David Wojnarowicz
Untitled (Between C & D)
1985

About the Item

In this offset poster, printed in collaboration with the Lower East Side literary magazine, "Between C & D," David Wojnarowicz confronts and denounces violence against members of the LGBT community. Cynthia Carr discusses this poster in her biography, "Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz." She relates the episode of when Wojnarowicz became estranged from collaborator Marion Scemama during the production of this piece and inked out her name on the copies of the poster in his possession. This is a copy from his estate. Between C & D (1983–1990) was a Lower East Side quarterly literary magazine edited by Joel Rose and Carherine Texier. Though a geographical reference to the blocks between Avenue C and Avenue D in New York City's East Village neighborhood, “Between C & D” has also been suggested to mean “between coke and dope,” giving an indication of the publication's transgressive content and ethos. The magazine's actual tagline was “Sex. Drugs. Danger. Violence. Computers.” It was printed on fanfold computer paper, sold in a plastic bag, and featured original artwork on each binding. Contributors included Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Gary Indiana, Tama Janowitz, Lynn Tillman, and David Wojnarowicz. The magazine is discussed in-depth in Brandon Stosuy’s "Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992" (NYU Press, 2006). David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1954. He experienced an extremely difficult childhood with a highly abusive family life. Maturing with a sense of his homosexuality, Wojnarowicz dropped out of high school and was living on the streets by the age of sixteen. He soon turned to hustling in Times Square, in New York City. After hitchhiking many times across the U.S. and living for a time in San Francisco and Paris, he finally settled in New York’s East Village in 1978, where he began exhibiting artwork. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related illness in New York City in 1992, at the age of 37.

Creator:
David Wojnarowicz (1954 - 1992, American)
Creation Year:
1985
Dimensions:
Height: 17 in (43.18 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)
Medium:
Offset
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
1980-1989
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU93233436973
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David Wojnarowicz

David Wojnarowicz was an author, poet, photographer, musician, filmmaker and painter whose work as an AIDS activist influenced his visionary and revolutionary art. Personal experiences of disenfranchisement and the stories of people he met living on the margins of society informed the narratives of his work, with identity, sexuality and a bristling against political structures all contributing to its visceral edge. Wojnarowicz unapologetically channeled his anger at the injustices exacted on minorities and alternative lifestyles through repressive governments and financial systems into his paintings, prints, collages and photography.

Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954. He had a tumultuous childhood, dropping out of high school and living on the streets by the time he was 16. He spent much of his youth hitchhiking, spending time in San Francisco and then Paris.

Wojnarowicz moved to New York’s East Village in 1978, where he began exhibiting his art, which he frequently made from found materials. He became a central figure in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, refusing to censor his work, which often forthrightly reflected his queer sexuality and his fury at the conservative establishment. Particularly after the death of his lover Peter Hujar in 1987, he concentrated on the government’s political inaction during the AIDS crisis. As he wrote in his 1991 memoir, Close to the Knives, “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions.”

Wojnarowicz died in 1992 from complications due to AIDS. His art is in major collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Modern and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which has championed LGBTQ+ artists such as Wojnarowicz for decades. In 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective of his work.

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