David Wojnarowicz, who had lived on the streets of New York since he was thirteen, drew from his experiences on the margins of American society to recreate a passionate world of outsiders-hustlers and hobos, club kids and rednecks. After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the late 1980's, Wojnarowicz's art took on a sharply political edge, and from then until his death in 1992, he became entangled in highly public debates about medical research and funding, censorship in the arts, and politically sanctioned homophobia. Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz is the first book to explore the extraordinary breadth of his work in film, installation, sculpture, photography, performance, and writing, as well as his considerable influence on artists and writers working today. It features essays by leading art scholars, including New Museum senior curator Dan Cameron, along with excerpts from Wojnarowicz's own writings and previously unpublished material from the archives of the Wojnarowicz estate-works that cross literary lines, from memoir and fiction to political commentary and cultural critique. Dan Cameron, John Carlin, C. Carr, and Mysoon Rizk
Author
David Wojnarowicz was a gay painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City and worked as a farmer on the Canadian border. Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made super-8 films, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries. In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS on July 22, 1992. His personal papers are part of the Downtown Collection held by the Fales Library at New York University.
