FILM
Wojnarowicz Doc Recalls a Gay Icon
Confrontational, uncompromising artist comes into focus
BY GARY M. KRAMER
Director Chris McKim’s
outstanding documentary
“Wojnarowicz:
Fuck You Faggot
Fucker,” about David Wojnarowicz,
uses the late gay political activist
and multimedia artist’s journals,
cassettes, photographs, paintings,
and super-8 fi lms to recount his life
and work. The fi lm is a remarkable
testament to the downtown artist
as an angry young man.
Wojnarowicz grew up in an abusive
home and spent time on the
streets as a hustler before he developed
a career in the 1980s art
world alongside contemporary graffi
ti artists, including Keith Haring
and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yet he
had justifi able contempt for both
the gallery system that served rich,
white culture, as well as the politicians
and conservatives who condoned
homophobia in their efforts
to stop federal funding for controversial
artists like himself. He was
the subject of various lawsuits regarding
politics, funding, and art,
and even won one against Donald
Wildmon, who used the artist’s
work inappropriately to send messages
of hate.
Diagnosed with AIDS, Wojnarowicz
pointedly observed, “I
contracted a diseased society as
well.” He became a member of
ACT UP, and penned an incendiary
essay, “Postcards from America:
X-Rays from Hell,” as part
of the catalog for the 1989 exhibition
“Witnesses: Against Our
Vanishing” as a response to the
AIDS crisis. (Alas, the documentary
does not feature much of its
subject’s writing. It briefl y mentions
his efforts to get “Sounds
in the Distance” published, but
nothing about his memoir, “Close
to the Knives.”)
Wojnarowicz’s work was extremely
infl uential, and as an early
clip in the documentary shows, he
talked about the inability to separate
art from politics. His work
was never polite and always confrontational.
McKim features a signifi
cant portion of his drawing and
David Wojnarowicz’s artwork.
painting in the fi lm, emphasizing
the point that his art was a way for
him to process his life. (A fi lm clip
of Wojnarowicz with a rabbit stems
from a shocking incident from his
childhood when his father fed the
family’s pet rabbit to David and his
siblings).
His early work featured images
of Rimbaud and Genet, two of
his outsider idols. He also created
content with Peter Hujar, who was
Wojnarowicz’s greatest infl uence,
friend, father fi gure, and, briefl y,
his lover. Hujar told him not to
compromise or adapt to other people’s
tastes — and that was advice
he took to heart. Wojnarowicz’s
photographs of the Hujar’s head,
hands, and feet from his deathbed
are among his most poignant images.
McKim’s documentary traces
its subject’s career, from performing
songs about the underclass
with the band “3 Teens Kill 4” to
his “action installation” with Julie
Hair — involving cow bones, blood,
and stencils in Leo Castelli’s gallery
— until his breakout in the
East Village art scene in 1982. He
PROPERTY OF KINO LORBER
also established an illegal, surreptitious
artists’ space in the Hudson
piers, which was quite successful
until the police shut it down.
When Wojnarowicz’s work was
shown at the Gracie Mansion gallery,
Grace Glueck, a New York
Times arts reporter, wrote about it
and the emerging queer sensibility.
Suddenly, Wojnarowicz started
getting noticed. And his paintings,
“Fuck You Faggot Fucker” and
“Prison Rape,” expressed, in no
uncertain terms, what being queer
in America was like.
The fi lm celebrates Wojnarowicz’s
raw, uncompromising politics
and consciousness and McKim
emphasizes the artist’s claim that
his work was not a product. When
two of his paintings were selected
for the 1985 Whitney Biennial,
Wojnarowicz practically shrugged;
he did not look for acceptance in
the larger art world. Viewers will
likely snicker when Wojnarowicz
is commissioned to make an installation
for Robert and Adriana
Mnuchin, which he fi lled with the
dirtiest trash he could fi nd — and
bugs.
McKim does focus on Wojnarowicz’s
personal life. There are exchanges
he had with his sister Pat
and his brother Steve, the latter of
whom has a very tense conversation
with him when Wojnarowicz
is dying of AIDS. There is a discussion
of his using heroin — and
stopping when Hujar insisted. And
there are also some very revealing
interviews with Tom Rauffenbart,
who was the artist’s boyfriend.
Rauffenbart wistfully describes
Wojnarowicz prioritizing Peter
fi rst, his art second, and his lover
third, acknowledging, grudgingly,
that it made sense.
“Wojnarowicz” does not coddle
its subject or viewers. There are
graphic images that disturb or
may offend, such as the iconic
image of the artist with his
mouth sewn shut, or depictions
of graphic sexuality, but McKim
is not looking to shock or exploit.
He is assembling the work to
show the rage Wojnarowicz felt.
Watching clips from the ACT UP
demonstrations he attended are
galvanizing.
At the St. Patrick’s Cathedral
protest, the artist wore a jacket
that read, “If I die of AIDS — forget
burial — just drop my body
on the steps of the FDA.” And at
Wojnarowicz’s political funeral,
men carried a banner that read,
“Wojnarowicz died of AIDS due to
Government Neglect.”
One can, of course, only wonder
what the artist would have created
had he lived. Retrospectives
of Wojnarowicz’s work at Illinois
State University in 1990, while he
was alive, and a more recent one
at the Whitney in 2018, show the
lasting impact of his work. They
also magnify a cogent point made
in the fi lm about “expressing ideas
that may change yours.” Such is
the power of the artist, and the
takeaway from McKim’s excellent
“Wojnarowicz.”
“WOJNAROWICZ: FUCK YOU
FAGGOT FUCKER” | Directed by
Chris McKim and produced by WOW
Docs/World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato
& Fenton Bailey | Opening
March 19 via Film Forum (virtual)
MARCH 25 - APRIL 7 , 2 24 021 | GayCityNews.com
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