polymath
Although Wojnarowicz started out writing poetry and monologues (pulled from conversations he would record with interesting people he met on his travels), he proceeded to be skilled in an array of mediums. History Keeps Me Awake at Night showcases the extensiveness of Wojnarowicz’ artistic talent, ranging from photography and stencils through drawing, sculpture, collage, painting and film. “He really used whatever means was necessary in order to express what he needed to do at that moment”, confirms Breslin. “He wasn’t wedded to any one particular medium. In some ways, the heterogeneity of his means of address really embodied his desire not to be stuck in any one rut.” By shifting between mediums, Wojnarowicz was able to “keep people on their toes”. For example, in the mid ’80s — when there was a resurgent interest in painting in the East Village — Wojnarowicz abandoned the popular medium. “It was as if he was being brought into the established art world so much that he needed to find another way to feel the energy that he required to create — that’s when he started to pick up the camera and Super 8,” says Breslin. “The necessity to never be identified clearly as an artist was very important to him in order to maintain the status of an outsider.”
3. He collaborated on the New York arts scene
The tumultuous cityscape of ’70s and ’80s New York forms the backbone of Wojnarowicz’s work. At the time that he was working, the glossy, cosmopolitan city that we know today couldn’t have been more different. As crime rattled through the streets and economic stagnation impacted the development of the city before gentrification brought about the ruination of creative sites in the early ’80s, marginalised artistic communities still flourished. The city as a blistering melting pot fuelled Wojnarowicz’s work: “It allowed him to jump from a poetry scene to a punk rock music scene to a painting scene — being able to have that in one place was extremely important,” says Breslin. The pulsating energy of New York at this time permitted Wojnarowicz to collaborate with the likes of Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, Mike Bidlo and Keith Haring, long before they were the art mega stars that they are today. This sharing of ideas and collaboration was central to Wojnarowicz’s world view. He was critical of the notion of America as a “one tribe nation”, instead believing that America was “a constellation of tribes” — an idea he sought to privilege in his work.
4. He was an impassioned portrayer of the AIDS crisis
It is impossible to discuss the work of Wojnarowicz without detailing the impact of the AIDS crisis on his life and career. From as early as 1985/86, Wojnarowicz was making enormous allegorical paintings depicting sperm and blood cells within larger, detailed compositions that allude to the destructive spread of the virus, such as in the painting Water from 1987. The depth of Wojnarowicz’s engagement with the crisis intensified following the death of his mentor, Peter Hujar, in 1987. “When something like this happens with someone that close, the inevitability of death … it shook my work,” Wojnarowicz said in his interview with Rose. Among the most stirring works in the exhibition is a ghostly series of three black and white photographs that document the moments directly after Hujar’s passing (above). This sensitivity to the transience of life lent Wojnarowicz’s work the impassioned sense of urgency that it’s famous for. As the disease robbed him of his friends and lovers, Wojnarowicz — as a gay man — experienced life with a new “sense of pressure”. “My feelings about time are different, things have much more meaning,” said the artist. “It’s like wanting to have beauty and live for beauty at the same time that you want to live more than anything else and want to make work that you think might get the word out,” posits Breslin.
5. His was a singularly powerful political voice
As much as Wojnarowicz was uniquely sensitive and attuned to the flow and flux of life, he was was also furious and enraged about how those on the edge of society were treated by those in power. According to Breslin, Wojnarowicz’s fiery politics came from his “love of the world and its possibilities”, but that’s not to say he wasn’t frustrated. Wojnarowicz “was unafraid to let his anger show” and possessed — what Breslin refers to as — a “righteous rage” with regard to how the elite refused to protect the marginalised in the wake of crisis. It is precisely for this reason that Wojnarowicz is experiencing a revival in 2018 (the Whitney exhibition coincides with an exhibition of Wojnarowicz and Hujar’s work at the Loewe Museum in Madrid). “The urgency that you see in his early work in the ’70s through his work that dealt with the AIDS epidemic is extremely powerful now when we are living in a time where the rights of immigrants are threatened and abortion rights are up for grabs. The importance of an artist, who can make a stunning visual language to express what it’s like to be on the outside in order to confront people who are on the inside with what that means, is more powerful now than ever,” explains Breslin. “That’s what his work was really about — not only speaking up for himself — but finding a voice for those who had not or would not be listened to.”
David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night curated by David Breslin and David Kiehl runs through to September 30 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.