Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
February 10–May 1, 2011

February 10, 2011. In a bit of serendipity that is hardly lost on the Whitney Museum itself, the exhibition they just opened, of work from the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, is mounted in fourth floor galleries that already honor her name. The estimable Fisher Landau collection, totaling over 400 works, was pledged to the museum in May 2010 by their longtime trustee, who has also established an endowment for continuing support of the Biennial. The show currently on view, comprising just over 80 pieces, is assembled by Whitney curators Donna De Salvo and David Kiehl, and ranges from signature work by Andy Warhol, Edward Ruscha, Richard Artschwager and John Baldessari to a vintage 1980 Susan Rothenberg new image painting, a wealth of Jasper Johns screenprints, pristine early 60s works on paper by Agnes Martin, Carl Andre concrete poetry on typewritten sheets, Felix Gonzalez-Torres jigsaw puzzles, assemblages by Nayland Blake, photo portraiture by Peter Hujar and Nan Goldin, and an early Richard Prince nurse painting, to name but a few.

You Killed Me First, installation view, 1985.

James Romberger - artist, gallerist, writer and collaborator with David Wojnarowicz during the salad days of the East Village - was prompted by the current censorship of "A Fire In My Belly" to pen an eloquent analysis and remembrance of his friend. Wojnarowicz’s Apostasy http://www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian/2010/12/wojnarowiczs-apostacy/ is an essential read.

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo.

December 16, 2010. The above is taken from the Vimeo page of PPOW Gallery and from the archives of NYU's Fales Library. It represents two segments, of approximately 13 and 7 minutes, that David Wojnarowicz shot and edited on Super 8 in 1986-87, which he entitled "A Fire In My Belly". It is NOT the four minute piece that was yanked from the National Portrait Gallery show on December 1. It is also NOT the video I posted earlier on this blog, with its Diamanda Galas banshee wail/dirge of "Unclean". Nor the segment I have seen with an overlaid soundtrack of a 1980s ACT UP demonstration. Wojnarowicz shot and presented his original footage without sound, a suggestion of the urgency and severity of the political climate that led to the mantra of "Silence = Death".

It is two weeks since the "silencing" of "A Fire In My Belly", and as we near Sunday's rally on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, it's clear that the culture wars are by no means over. This is hardly news to anyone following the hurtful antics of the Tea Party. Ever more empowered by their victories in the midterm election, the same purveyors of fear and purposeful obfuscation who demonized Obama for the past two years are trying to legislate and coerce the cultural landscape, to make art conform to their hypocritical and faux Christian yardstick. The fact that their cynical misunderstanding and bad intentions AGAIN fall directly on Wojnarowicz's shoulders is testimony to the enduring raw, elemental, and confrontational power of his art. Although the forces of reaction and censorship will always find something to belittle and attempt to repress, we almost have to thank them for forcing the issue and focusing attention on work that especially needs to be discussed and re-evaluated right now, as an antidote to right wing resurgence.

The presumptive Republican Speaker of the House, orange-faced crybaby John Boehner, currently bathing in a post-electoral glow, is taking a retrograde Conservative stand against freedom of expression, calling for censorship of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, an exhibition of "gay art" at the National Portrait Gallery, and threatening a curtailment of government funds if they do not bow to his will. The NPG has cravenly caved in and removed David Wojnarowicz's 1987 video, "A Fire in My Belly", from the exhibition.

We have undertaken the necessary corrective of posting it above.