David Wojnarowicz

In 1978 and 1979, David Wojnarowicz took a series of photographs of a man wearing a paper mask bearing the visage of Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet equally known for his fervid verse and dramatic life. Rimbaud was the instantiation, and perhaps the inventor, of the idea of the young gay hustler of genius.
Presenting a selection of photographs by Wojnarowicz, this amply illustrated volume features an introductory essay by Antonio Sergio Bessa contextualizing the series within a foundation of other works across literature, photography and performance. Nicholas Martin explores Wojnarowicz's practice in the context of the rise of the punk movement in downtown Manhattan in the late 1970s. Craig Dworkin explores Rimbaud's years as a runaway youth in Paris during the Commune, and his acquaintances with the city's bohemia. Marguerite Van Cook contributes an essay about her experiences with the London and New York music and art scenes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Phillip Aarons offers a personal account of his engagement as a collector of Wojnarowicz's work. The book also features an interview with photographer Allen Frame, who produced several performances of Wojnarowicz's monologues in the early 1980s in New York's Lower East Side, Berlin and Brooklyn.
Painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter and activist David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954 and died from AIDS-related illness in New York in 1992. He authored a few books, most famously Close to the Knives. Wojnarowicz attained national prominence as a writer and advocate for AIDS awareness and for his stance against censorship.

This volume collects David Wojnarowicz’s transatlantic correspondence to his Parisian lover Jean Pierre Delage between 1979 and 1982. Capturing a truly foundational moment for Wojnarowicz’s artistic and literary practice, these letters not only reveal his captivating personality—and its concomitant compassion, neuroses and tenderness—but also index the development of the visual language that would go on to codify him as one of the preeminent artists of his generation.
Through this collection, readers are introduced to Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud series, his band 3 Teens Kill 4, the publication of his first photographs, his early friendship with Peter Hujar, his participation in the then-emerging East Village art and music scenes, and the preparations for the publication of his first book. Included with these writings are postcards, drawings, xeroxes, photo­graphs, collages, flyers, ephemera and contact sheets that showcase some of the artist’s iconic images and work, such as the Burning House motif and Untitled (Genet, after Brassai).
Beyond these milestones, the book offers a striking portrayal of Wojnarowicz as a 20-something detailing his day-to-day life with the type of unbridled earnestness that comes with his age and the softness of love and longing. This disarming tenderness provides a picture of a young man who is just beginning to find his voice in the world and the love he has discovered in it. Although the two exchanged letters in equal measure, Delage’s correspondences have largely been lost, leaving us with only a revelatory glimpse into the internal world of Wojnarowicz during what turned out to be his formative years.
Painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter and activist, David Wojnarowicz was born in Redbank, New Jersey, in 1954 and died of AIDS in New York in 1992. He authored five books, most famously Close to the Knives. Wojnarowicz attained national prominence as a writer and advocate for AIDS awareness and for his stance against censorship. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, among other institutions.