First Exhibition of the Martin Wong Collection, Featuring 150 Works by
DAZE, DONDI, FUTURA 2000, Keith Haring, LADY PINK, LEE, and
More New York Graffiti Artists of the 1970s-’80s
The Museum of the City of New York announces City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, the first exhibition of the treasure trove of 1970s and ’80s graffiti art amassed by artist and pioneering collector Martin Wong, who donated the entire collection to the City Museum in 1994. The exhibition features seminal paintings and “black book” sketches by DAZE (Chris Ellis), DONDI (Donald White), FUTURA 2000 (Leonard McGurr), Keith Haring, LADY PINK (Sandra Fabara), LEE (Lee Quiñones), RAMMELLZEE, SHARP (Aaron Goodstone), ZEPHYR (Andrew Witten), and many more New York graffiti artists, as well as photographs by Charlie Ahearn, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, and others that show the era’s graffiti-covered subways and buildings. City as Canvas will open Tuesday, February 4, 2014, and remain on view until Sunday, August 24, 2014.
City as Canvas explores the cultural phenomenon of New York City graffiti art, beginning with historical photographs of graffiti long erased from subways and buildings, and delving into paintings and sketchbooks collected by Martin Wong (1946-1999). Graffiti emerged as a powerful form of self-expression in New York City in the 1970s. With Wong and his friends at its epicenter, the movement evolved from illicit expressions on subway cars and station walls, to colorful paintings embraced as valuable works of art by collectors and patrons from the Downtown scene of the 1980s.
Wong was drawn to the ubiquitous graffiti writing he saw all over New York City when he moved from San Francisco in 1978. While working at Pearl Paint, an art supply store on Canal Street in Manhattan, he befriended New York City graffiti writers, many of whom were teenagers. At a time when others saw graffiti as an urban blight, Wong recognized the artistic and cultural value of his friends’ work, which he began collecting through purchase or trade. The resulting collection features 55 sketchbooks-called “black books”-and more than 300 mixed media paintings on canvas, cardboard, paper, and plywood, many of which were permutations of spray-painted works on subways and buildings that were later erased or painted over. Interested in keeping the entire collection intact, Wong donated it to the City Museum in 1994 before returning to San Francisco, where he remained an active artist and friend of graffiti artists until his death from AIDS in 1999.