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拍品專文
TUNA is a sublime example of David Wojnarowicz’s early use of supermarket posters as backgrounds for his paintings. Here, the vibrant, eye-catching green poster acts as a foundation for Wojanrowicz’s painted and collaged vignette of a stereotypically suave cowboy with his hands tied behind his head and his mouth covered with a red bandana. Upon closer inspection, there is a smaller scene within this snapshot that illustrates a headless figure, presumably a victim of the smoking gun that stands before it. While it is unclear who the headless victim is, the ultimate issue Wojnarowicz wants viewers to question is the narratives that are fed to American society through mass-market and popular culture imagery.
TUNA specifically reflects on the violent roles expected of men as perpetuated through tropes, such as the rugged cowboy, in turn analyzing “how much more attention society gave to the killing of men than the loving of them” (D. Cameron, "Passion in the Wilderness," Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz, New York, 1999, p. 8).
When Wojnarowicz created this work in 1983, the visual language of commercialism and mass-produced images was not unique to the artist, having been a core pillar of the preceding generation’s interests and expressions through Pop art. These artists used similar source material, such as comic strips and advertisements from the newspaper, to stress the monotony of commercial America, as evidenced with works, such as Andy Warhol’s Dr. Scholl’s Corns (1961). Unlike Warhol’s Dr. Scholl’s Corns, which is painted on canvas, Wojnarowicz’s TUNA is painted and collaged onto an actual advertisement poster. Without any real income, Wojnarowicz sought materials from various stores in his Lower East Side neighborhood, such as local supermarkets, where he would salvage “Sale of the Week” posters from trash bins before altering their surfaces. By using an object that epitomizes conspicuous consumption as the foundation for the works in this series, Wojnarowicz offers viewers something recognizable and self-referential. The simplicity and “everyday” nature of this series is where its power lies—the messaging by Wojnarowicz as clear and direct as that of the poster.
Wojnarowicz also set himself apart from the preceding generation of artists engaging similar materials by blending the public, or the commercial, with the private. Whereas Pop artists, like Andy Warhol, purposefully stripped their work of any sense of originality or personal reference, Wojnarowicz portrayed subject matter that was important to him, and that others were too fearful to address, such as homophobia and the AIDS epidemic, to censorship, and failings by the United States government. These issues not only affected the artist, but also the community he built of other creatives and self-ascribed outsiders in the East Village of the 80s and 90s. The anxiety and fear felt by those affected are poignantly captured in the uncertainty and violence of Wojnarowicz’s supermarket poster series. In this way, the supermarket poster works serve as a metaphor for this forlorn fellowship—seemingly abandoned and cast aside, but garnering the power to alter human consciousness through visual expression.
Along with his fervent belief in the power of art to transform perspective, Wojnarowicz adhered to a firm ethos that an artist’s materials and imagery should evolve, much as the artist does. While the supermarket poster series spanned just two years of the artist’s career, it is recognized as an important evolution where Wojnarowicz continued to explore his visual language, as exemplified through the present lot’s inclusion in the Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake At Night, a seminal exhibition that highlighted the most important works of the artist’s brief, yet impactful career.
TUNA specifically reflects on the violent roles expected of men as perpetuated through tropes, such as the rugged cowboy, in turn analyzing “how much more attention society gave to the killing of men than the loving of them” (D. Cameron, "Passion in the Wilderness," Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz, New York, 1999, p. 8).
When Wojnarowicz created this work in 1983, the visual language of commercialism and mass-produced images was not unique to the artist, having been a core pillar of the preceding generation’s interests and expressions through Pop art. These artists used similar source material, such as comic strips and advertisements from the newspaper, to stress the monotony of commercial America, as evidenced with works, such as Andy Warhol’s Dr. Scholl’s Corns (1961). Unlike Warhol’s Dr. Scholl’s Corns, which is painted on canvas, Wojnarowicz’s TUNA is painted and collaged onto an actual advertisement poster. Without any real income, Wojnarowicz sought materials from various stores in his Lower East Side neighborhood, such as local supermarkets, where he would salvage “Sale of the Week” posters from trash bins before altering their surfaces. By using an object that epitomizes conspicuous consumption as the foundation for the works in this series, Wojnarowicz offers viewers something recognizable and self-referential. The simplicity and “everyday” nature of this series is where its power lies—the messaging by Wojnarowicz as clear and direct as that of the poster.
Wojnarowicz also set himself apart from the preceding generation of artists engaging similar materials by blending the public, or the commercial, with the private. Whereas Pop artists, like Andy Warhol, purposefully stripped their work of any sense of originality or personal reference, Wojnarowicz portrayed subject matter that was important to him, and that others were too fearful to address, such as homophobia and the AIDS epidemic, to censorship, and failings by the United States government. These issues not only affected the artist, but also the community he built of other creatives and self-ascribed outsiders in the East Village of the 80s and 90s. The anxiety and fear felt by those affected are poignantly captured in the uncertainty and violence of Wojnarowicz’s supermarket poster series. In this way, the supermarket poster works serve as a metaphor for this forlorn fellowship—seemingly abandoned and cast aside, but garnering the power to alter human consciousness through visual expression.
Along with his fervent belief in the power of art to transform perspective, Wojnarowicz adhered to a firm ethos that an artist’s materials and imagery should evolve, much as the artist does. While the supermarket poster series spanned just two years of the artist’s career, it is recognized as an important evolution where Wojnarowicz continued to explore his visual language, as exemplified through the present lot’s inclusion in the Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake At Night, a seminal exhibition that highlighted the most important works of the artist’s brief, yet impactful career.