ACID VIOLET

You & i are Earth 1661

Earthenware plate excavated in London

190

Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

The fruit was never an apple.

A Collection of Poems + Poets by MoMA teen takeover

1: Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (c. 1640) by Harmen van Steenwyck

2: Bonedog, Eva HD

3: Vanitas still life with a skull, sheet music, violin, globe, candle, hourglass and playing cards, all on a draped table (1662) by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts

4: Dig Those Sunsets, Pony, Hanif Willis Abdurraqib

5: Vanitas – Still Life with Books and Manuscripts and a Skull (1663) by Edwaert Collier

An American painter, David Michael Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was incredibly prominent in the East Village art scene, and an important AIDS activist until he died from it.

Wojnarowicz was born in New Jersey but grew up in New York, working as a street hustler while he was in high school. In his twenties, Wojnarowicz began creating avant-garde street art, being recognized for his stencils of houses on fire that he put on the walls of actual buildings. He also made super-8 films and collaborated with other artists in the New York art scene of the 70s and 80s.

In 1987, his mentor and lover, Peter Hujar, died of AIDS and Wojnarowicz learned he was HIV-positive. Reeling from the death of the man he loved and confronting his own death, Wojnarowicz began creating art more explicitly political in content, especially about the AIDS crisis.

You may recognize Wojnarowicz's work from the following photograph--it was used on the cover of the song "One" by U2 (which may have been at least partly inspired by Wojnarowicz's story).

You may recognize Wojnarowicz from the following photograph--this is him, in his own jacket.