Works on Paper--Prints

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Untitled (Genet, after Brassai), 1978-79/1990. Lithograph, 35 x 47 ½ inches, Edition of 10. Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W, New York
Wojnarowicz worked with commercial printing processes, such as Xerox, Photostat, and offset printing, throughout his career. He created stencil prints and monoprints, and explored fine art printing processes like lithography later in his career. He became well-known for his stenciled imagery in the early 1980s (for more on stencils, see stencils). His first non-stenciled prints were a collaboration with Kiki Smith. The two were inspired by a trove of found psychiatric tests they found at the abandoned Pier 28 that had been administered by the Psychiatric Clinic of the Court of General Sessions. They selected a group that included a section where offenders were asked to draw pictures of man and woman, and planned to produce a series of fine prints that they would then plaster in the streets.[1]. They received a grant for materials and produced an edition of 10 of silkscreened images from the found tests, with color lithographic images of Rorschach tests overlaid on top.

In 1984, Wojnarowicz produced an offset lithograph in collaboration with Marion Scemama for Between C & D, a Lower East Side literary magazine that was distributed folded in a Ziploc bag with original artwork on each binding. The collaborative poster demonstrates Wojnarowicz’s early experimentation with combining text and photographic imagery. In this work, a photographic image of Wojnarowicz as apparent victim of a gay bashing (taken by Scemama) is paired with a text that reflects on the recent Supreme Court ruling suggesting that gay people had forfeited their constitutional right to privacy.

After these early forays into print-making, Wojnarowicz published only six editioned lithographs in his lifetime, including the three prints published at Normal Editions Workshop when he was there preparing for the 1990 exhibition. [2] At Normal’s print studio, Wojnarowicz created three multi-color lithographs. He arrived planning to a version of the four seasons, and two of the prints are centered on this theme: Fire and Water, and Earth and Wind. In these works he used iconography familiar from elsewhere in his work, juxtaposing grounds made of currency, musical sheets, and supermarket advertisements with overlaid images of organs, nature, and fantastical creatures. In the third untitled print, he responded to his immediate concerns, using a NY Post editorial about the Artspace controversy as ground for drawings of a crucified voodoo doll, a circular inset of blood cells, and an earth encrusted with skeletons.

Media and techniques

For the commercial printing processes, Wojnarowicz likely used a variety of local shops, including Todd’s Copy Shop on Mott Street between Prince and Spring, or Giant Photo.

Wojnarowicz learned how to screenprint from Kiki Smith when they collaborated on the psychiatric test prints in 1983.[3] Keith Davis had screenprinting equipment in his apartment and Steve Doughton recalls Wojnarowicz and Davis screenprinting on top of supermarket posters there in the mid-1980s. [4]

These prints, likely True Myth (Domino Sugar) and Jean Genet Masturbating in Metteray Prison were made in 1983. The essential imagery in True Myth was earlier rendered on the side of a building in New York City circa 1981. Wojnarowicz recycled popular printed material from his extensive collection of ephemera to use as substrates for these prints; both True Myth and Jean Genet are printed on recycled screenprinted supermarket posters. On such advertisements, Wojnarowicz later reflected:

"I like to subvert the intended use of printed material[s]. . . . It’s like whatever you can find that is just printed in the street that you can see just walking down the street. Whatever you see that is in use that has been printed I like to work with because there are a variety of meanings by putting any image on top of it."[5]

Offset plates and metal plates for the production of the Between C & D poster can be found in Fales collection, Series XI, Mapcase 1J, folders 13 and 14.

Wojnarowicz learned how to work with lithography while working with the master printer Richard Finch at Normal Editions print workshop at Illinois State University. Finch provided contracts for three of those images, Earth and Wind, Fire and Water, and Untitled. They explain the exact colors used, the run of the prints, and other identifying information. To read the contract for Earth and Wind, click here. To read the contract for Fire and Water, click here. To read the contract for Untitled, click here.

Conservation and display

Some of the inks used to print the commercially produced supermarket posters that Wojnarowicz appropriated are light sensitive. There are several unprinted examples in the Wojnarowicz Papers at Fales Library that display partial fading.

Selected works