Wojnarowicz referenced in an essay
Oct. 13th, 2006 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
likethebeerEntitled, "Whose art is it anyway?"
I'd like to say for the record that all Wojnarowicz wrote was, "At least in my imagination I can douse Jesse Helms with gasoline and set his putrid ass on fire." So, really, it was just one nasty thing. That line came right after his oft-quoted line, "I'm beginning to believe that one of the last frontiers left for radical gestures is the imagination."
Although, yeah, the Jesse Helms' line caused a controversy. Well, the show, Witnesses against our Vanishing, featured artists with AIDS. Some of them were pretty pissed (and already dead, as I recall).
Yeah, the late '80s. Just a total fuckwad for the art world. I used to check the obits in Art in America every issue that came out. For awhile there--and I'm talking years--you'd lose about 2-4 artists every month who were below the age of 50, 45. I just counted on it.
I made a list of them one time for a Day without Art event. I didn't have everyone, I just counted who was listed, then wrote down their ages. Average age of death was like 37. Younger than Van Gogh when he died. Younger than I am now. The retrovirals have really done a good job. Not fast enough for David, though (he died a couple of months before his 38th birthday).
a catalogue essay for a federally subsidized show called for nasty things to be done to Senator Jesse Helms;
I'd like to say for the record that all Wojnarowicz wrote was, "At least in my imagination I can douse Jesse Helms with gasoline and set his putrid ass on fire." So, really, it was just one nasty thing. That line came right after his oft-quoted line, "I'm beginning to believe that one of the last frontiers left for radical gestures is the imagination."
Although, yeah, the Jesse Helms' line caused a controversy. Well, the show, Witnesses against our Vanishing, featured artists with AIDS. Some of them were pretty pissed (and already dead, as I recall).
Yeah, the late '80s. Just a total fuckwad for the art world. I used to check the obits in Art in America every issue that came out. For awhile there--and I'm talking years--you'd lose about 2-4 artists every month who were below the age of 50, 45. I just counted on it.
I made a list of them one time for a Day without Art event. I didn't have everyone, I just counted who was listed, then wrote down their ages. Average age of death was like 37. Younger than Van Gogh when he died. Younger than I am now. The retrovirals have really done a good job. Not fast enough for David, though (he died a couple of months before his 38th birthday).
