Art about AIDS: Nan Goldin's Exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing 9783110453072, 9783110451504

Table of contents :
ROOM 1. WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING
ROOM 2. WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING
Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ART about AIDS
The Meaning of Art During the AIDS Epidemic
Questions and Aims
Art about AIDS in Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, 1989
Was Art about AIDS an American Phenomenon in the 1980s? A Comparison with the Federal Republic of Germany
Methodology and Theoretical Framework
State of Research
Chapter 2. CONCEPT and CONTEXT of WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING
Nan Goldin as Curator: Promoting the Visibility of her Community
Goldin’s Choice of Artworks: The Network on the Wall
Nan Goldin’s Photographs of Gilles and Gotscho, 1991 to 1993
Comparison with Three Other Exhibitions about AIDS, 1989 to 1994
Images & Words: Artists Respond to AIDS, 1989
The Indomitable Spirit, 1990
From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, 1992 to 1994
Visual AIDS’ Day Without Art and Witnesses, 1989
Exhibiting Art about AIDS
Witnesses in the Context of the Culture Wars
The Controversy between Artists Space and the NEA, Fall 1989
Funding Witnesses: Perception of the Confl ict
The Controversy in the Press
The Controversy in the Eyes of Artists Space and Goldin’s Community
Understanding and Contextualizing the Art Battles of 1989
Chapter 3. PHOTOGRAPHIC SELFREPRESENTATION in WITNESSES and in the PRESS
Depicting Homosexuality in the Photographs in Witnesses
Sexual Exposure of the Male Body: David Armstrong and Mark Morrisroe
Sexuality and Politics: David Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series
Depicting Homosexuality in American Press Photographs, 1983 to 1989
“Sexuality as a Positive Force”? Images of Homosexuality in the Context of AIDS
Photographs of People with AIDS in Witnesses
The Dissolution of the Body: Philip-Lorca diCorcia and David Armstrong
David Wojnarowicz’s Triptych of Peter Hujar’s Dead Body
Staging his own Mortality: Mark Morrisroe
People with AIDS in American Press Photographs, 1983 to 1989
Excursus: Nicholas Nixon’s People with AIDS
“We will not Vanish” — The Representation of People with AIDS
Appropriate Representation? The Reception of Photographs of People with AIDS
Personal Experience as a Guarantee of Authenticity
Gran Fury’s Activist Art: “If it works — we use it.”
The Meaning of Art in the Context of AIDS
Chapter 4. NAN GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY between MARGINALIZATION and DISSOCIATION
The East Village Art Scene
Goldin’s Community as an Artistic Bohème?
The Art Community as People with AIDS
The Exclusivity of Goldin’s Community
The Social Structure of the AIDS Movement
ACT UP as Elitist Mouthpiece of the AIDS Movement
SUMMARY and FUTURE PROSPECTS
APPENDIX
References
Primary Sources
Literature
Exhibition Plan Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing
Interviews and Correspondence
Interviews in Contemporary Art History
Transcript 1: Interview with Ross Bleckner, 2011
Transcript 2: Interview with Dan Cameron, 2011
Transcript 3: Interview with David Deitcher, 2011
Transcript 4: Interview with Marvin Heiferman, 2011
Transcript 5: Interview with Kiki Smith, 2011
Transcript 6: Interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, 2011
Email Correspondence with Susan Wyatt, 2012
Credits
Acknowledgements

Citation preview

ART about AIDS

Sophie Junge

Translated by Laura Radosh De Gruyter

ART about AIDS Nan Goldin’s Exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing

TABLE of CONTENTS

116 Visual AIDS’ Day Without Art

9 17

WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING ROOM 1 ROOM 2

31

Chapter 1

128 The Controversy between Artists Space and the NEA, Fall 1989 131 Funding Witnesses: Perception

The Meaning of Art During the AIDS Epidemic Questions and Aims

131 The Controversy in the Press 135 The Controversy in the Eyes of Artists Space and Goldin’s Community 139 Understanding and

33 39 41 45

50 57

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INTRODUCTION ART about AIDS

Art about AIDS in Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, 1989 Was Art about AIDS an American Phenomenon in the 1980s? A Comparison with the Federal Republic of Germany

Methodology and Theoretical Framework State of Research Chapter 2

CONCEPT and CONTEXT of WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING Nan Goldin as Curator: Promoting the Visibility of her Community

Goldin’s Choice of Artworks: The Network on the Wall

103 Nan Goldin’s Photographs

of Gilles and Gotscho, 1991 to 1993 110 Comparison with Three Other Exhibitions about AIDS, 1989 to 1994

110 Images & Words: Artists Respond to AIDS, 1989 111 The Indomitable Spirit, 1990 114 From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, 1992 to 1994

and Witnesses, 1989 120 Exhibiting Art about AIDS 124 Witnesses in the Context of the Culture Wars

of the Conflict

Contextualizing the Art Battles of 1989

147 Chapter 3

PHOTOGRAPHIC SELFREPRESENTATION in WITNESSES and in the PRESS

186 Depicting Homosexuality in

the Photographs in Witnesses

188 Sexual Exposure of the Male Body: David Armstrong and Mark Morrisroe 191 Sexuality and Politics: David Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series 195 Depicting Homosexuality in

American Press Photographs, 1983 to 1989 199 “Sexuality as a Positive Force”? Images of Homosexuality in the Context of AIDS 201 Photographs of People with AIDS in Witnesses 202 The Dissolution of the Body: Philip-Lorca diCorcia and David Armstrong 205 David Wojnarowicz’s Triptych of Peter Hujar’s Dead Body 207 Staging his own Mortality: Mark Morrisroe

209 People with AIDS in

American Press Photographs, 1983 to 1989 213 Excursus: Nicholas Nixon’s People with AIDS 215 “We will not Vanish” — The Representation of People with AIDS 218 Appropriate Representation? The Reception of Photographs of People with AIDS 223 Personal Experience as a Guarantee of Authenticity 229 Gran Fury’s Activist Art:

“If it works — we use it.”

232 The Meaning of Art in the

Context of AIDS

241 Chapter 4

NAN GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY between MARGINALIZATION and DISSOCIATION

250 The East Village Art Scene 254 Goldin’s Community as an Artistic Bohème? 260 The Art Community as People

with AIDS

263 The Exclusivity of Goldin’s Community 265 The Social Structure of the

AIDS Movement

268 ACT UP as Elitist Mouthpiece of the AIDS Movement 275 SUMMARY and

FUTURE PROSPECTS

287 APPENDIX 288 289 291 306

References

Primary Sources Literature

Exhibition Plan Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing 308 Interviews and Correspondence 309 Interviews in Contemporary Art History 312 Transcript 1: Interview with Ross Bleckner, 2011 318 Transcript 2: Interview with Dan Cameron, 2011 323 Transcript 3: Interview with David Deitcher, 2011 332 Transcript 4: Interview with Marvin Heiferman, 2011 337 Transcript 5: Interview with Kiki Smith, 2011 343 Transcript 6: Interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, 2011 345 Email Correspondence with Susan Wyatt, 2012 349 Credits 351 Acknowledgements

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ARTISTS in WITNESSES: Against Our VANISHING, ARTISTS SPACE, NEW YORK, 1989

Dorit Cypis

3

David Armstrong

Male, age 35 Education: B. F. A. + 4 th Year Certificate First solo show: 1977, together with Nan Goldin First group show: 1982

*

4 5

Nan, Boston, 1989 Self Portrait, Boston 1989 Tommy, Boston, 1989 Kevin at Avenue B, New York, 1983 Stephen at Home, New York, 1983 Genario and Costas, New York, 1980 Cookie, New York, 1977 Kevin at St. Luke‘s Place, New York, 1977, all gelatine silver print

*

2

*

Female, age 37 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1982 First group show: 1979

Untitled, 1989 Untitled, 1989 Untitled, 1989, all ink on paper

Philip-Lorca DiCorcia

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Male, age 36 Education: M. F. A. First solo show: 1985 First group show: 1987

Vittorio, 1989, C-print title unknown title unknown Clarence Elie-Rivera

Male, age 38 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1974 First group show: 1976

1

Yield, The Body, 1989, mixed media Jane Dickson

Tom Chesley

*

Female, age 38 Education: M. F. A. First solo show: unknown First group show: 1977

Going Under, 1989, oil on canvas Time for Communion, 1989, oil on canvas Untitled, 1988, mixed media Eye of the Angel, 1988, oil on canvas

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Male, age 31 Education: dropped out of college First solo show: 1987 First group show: 1987

Sofie y Maralin, 1989 Gilbert y el Perico, 1989 Mirada desde la entrada, 1989 Receso para un tabaco, 1989 Descanso de Pues de cena noche buena, 1989 Beso para El Sobrino, 1989, all Ektacolor

Shioban Liddell

Darrel Ellis

8 9

Male, age 31 Education: 3 years of art school First solo show: 1984 First group show: 1980

Self-portrait after photograph by Peter Hujar, 1989, ink on paper on canvas Self-portrait after photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1989, ink on paper Allen Frame

Female, age 24 Education: B. A. First solo show: 1987 First group show: 1986

13 Untitled, 1989, oil on canvas

Ramsey McPhillips

Male, DOB unknown

14 Am I Dead Yet?, 1989, mixed media Mark Morrisroe

Male, age 38 Education: B. A. First solo show: 1982 First group show: 1981

10 Group Portrait, 1989 Boys on the Couch, 1989 Rescue, 1989 Peter Hujar

Male, age 53, d. 1987 Education: unknown

11 John McLellan, 1981 Untitled, 1980 Untitled, 1980 Manny Vasquez, 1978 Peter Hujar, 1976 Lynn Davies, year unknown Hudson River, 1975 title unknown, all gelatine silver print Greer Lankton

Female, age 31 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1981 First group show: 1981

12 Jesus Maria, 1989 Sissy‘s Skin, 1989 Valentine‘s Day, 1989 Rusty‘s, year unknown, all mixed media

Male, age 30 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1982 First group show: 1982

15 Untitled [Self-Portrait], 1989, T-665 Polaroid 16 Untitled, 1988, photogram of an X-ray 17 Ramsey, Lake Oswego, 1988 18 Untitled, John S. and Jonathan, 1985 * Sweet 16: Little Me as a Child Prostitute, June 6, 1984 * Self-Portrait, to Brent, 1982, all C-print, negative sandwich James Nares

Male, age 36 Education: 3 years of art school First solo show: 1984 First group show: 1972

19 Beat 1, 1989 20 Beat 2, 1989 21 Beat 3, 1989, all oil on canvas

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Perico Pastor

Janet Stein

Male, age 36 Education: 3 years of art school First solo show: 1980 First group show: 1983

*

Female, age 34 Education: 3 years of art school First solo show: unknown First group show: 1980

Time After Time, 1989, ink and watercolor on paper

28 Queen B. Easy Chair Dress, 1989, mixed media

Margo Pelletier

Tabboo! Stephen Tashjian

Female, age 38 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1979 First group show: 1971

Male, age 30 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1986 First group show: 1984

Today, 1989, charcoal and chalk on paper 22 Relief, 1989, colored wood

*

* *

Vittorio Scarpati

Male, age 34, d. 1989 Education: unknown

You can‘t pre-guess when it‘s gonna strike but baby when it does …, 1989, acrylic and glitter on canvas Portrait of Mark Morrisroe, 1985, acrylic on canvas Shellburne Thurber

23 nine drawings Untitled, 1989

Female, age 40 Education: B. F. A. + 5 th Year Graduate Programm First solo show: 1983 First group show: 1983

Jo Shane

Female, age 34 Education: B. F. A. First solo show: 1985 First group show: 1980

29 Motel Room with Red Carpet, 1989 Motel Room with Holy Bible, 1989 Motel Room with Air Conditioner, 1989 Motel Room with Two Doors, 1989 Motel Room with Two T.V. s, 1989 Motel Room with Night Stand, 1989, all Ektacolor

24 Birdcage for Max, 1989 25 Permeable Membranes, 1989 26 title unknown, all mixed media Kiki Smith

Female, age 35 Education: 4 years of art school First solo show: unknown First group show: 1980

27 All Our Sisters, 1989, silkscreen print on muselin, papier-mâché

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Ken Tisa

Male, age 44 Education: M. F. A. First solo show: 1972 First group show: 1974

* * *

Waiting, 1989 The Poet, 1989 The Confrontation, 1989, all acrylic on canvas Robert Vitale

Male, DOB unknown Education: unknown

* * *

Black Cross, 1988 Cloistered, 1988 Max‘s Chair, 1988, all oil on masonite David Wojnarowicz

Male, age 35 Education: unknown First solo show: 1982 First group show: 1980

30 Sex Series for Marion Scemama, 1989, gelatine silver print 31 Untitled, 1989, gelatine silver print 32 Untitled, 1988–1989, collage on masonite

All biographical information taken from the artists' CVs in the NYU Fales Library archives

* Works not reproduced For the hanging of the works in Witnesses, see exhibition plan p. 307

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INTRODUCTION ART about AIDS

31

The MEANING of ART DURING the AIDS EPIDEMIC

“By its very existence and its volume, this show proves its own premise — that AIDS has not and will not eliminate our community, or succeed in wiping out our sensibility or silencing our voice.”1 Nan Goldin wrote these words in her introduction to the catalogue of the 1989 New York City exhibition, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing. In recent years, Goldin’s wish that artists with AIDS receive lasting recognition seems to have come true. Exhibitions such as Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism (2013–2014) or AIDS in New York: The First Five Years (2013) have rediscovered and revisited artistic confrontations with AIDS.2 After two decades of relative disregard, there has been a resurgence of interest in the AIDS epidemic as an object of artistic reflection. One sign of this has been a veritable boom in HIV/AIDS-related exhibitions, including not only the group shows mentioned above, but also retrospectives of individuals including David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992) and Mark Morrisroe (1959 – 1989). These artists are hailed as representatives of a social movement and their work is presented to the museum and gallery public as examples of political art about AIDS.3 Many of the gay artists involved were themselves HIV-positive and died from AIDS-related causes. They did not have the opportunity to develop their art in new contexts after the epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s abated, and to this day their works remain closely connected to the historical outbreak of AIDS in the United States. In contrast, women artists such as Nan Goldin and Kiki Smith, who also put AIDS at the center of their work, have been on the artistic landscape continuously since the 1970s, and their work today belongs to an internationally recognized artistic canon.4 As banal as it may sound, they also owe this constant presence 1 2

3

4

Goldin, “In the Valley,” 5. Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism was exhibited 2013 / 2014 in the New York Public Library, AIDS in New York: The First Five Years was shown in 2013 at the NewYork Historical Society. In the same year, the exhibitions LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX 1: Kunst Aids Aktivismus 1987 – 1995 and LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX 2: Kunst Aids Aktivismus 1995 bis heute could be seen in the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (nGbK) in Berlin. In 2012, the show Gran Fury: Read My Lips opened at 80 Washington Square East Gallery of New York University and the group show This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. For example, Spirituality: Works by David Wojnarowicz from 1979 – 1990 (2011), exhibition at P. P. O.W Gallery, New York City; an evening of films by and about David Wojnarowicz at Tate London in January 2011; the inclusion of Wojnarowicz in HIDE / SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (2010), exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D. C. ; and a Mark Morrisroe retrospective in Fotomuseum Winterthur (2010 – 2011). Following Jutta Held, I define canon as the gauge or measure by which the quality of artists or works is determined, accepted as a binding definition of a corpus of exceptional artists and works (Held and Schneider, Grundzüge Kunstwissenschaft, 244). For a feminist perspective see Nochlin, “Women Artists” and Griselda Pollock, who defined canon as a “discursive formation which constitutes the objects / texts it selects as the products of

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to the fact that they did not become infected with HIV and survived the AIDS epidemic. Recent exhibitions about HIV/AIDS are a sign of a marked interest in 1980s American activist art. These artworks were immediate reactions to the sociopolitical consequences of the epidemic. For example, in 2010, the fall show of the White Columns gallery in New York City focused on the political and artistic activism of ACT UP, the central voice of the city’s AIDS movement. The exhibits SICK 80s at the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona at the end of 2010 and the “AIDS room” installed at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the same year are examples of the desire to canonize activist art—whether graphic art, photography, or installations—and create visibility for these representations of a past crisis.5 Gallery Gmurzynska in Zurich, a commercial gallery, exhibited a large red AIDS sculpture by the Canadian art collective General Idea in the winter of 2011, indicating that artworks about AIDS can even now be lucrative. Furthermore, around 30 years after the height of the epidemic in the United States and Europe, artistic confrontations with HIV/AIDS are also increasingly the subject of research in the social sciences and the humanities.6 But academic researchers, like curators and gallery owners, seem more interested in activist art — often the creations of collectives — than in individual explorations of AIDS. The latter, heterogeneous and more difficult to read, have at best been the subject of monographs. The analysis at hand attempts to close this gap. Its focus is not the pictorial discourse created in collective and anonymous processes, but the meaning of individual artworks that were a reaction to a concrete political situation. Through a historicization of the epidemic and the artistic grappling with the same, this study also throws a critical eye on the current canonization of art that has written a particular history of AIDS. Countering the narrative of medical progress in the fight against the virus, the focus is on the self-empowerment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual American activists who were reacting to a specific sociopolitical situation in Ronald Reagan’s America. It is the history of a local movement that, in its struggle against AIDS, the Reagan government, and the pharmaceutical industry, played a decisive role in creating visibility for the epidemic and changing the way in which it was seen. This history of overcoming a past crisis is unrelated to the current global spread of HIV and the continuing epidemic in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where every twentieth adult is HIV-positive.7

5 6

7

artistic mastery and, thereby, contributes to the legitimation of white masculinity’s exclusive identification with creativity and with culture” (Pollock, Differencing the Canon, 9). As an example of current exhibitions see Goldin’s participation in the show PRIVAT, 201 2/ 2013 at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt / M., and Kiki Smith: Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum in 2010. The full titles are ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987 – 1993 and Sick 80s: The AIDS Crisis, Art and Counter-biopolitical Guerrilla. Just one example is the work of the Association for the Social Sciences and Humanities in HIV (ASSHH) and the comprehensive literature on cultural responses to AIDS by i. e. Gregg Bordowitz, Emily Colucci or Lutz Hieber (see Bibliography). See http://www.who.int/hiv/ (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016).

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Nevertheless, this (local) history of a political battle fought by Western activists shaped the (global) image of HIV/AIDS, as exemplified not only in exhibitions but in many other cultural products. John Irving’s novel In One Person (2012), documentaries such as United in Anger (2012), the ACT UP Oral History Project, and the Academy Award-winning feature Dallas Buyers Club (2013) are just a few of many examples. Current historicization stresses the fighting spirit of the American AIDS movement and almost exclusively canonizes activist art in exhibitions about AIDS. This begs the question of the power of definition regarding the epidemic. Which images are suitable to represent HIV/AIDS today and how should we remember the epidemic? These questions have accompanied images about AIDS since the 1980s and to this day — I posit — the power of cultural definition lies in the hands of former activists and representatives of the gay community.8 Frank Wagner’s two exhibitions at the Berlin gallery Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (nGbK), Vollbild AIDS (1988), the first German group exhibition on AIDS, and the more recently curated two-part show LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX (2013 / 2014) must be seen in this context. Even today, many former activists’ interest in images of HI V/ AIDS is politically motivated. These artworks are constitutive for the history and self-understanding of their community. Thus representations of the epidemic are not truly open to interpretation by anyone, but act as the voice of certain social groups. From a social-science rather than a political perspective on artistic responses to AIDS, this rather one-dimensional history of the epidemic in the United States and Western Europe must be seen critically. There is a great danger that old quarrels about interpretation could become solidified. Old dichotomies about “correct” and “incorrect” images are not broken, but reproduced, and the makers of these images are reduced to their position as enunciating subjects. Former AIDS activist David Deitcher named a further reason for the current interest in AIDS activism: it fulfills a wish for “a passion of engagement” and the desire to experience the sense of solidarity, the possibility for a coalition that crystallized in those years. […] But I do think there is, if anything, a kind of nostalgia for that kind of critical mass, which has to do with politics and identity and community. 9 In no way does the current analysis wish to belittle the experiences of activists such as Deitcher. Nevertheless, this study does not preference the pictorial politics of a particular community, but rather sets itself the goal of uncovering the meaning of artistic and political pictorial strategies. 8

9

The film United in Anger and the ACT UP Oral History Project were produced and initiated by Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman. The Oral History Project is situated in the Harvard College Library since 2011 and is openly available online: http://www.actuporalhistory.org (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Author’s interview with David Deitcher, May 23, 2011 (p. 327). All interviews can be found in full in the appendix.

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There is no question that the history of AIDS activism should be part of the canon of visual responses to the epidemic in America. But the dominant focus on activist art should be expanded to counter a one-sided (pictorial) history of AIDS. The sociopolitically loaded nature of artworks about AIDS in the 1980s can be transferred to the contemporary reception of this art. In this way, we can better understand processes of art-historical appraisal and of canonization beyond the context of AIDS. Thus the starting point of this analysis is the question of which histories of AIDS were and are told — with a critical eye toward transmission. The analysis of artworks dealing with AIDS presents a challenge to the academic discipline of art history. These works do not fit into the usual categories of style and epochs because their artistic culture, generally understood as a movement, is characterized by heterogeneous media and styles. At the same time, statements about individual works and oeuvres have a tendency to lapse into subjective, biographical testimony about personal involvement. As an alternative, this study looks at the artistic and sociological framework of the exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing and analyzes the genesis of the show and the concept of curator Nan Goldin as well as the works themselves and their reception. The focus is on artistic investigations of the AIDS epidemic in the United States between 1985 and 1989. These works explore the physical and psychological effects of AIDS, the societal discourse on the epidemic, and the reactions of government and media.10 The time span was chosen due to the large number of artworks about AIDS after 1985. Although the epidemic began in the early 1980s, artistic reactions first began to appear in large numbers in the second half of the decade. This lag can be explained by the fact that the first counter-discourse by people with AIDS 11 was solely textual, because (pictorial) visibility of people with AIDS was seen as inviting marginalization or repression. For these reasons, many people with AIDS did not want to have their pictures public. Only in a second counter-discourse did people with AIDS create their own pictorial language of self-representation.12 In 1987, AZT — the first antiretroviral medication which inhibits HIV replication — was approved. In the mid-1990s, a combination therapy of various antiretroviral drugs was introduced that, at least for many 10

11

12

I use William H. Foege’s definition of an epidemic: “a disease or other condition causing high mortality or morbidity and often accompanied by social dislocation” (Foege, “Plagues Perceptions,” 12). In the following I shall go into the use of the term in more detail. I use the phrase people with AIDS to denote those infected with HIV, those sick from AIDS-related diseases (directly affected) as well as their relatives and friends (indirectly affected). Both AIDS activists and people with AIDS have rejected the term victim, which implies they are only passive patients and places them in the category of an Other from which the general population can disassociate itself. The term people with AIDS was coined in 1983 at the Second AIDS Forum in Denver, Colorado (Grover, “AIDS Keywords,” 26). Susan Sontag uses the term general population as a code for white heterosexuals (Sontag, Illness and Aids, 68). This is the sense in which I use this phrase. Simon Watney has criticized the lack of differentiation in this category, which reduces all differences of class, gender, and ethnicity to sexual orientation (Watney, “The Spectacle of AIDS,” 73). Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 31.

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inhabitants of Western industrialized countries, led to a dedramatization of the epidemic.13 These medical developments are clearly reflected in the arts. In the early 1990s, activist collectives disbanded and HIV/AIDS lost its importance as an issue in the art world. However in the United States — a country without public health insurance — the crisis was only over for people with AIDS who could afford the life-extending medication.14 This included those artists with AIDS at the center of this study who, as we shall see below, were mainly members of the white middle class and had access to treatment. In the late 1980s, numerous group and individual exhibitions explored the topic of AIDS. The exhibitions themselves and the literature about them — for instance the group exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS (1992 – 1994)15 and Rob Baker’s 1994 publication The Art of AIDS16 — commonly referred to the works shown as “Art about AIDS.” 17 Like the individual works themselves, these shows exhibited a wide conceptual, contextual, and medial diversity. The broad spectrum ranged from monographic gallery exhibitions, such as David Wojnarowicz’s 1990 show Tongues of Flame at Illinois State University in Normal, to group exhibitions such as the abovementioned From Media to Metaphor, a travelling exhibition that was shown in nine different places over two years. There is no common visual language intrinsic to Art about AIDS that allows the identification thereof; it describes neither a particular school nor program. Instead, these artistic explorations are completely heterogeneous in terms of media, form, and content, and are rooted in their contemporary artistic contexts. One reason for the heterogeneity is certainly the lack of temporal or artistic distance to the crisis. The suddenness with which the epidemic hit the New York City art scene left no time to develop common imagery. While curator Thomas W. Sokolowski nevertheless has spoken of an “AIDS style” that is “hard, clean, and fast,” the analysis at hand assumes that the only thing that brought these artists together under the label Art about AIDS was their status as people with AIDS.18 The heterogeneity of these artworks raises the question of whether Arthur C. Danto’s concept of post-historical art might offer fitting terminology for artistic explorations of AIDS. Danto, elaborating on 13

14 15 16 17 18

The term “dedramatization” (Entdramatisierung) is theater scholar Beate Schappach’s designation for the slow retreat of the AIDS crisis (Schappach, Aids in Literatur, Theater und Film). All current medical facts on HIV and AIDS are from the website http://www.hivbuch.de (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Deitcher, “American Interregnum,” 35. On exhibitions about AIDS see Dreishpoon, “Review of Art’s Revenge” and Harris, “Urgent Images.” From Media to Metaphor is discussed in more detail below. For examples of Art about AIDS see also Deitcher, “Silence.” I understand Art about AIDS as a label or (genre) title, for which reason it is capitalized here and in the following. Sokolowski, “America,” 67. I use this open definition, unlike Rob Baker, who looks only at “gay representations of AIDS in the Arts” and unsurprisingly then asks about the continuing relevance of this work (Baker, Art of AIDS, 15 and 138).

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Georg W. F. Hegel’s ideas about the end of art, famously stated that Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, exhibited in the Stable Gallery in New York City in 1964, marked the onset of art “after the end of art.” 19 He did so in opposition to Clement Greenberg’s paradigm of “the purity of modernism” reflected in the contrast of “high art” and “low art.” Danto instead saw posthistorical art as a synthesis of life and art, of everyday objects and artworks.20 However Danto did not really mean the end of art itself, but rather the end of modernist art history as defined by Greenberg.21 To define Art about AIDS, it is not useful to focus on lacking guidelines, and Danto’s terminology is therefore not precise enough. Instead it is necessary to transcend the margins of an idealistic concept of art and and, as Danto in fact demanded, to create an art history that includes social history.22 If we want to be able to analyze Art about AIDS and look not only at the political function of activist art in the service of the AIDS movement, we need to expand art historical approaches to include the sociology of art. This interdisciplinary research approach makes it possible to conduct scientific research on Art about AIDS and its meaning in the social discourse on AIDS in the 1980s. Only in this way can we take into account the specific conditions of its political and social production and distribution. This study therefore centers on the group exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (Witnesses in the following), curated by the American photographer Nan Goldin (born 1953) at Artists Space in New York City. The exhibition ran from November 16, 1989 until January 6, 1990. Witnesses was the city’s first group show about AIDS and it sparked a nationwide debate about government funding of art. This controversy made the exhibition highly relevant as a political and artistic event, and comprehensive archival material on Witnesses is available to the public at the New York University (NYU) Fales Library. This material provided the basis for the study at hand. This analysis has consciously avoided personal statements by the artists with AIDS in the show and is not interested in eventual relationships between artists’ biographies and their creative work. Rather it asks about the contemporary reception of the exhibition by artists, curators, people with AIDS, and the American media, and analyzes the functionalization of this paradigmatic exhibition in the political and artistic discourses (on AIDS) of the late 1980s. It thus aims to expand this area of research, which is necessarily dominated by subjective and biographical approaches, in a new and productive manner. 19

20 21 22

Hegel saw the end of art as accompanying gains in knowledge: “We may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection, but the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the spirit” (Hegel, Aesthetics, 103 and Danto, “End of Art,” 30 – 31). Danto, “High Art,” 157. Ibid. Although Danto’s “art after the end of art” seems fitting to the end of the 20 th century, which has often been called apocalyptic, I do not find his ideas very original. They are very similar to Peter Bürger’s description of the historical avant-garde as well as to, for example, Douglas Crimp’s definition of postmodern art (see Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde and Crimp, “Photographs at the End”).

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QUESTIONS and AIMS

The research project at hand presents a pioneer analysis of a segment of the New York City art scene that was greatly impacted by AIDS and that presented itself publicly in Goldin’s exhibition. I view the self-proclaimed Art about AIDS of the time as a representation of social outsiders who were not part of the heteronormative 23 general population and made communal artistic statements in New York City.24 At the center of my study is photographer Nan Goldin. As curator and as an artist who thematized AIDS in her own work, she was a key figure of the East Village art scene in New York City. Both the sites of research relevant to this study as well as the various ways in which AIDS was dealt with in art at the time converge in her person. The following questions guided my analysis of the exhibition: — —

—

—

What were Goldin’s demands on the artworks in her show? How did artists represent themselves in the show? Did they distance themselves from media images of HIV-positive people and AIDS patients in the press, that is from images created by the general population who were, assumedly, not affected by the epidemic? In the context of the AIDS crisis, what were the specific functions of the individual artworks and of the exhibition as a whole as regards representation, economics, ethics, and the formation of identity? What was the sociological and theoretical role of the artists’ personal relationship to AIDS, or HIV status, regarding the reception of the works?

To answer these questions about the conditions of production as well as the concept and reception of the exhibition, I studied all those involved in the show. Following Mieke Bal’s theory of cultural analysis, I looked at Goldin’s show as a discursive formation, the conditions of which — the Artists Space as institution, the curator Nan Goldin, the artworks, artists, visitors, and political framework — must always also be taken into consideration.25 Bal views exhibitions as a synecdoche of a larger cultural and political context.26 Her approach makes it possible to look both at the aesthetic value of an individual artwork and the cultural meaning of art. I also examine Goldin’s community, which I define in the following as 23 24

25 26

With Michael Warner, I use the term heteronormativity to describe a social system in which heterosexuality is presented as the norm (see Warner, “Queer Planet”). Following Nelson Goodman, under ‘representation’ I include concepts and pictures that refer directly and indirectly to AIDS; indirect representations are pictures that denote an object without portraying an exact likeness (Goodman, Languages of Art). Thus I use representation — also incorporating T. J. Clark’s definition of the concept — to mean the system of signs that structure society and compete with one another for ascendance. Clark speaks of a “battlefield of representations” (Clark, Painting of Modern Life, 6). Bal, Double Exposures, 3 – 4. Bal, “Discourse of the Museum,” 206.

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a social group with fundamental common values27 as regards not only its artistic production, but also its social structure. Starting from the thesis that these artists with AIDS formed an elite, I look at the community members — socially marginalized as gay people with AIDS — as an exclusive network that self-confidently set itself apart from the general population.28 Whether they created their own canon of visual representation within this alternative space is explored further on. Alongside Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992) is an important figure within this study. From the 1970s, Wojnarowicz had worked with a variety of media including graffiti, painting, photography, collage, text, and film. He was one of the best-known artists in the show. As an HIV-positive AIDS activist and member of Goldin’s community, he acted as the point of intersection between her circle of friends and the AIDS movement. Like Goldin, he is a key historical figure. This comprehensive analysis of the show Witnesses aims to make a contribution to the research of a specific and yet representative artistic community. That community used artworks and exhibitions as both self-representation and political protest during a threatening medical, personal and societal crisis. In four chapters, we shall take a close look at the curator and her concept, the political situation of the time, selected artworks, and Goldin’s community. The guiding question of the first chapter is the goal of Goldin’s exhibition concept as well as her selection criteria. To aid the examination of Goldin’s motivation and concept, we shall also be looking at Goldin’s own response to AIDS in her photographs of Gilles and Gotscho, taken between 1991 and 1993. To better understand Goldin’s aims, Witnesses is compared with three other New York City group shows about AIDS that opened between 1989 and 1992: — — —

27

28

Images & Words. Artists Respond to AIDS, Henry Street Settlement, 1989 / 1990 The Indomitable Spirit, International Center of Photography, 1990 From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, travelling exhibition, 1992 – 1994

Sebastian Haunss avoids the term gay community and instead introduces the concept of “scene.” He defines scenes as located in a specific space and dependent upon interaction and not only communication; as local and action oriented and only loosely tied to social status (Haunss, Identität in Bewegung, 87 and 89). The concept of scene is also useful for this work, in particular the term “art scene.” I use scene rather than milieu because belonging to the latter is not a matter of free choice, but is predispositioned and delimited by long-term overall structures, and usually has fixed borders that cannot be crossed (Ibid., 85). I use the term elite as a sociological category following Pierre Bourdieu’s delineation of the aristocracy. Elites are defined by their social position and their cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu, Distinction, 114 – 116). A more thorough definition of the concept shall be given below.

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All of these exhibitions are characterized by the diversity of the artistic forms through which AIDS was explored. Each also published a catalogue, making a study of primary sources possible.29 In the second chapter, I take a close look at the genesis of the show and its importance in the context of the American culture wars. The exhibition was funded with money from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).30 Shortly before the exhibition opened, the NEA threatened to withdraw its support because the exhibit, in particular David Wojnarowicz’s contribution to the catalogue, was too “political.” 31 Not until the day of the opening did the NEA and Artists Space reach an agreement. This conflict about government funding of Art about AIDS was part of larger battles about NEA funding, including the conflicts of the same year surrounding photographs by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. In the third chapter, we shall explore some of the artworks exhibited at Witnesses. Starting with Goldin’s demand for appropriate, “positive” representation of people with AIDS, I compare the photographic portraits of gay men with AIDS shown in the exhibit with media images considered to be “negative” portraits of people with AIDS. One-third of the works shown in Witnesses were photographic portraits; seven of these works are the focus of my analysis. Three photographs examine the theme of sexuality and (homo)erotic desire; four are portraits of people with AIDS. Through this analysis, I was able to gain a fundamental understanding of the function and meaning of photography in Witnesses. I was also able to situate the works in the political discourse (surrounding AIDS) of the late 1980s. The final chapter revolves around Nan Goldin’s community. I look at its inception and structure, grounded in the artists’ enclave of the East Village and in the larger AIDS activist movement. A comparison with the activist works of the artists collective Gran Fury provides insight into the utilization of art during the AIDS epidemic and allows us to pose questions about judging these various artistic engagements with AIDS. In conclusion, I look at AIDS as a social and cultural crisis. One particular interest is how historical epidemics such as the plague and syphilis were used as metaphors to construct meanings for this new epidemic.

ART about AIDS in WITNESSES: AGAINST Our VANISHING, 1989

Almost 100 works by 25 artists were exhibited in Nan Goldin’s show. Before Witnesses even opened, these works — and a David Wojnarowicz text in the catalogue — led to a raging debate about government funding of 29

30 31

There were exhibitions about AIDS outside of New York City, for example AIDS: The Artists’ Response, at the Hoyt L. Sherman Gallery of Ohio State University from Feb. 24 to Apr. 16, 1989, curated by Jan Zita Grover. As this study focuses on art in New York, these exhibitions will not be examined further. The NEA was founded in 1965 as the first federal foundation for the support of art and culture nationwide. Document Frohnmayer 1989a. All archival documents from Witnesses are cited with the NYU Fales Library file numbers in the appendix.

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supposedly obscene artworks. This resulted in enormous media publicity for the small, short-term exhibition, so that sufficient archival material is now available to reconstruct and analyze both the events before the show’s opening and the reception of the show by contemporary newspapers, art journals, artists, and art critics. In terms of content, Goldin’s show exhibited the usual heterogeneity of Art about AIDS. The artists approached the subject from a variety of perspectives and their art is indistinguishable from the contemporary artistic context as regards both form and content. As solely photographs are analyzed in the third chapter, and only a selection thereof, a short overview of the entire show and its artistic themes follows. The artworks in Goldin’s show were presented in two rooms. In the first were the works of 14 artists covering a broad spectrum of media — painting, drawing, photography, installations, and sculptures — and varying grades of abstraction. The second room was mostly given over to photography. All of the pieces dealt with the human body and, through the body, with issues connected to HIV/AIDS such as sexuality, illness, death, loss, and memory. Themes included the intimacy of two bodies (David Wojnarowicz, David Armstrong, Peter Hujar), the fragmentation and destruction of the body and its margins (Dorit Cypis, Greer Lankton), the body’s absence (Jo Shane, Kiki Smith, Shellburne Thurber), its decline (Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Mark Morrisroe, David Wojnarowicz, Vittorio Scarpati), and inner workings (James Nares). This fit in with Goldin’s conceptual ideas, expressed in the catalogue, which were concerned less with explicitly political questions and more with the artists’ personal responses to AIDS.32 The motif of boundaries played an important role in these diverse explorations of the body. The unity of the body and the concomitant safety of our bodies’ margins was questioned: while Dorit Cypis presented her own body as fragmented in 28 photographs, Greer Lankton and Kiki Smith asked whether skin defines and protects our bodies, especially from HIV. Smith’s installation All Our Sisters, Room 1, no. 27 (1989), is representative of many of the show’s works, as it expressed diverse aspects of this boundary motif. All Our Sisters is an off-white rectangular muslin banner printed with almost 80 female figures and, hanging from the ceiling above the banner, a papier-mâché sculpture, also in the form of a naked female body. The delicate sculpture reflects the fragility and vulnerability of human skin, which is barely able to ward off an HIV infection.33 As a sculpture of a woman’s body, it also represents the body’s defenselessness against male penetration, thus breaking the long-held silence about the threat of HIV infection for women. Smith’s hollow paper sculpture symbolizes the presence of the absence of a person after their death.34 It is only the imprint of a body and is thus a site of the body’s last 32 33 34

Goldin, “In the Valley,” 4. Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 40. These papier-mâché works were inspired by Japanese paper balloons. Author’s interview with Kiki Smith, July 8, 2011 (p. 338).

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touch. Although the air-filled paper sculpture, like the absent body, takes up almost no physical space, it is a lack that demands its proper place: “It takes up the similar kind of psychic space, just the form without having any content whatsoever.” 35 Shellburne Thurber, who began taking photos of empty motel rooms in 1989, six of which were exhibited in the show, also equated the emptiness of space with the absence of bodies and thereby reflected on loneliness and intimacy, and loss and memory, not only in the context of the AIDS crisis.36 Despite the universality of these two reflections on the disappearance of the body, and despite Kiki Smith’s explicit desire not to be reduced to the discourse surrounding AIDS,37 a link can be made to her personal mourning of those who died in the AIDS epidemic, as she clearly stated in the exhibition catalogue: “The paper body hovers near the ceiling […] like the many souls of my community dead from AIDS alive in me.” 38 Because HIV crosses the boundaries of the body, it necessarily calls to mind the border between the interior and the exterior. This in turn leads to more boundaries being drawn: between the individual body and the environment, as well as between the sick and the healthy, between people with AIDS and the general population. These borders were on the one hand used to marginalize people with AIDS as the enemy within. On the other hand they were criticized in theoretical discourse and artistic explorations and erased in order to fight the stigmatization of people with AIDS.39 These artworks are not only personal expressions of loss and lamentation due to AIDS, but also fundamental questionings of the lines drawn between the private and the public. It is noticeable that women artists in particular (Cypis, Lankton, Smith) dealt with these questions, but not surprising, as the dissolution of these dichotomies had also played a large role in feminist discourse in art and academia since the 1970s. The desire to transcend such opposition and to break down binary structures was exactly what informed the feminist adage “the personal is political.” 40 This process sounds out Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, which is based on the exclusion of private interests and of certain social groups. By making the private public, Habermas’s strict binary opposition of private and public is sublated.41 Julia Kristeva, whose psychoanalytical texts were often cited in feminist discourse, added a further aspect to the discussion of the boundaries of the body. She linked the dissolution of the body’s margins to its contamination and equated the dichotomy of pure and impure with that 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid. Peter Kruska noted that this motif grew out of her work for a college yearbook publisher, for whom she took portraits of students (Kruska, Boston School, 25). Author’s interview with Kiki Smith, July 8, 2011 (p. 337). Smith in Artists Space, Witnesses, 28. Bright, “Pictures, Perverts,” 1. For a fundamental discussion of stigma and stigmatization see Goffman, Stigma. Held and Schneider, Grundzüge Kunstwissenschaft, 455. Habermas’s concept of the public is based on its strict separation from the private, see Habermas, Public Sphere.

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of self and Other. Kristeva introduced the category of the ‘abject’ to denote contamination — which Susan Sontag also saw as a central metaphor for AIDS 42 — those unassimilated parts of the self located at the margins of existence, at the border between subject and object.43 A concrete example of the abject is bodily fluids, which belong to, but nevertheless leave, the body. In this way the body frees itself from its boundaries and the internal pushes out. The category of the abject can be applied to the defilement of the body and of society by AIDS, for as Kristeva said: it is “not a lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules.”44 The link between (corporeal) boundaries and the contamination of society is a theme also taken up by the artistic confrontations with AIDS in Goldin’s exhibition. Within this show there was an intersection of feminist questionings of identity and gender, and issues central to the discourse surrounding AIDS: (homo)sexuality, autonomy, the right to control your own body, and the visibility of social minorities. The exhibition’s artworks therefore cannot be classified only as part of the AIDS discourse; they were also multidimensional inquiries into gender and the body. Diverse as these discourses themselves, they mirrored a fundamental plurality that can be seen in the intersection of AIDS discourse, feminist theory, and queer theory.45 Finally, the artworks in Witnesses were situated squarely within the artistic context of their times. The topos of fragmented or broken bodies was common in the 1970s and 1980s. While AIDS gave it new relevance, it did not first come into being with the epidemic.46 The theme of vulnerable, deteriorating, or destroyed bodies in Goldin’s show was mirrored for example in Kiki Smith’s wax figures—“bodies on the margins of state-sanctioned order”47—or Andres Serrano’s series, The Morgue (1992). If we read the body as a reflection of or metaphor for society, these artistic representations of bodies destroyed also illustrated the apocalyptic mood of the final decade of the twentieth century.48 AIDS played a major role in the creation of this mood. The epidemic marked a turning point in attitudes toward sexuality and death as well as toward illness and medicine, and brought catastrophe back into the mindset of privileged Western European and American populations.49 AIDS heralded the return of the themes of sick and decaying bodies as well as death—taboos in Western society—also as the subjects of art.50 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Sontag, Illness and Aids, 153. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1 – 2. Ibid., 4. For an introduction to queer theory see for instance Giffney, Queer Theory. The fragmented body had its peak as an art motif in the mid-1990s, as illustrated by the title of the 1995 Venice Biennale, Identity and alterity: Figures of the body 1895 / 1995. Schmidt-Wulffen and Schwander, “Untitled,” 10. All translations by Laura Radosh unless otherwise noted. Belting, Menschenbild, 6 – 8. Sontag, Illness and AIDS, 158. Fuller, Endzeitstimmung, 32.

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WAS ART about AIDS an AMERICAN PHENOMENON in the 1980s? A COMPARISON with the FEDERAL REPUBLIC of GERMANY

This study looks only at artistic responses to AIDS in the United States, more specifically at artists working in and artworks exhibited in New York City. This is not because American art history is the starting point of this work, rather it is a result of the specificities of the AIDS epidemic in the United States and of cultural engagement therewith; no other country produced a similar visual discourse around AIDS in the 1980s. The broad diversity and heterogeneity of artistic explorations of AIDS — whether individual grapplings, collective forms of visual protest, or alternative representations of people with AIDS — seem to be a phenomenon exclusive to the United States and most prominent in New York City, the center of the American art scene.51 In other Western industrialized countries in contrast, such as West Germany, where one might expect similar artistic reactions to the epidemic, group shows about AIDS exhibited almost only American artists. The exhibition Gegendarstellungen: Ethik und Ästhetik im Zeitalter von AIDS was a 1992 show at the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the Museum of Art Lucerne organized by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, director of the Kunstverein at the time, in collaboration with British AIDS theorist Simon Watney.52 All of the works exhibited were by American and Canadian artists who had been able to establish themselves as representative of an artistic discourse on AIDS.53 The catalogue texts never once discussed the decision to show only North American works. However a 1992 review of the exhibition praised the model character of the artistic discourse, while claiming that it could not be applied to the situation in West Germany.54 Frank Wagner, the above-mentioned curator of the exhibition Vollbild AIDS, shown in the nGbK in Berlin in 1988, combined both American and German artworks. However he also stressed that artistic explorations of AIDS from New York and their reflection on the interaction of art and AIDS had no German analogue.55 And in fact, the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed in the United States. At the end of the 1970s, a new epidemic broke out among young gay men in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, years before AIDS was recognized as a viral infection.56 There were increased 51

52

53 54 55 56

There has however been a broad literary discourse on AIDS in Europe, see for example Hervé Guibert’s novels A l’Ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie and Le Protocole compassionel or Peter Zingler’s novel Die Seuche. I use ‘AIDS theorist’ to denote academic members of the gay community and / or AIDS movement, mostly from the social sciences and humanities, who, motivated by the impact of AIDS on their lives, analyzed AIDS as a social construction. Alongside Simon Watney, key theorists of this discourse include Robert Atkins, Douglas Crimp, and David Deitcher. Including the artists David Wojnarowicz, Gran Fury, and Nan Goldin. Becker, Review of “Gegendarstellung”, 330. Wagner, “Übers Sofa,” and interview with Wagner in Ruf et al., “Mark Morrisroe,” 345. A report by the Centers for Disease Control from June 5, 1981 recognized AIDS as an epidemic for the first time; see Holloran and Hunt, Social History of the United States, 103.

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incidents of a certain form of pneumonia (pneumocystis carinii) and of skin cancer (Kaposi sarcoma) that usually did not affect young men and was a sign of a weakened immune system. Lacking knowledge about the causes and origin of the disease, until 1982 the symptoms were clustered under the name GRID (gay-related immune deficiency), linking the AIDS epidemic to sexual orientation from the very beginning. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided upon the term AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. In 1983 / 1984, HIV was isolated in France by Luc Montagnier and in the United States by Robert Gallo and the mystery of transmission was solved.57 Comparable symptoms among gay men in Germany also first appeared in the late 1970s. But there were important differences in how West Germany and the United States dealt with the epidemic. In 1983, the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (German AIDS Service Organization) was founded and over the course of the following two years, the Federal Ministry of Health sent flyers to all West German households informing the population about AIDS. The German minister of health, Rita Süssmuth, pushed for education about preventative measures and infection risks and called publicly for empathy with people with AIDS.58 The U. S. government implemented no state measures against AIDS. Not until his second term in April 1987 did Ronald Reagan, president since 1981, make a public statement about AIDS, admitting the epidemic was “Public Health Enemy Number 1.” 59 This statement did open opportunities for the fight against HIV/ AIDS across the nation, but did nothing to change the concept of the state as the protector and guarantor of traditional family values. The government claimed that only monogamous, heterosexual marriage offered protection against HIV. It failed to inform the population that infections could be transmitted by heterosexual sex and put no resources into safer sex education.60 Societal ignorance and public taboos discouraged empathy with gay men or identification with people with AIDS, marginalizing them even further. As a result, all educational campaigns and support for the sick were organized by people with AIDS themselves. In New York City, the gay community took on the care and support of HIV/AIDS patients and their families. In 1982, the first non-profit AIDS organization was founded, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), a support center for people with AIDS. GMHC was founded and run with private donations alone and received no government aid.61 Dennis Altman has diagnosed this as typical for the 57 58 59 60

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Epstein, Impure Science, 78. Jones, “AIDS in West Germany,” 441 – 442. Tygiel, Ronald Reagan, 226. Watney, “Introduction,” 20. This ignorance about the cause and transmission of HIV/AIDS was also rampant in the press. Watney cited an article in the Daily Express from Dec. 12, 1988, in which Claire Dover named “20 Facts You Need to Know About a Killer.” She described the way in which the virus originated in Africa and went to the United States via Haiti. The only protection against the virus was a faithful, monogamous partnership, since the main channel of infection was anal sex, which was unsuited to human anatomy (Ibid., 37 – 39). Perrow and Guillén, AIDS Disaster, 112.

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American tradition of volunteer work, which he connected to a lack of government responsibility in social crises.62 Dan Cameron made a similar observation: “It wasn’t at all clear that the government was going to make the right decisions. They needed pressure.” 63 ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was also founded in New York City in 1987 to express the disappointment in and anger at the government for failing to respond to the AIDS crisis and ignoring the extent of the epidemic. ACT UP became the main mouthpiece of the AIDS movement. It promoted explicitly political grassroots activism and used protest and artistic interventions to gain attention for the crisis and to pressure government agencies to act.64 ACT UP groups were also formed in Germany, but their activism was limited to the local level and they were unable to stimulate political change. Benjamin Buchloh has interpreted this disparity between West Germany and the United States as a fundamental difference in the role of art in the respective societies. While political art in the United States was created with the goal of real cultural intervention in politics and society, there was no comparable artistic activism in West Germany in the 1980s.65 Lutz Hieber expanded upon Buchloh’s theory; in general, he argued, there was no point of engagement for provocative political activist art in West Germany at the time, such as existed in the United States in the art of Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger. In West Germany, the relegation of historical avantgarde movements to museums destroyed the possibility of using art as social intervention.66 However this argument is rather weak; more than almost any other institution, MoMA in New York worked since its founding in 1929 to bring Cubism, Surrealism, and Dadaism into museums and played a large role in the canonization of those movements. Furthermore, although there was no comparable AIDS activism in West Germany in the 1980s, other social issues such as environmental protection, world peace, and coming to terms with the Holocaust were reflected in art. One example is Joseph Beuys’ piece Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung (7000 Eichen) at the documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, or his campaign work for the Green Party.67 The Cold War and environmental catastrophes such as the meltdown in Chernobyl in 1986 increased social consciousness of catastrophe in Germany and led to activist art. The decisive reason why there was no such Art about AIDS in West Germany was simply the government’s public health policy. People with AIDS were perhaps just as stigmatized, but they at least had health insurance (and therefore medical care). In the United States, ignorance about social minorities and condemnation of homosexuality necessarily made the AIDS epidemic a social taboo. Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch have diagnosed this lack 62 63 64 65 66 67

Altman, New Puritanism, 181. Author’s interview with Dan Cameron, July 11, 2011 (p. 321). Halcli, “AIDS, Anger, Activism,” 135 – 137. Buchloh in Armleder et al., “Die 80er Jahre,” 80 – 81. Hieber, “Politisierung der Queer Culture,” 219. See also Vol. 93 of Kunstforum International (1988) on “Kunst und Ökologie.”

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of interest in social minorities as a sign of a social turn toward navel gazing and increased individualization.68 Furthermore, not only lack of health insurance, but the Reagan regime’s other massive cuts in social services made life more difficult for people with HIV/AIDS. When AZT, the first anti-retroviral medication, became publicly available at horrendous prices in 1987, many people with AIDS were excluded from this life-extending therapy due to the costs.69 In New York, where 45 percent of all new infections nationwide were reported in the early 1980s, the public health system had been teetering on the brink of collapse since the 1970s.70 Lack of adequate medical care in fact made AIDS a greater medical crisis in the United States than in West Germany.71 The neo-conservative Republican government created a societal consensus that there was no reason to integrate marginalized groups or to fight discrimination. That attitude aided the religious right, who instrumentalized the fear of AIDS to promote their traditional, conservative values.72 This unstructured movement of fundamentalist evangelist Christians called for the literal interpretation of the bible, strict moral values, and patriotism; they had been proselytizing against sexual liberation, abortion, and homosexuality since the 1970s. Political connections to the Reagan government increased their social relevance from the early 1980s on, leading to a marginalization of gays and lesbians even before the outbreak of AIDS and lending moral implications to the epidemic in the public eye.73 The movement’s public figures such as Jerry Falwell, television evangelist and founder of the political religious group Moral Majority, decried AIDS as God’s punishment for the sinful homosexual lifestyle. The Moral Majority fanned fears of sexual minorities by claiming that homosexuality itself was a cause of illness, and was catching. The epidemic was a sign of the impending apocalypse due to America’s sinful society.74 This instrumentalization of AIDS in the name of religion, a result of a fundamentalist interpretation of American Puritanism, helped to make any dealings with illness and sexuality taboo. Neither American society nor the Reagan government was able to react to AIDS — except in the form of moral approbation and condemnation of an allegedly sinful homosexual lifestyle. Moral reprobation of homosexual carriers of disease played a role in public AIDS discourse in Germany as well. James Jones (1992) conducted a linguistic analysis of this discourse as published in the weekly 68 69 70

71

72 73

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Heideking and Mauch, Geschichte der USA, 363 – 364. Stein, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 157. Perrow and Guillén, AIDS Disaster, 78 and 68. In San Francisco, the reaction to AIDS was both earlier and more concerted, a result of the decentralization of U. S. policy (Fetner, Religious Right, 53 – 54). By the late 1980s, the CDC reported more than 90,000 AIDS-related deaths (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2001, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 13, no. 2, p. 30, cited in Fetner, Religious Right, 55). Tygiel, Ronald Reagan, 106. One of their first public actions was Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save the Children campaign against the Florida anti-discrimination law. Bryant spoke openly against legal equality for gays and lesbians (Bernstein, “United States,” 202). Long, Apocalypticism, 2. The notion that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuals can also be found in Christian literature of the time, for example Rowe, Homosexual Politics.

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news magazines Der Spiegel and Stern. In them, AIDS was constructed as a foreign epidemic brought by the bad guys from the United States to Germany.75 In this AIDS discourse, people with AIDS are alien and perverse and thus social outcasts, a widespread stereotype that was also often repeated in American pictorial and linguistic discourse.76 Jones feared that this construction of an American epidemic could also be a danger to so-called risk groups77 in Germany, because labeling AIDS a foreign epidemic downplayed the danger of infection in West Germany, and portrayed American prevention measures as exaggerated and unnecessary. This is particularly true for the aggressively sexual safer-sex campaigns by ACT UP and GMHC. These were picked up by the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, but repudiated by the German gay community.78 Sander L. Gilman also believed that the lack of an AIDS discourse comparable to that in the United States was one result of the construction of the epidemic as American, considering Germany’s negative image of the United States after the Vietnam War.79 Finally, in both countries AIDS was experienced as an attack on Western industrialized countries’ belief in progress. In 1979, the World Health Organization officially celebrated the eradication of smallpox, underscoring Western societies’ feeling of security; AIDS was an assault on their trust in technology, on the pharmaceutical industry, and on science and medical research, undermining the belief that each generation could achieve more than that of their parents.80 The epidemic and the way it was dealt with led to a realization of vulnerability and ignorance — conditions that did not fit into the self-image of Western societies.81 The inexorable push forward was also stopped in fact, because a generation that actively shapes society, 25- to 40-year-olds, was dying. In the United States, this societal drama and the government silence surrounding it gave rise to a powerful political movement and a multifarious pictorial discourse on AIDS.

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76 77

78 79 80 81

Jones, “AIDS in West Germany,” 445. While Jones concentrates on the white gay community as the bad guy, it should be said that the spread of the epidemic among African-Americans also called up racial stereotypes. Ibid., 448 and 455. Sander L. Gilman names Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin addicts as the so-called risk groups (Gilman, Sexuality, 309). Like Gilman, I prefix the term risk groups with so-called to make clear that HIV infections are not transmitted within certain social groups, but through specific practices. Jones, “AIDS in West Germany,” 457. See for example the slogan of the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe: “Schwitzen. Spritzen. Safer Sex” (sweat. shoot. safer sex). Gilman, “Plague in Germany,” 1164. Pulver, Tribut der Seuche, 278. See also author’s interview with Ross Bleckner, June 1, 2011 (p. 313).

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METHODOLOGY and THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The focus on Goldin’s exhibition in this analysis links art history analyses, the sociology of art, and cultural studies methods to study the specific conditions of the genesis of an artistic community impacted by AIDS as well as mechanisms of appraisal within this community.82 While my approach is interdisciplinary, the analysis is firmly within the field of critical art history, as the starting point of all theses and theories is the artwork exhibited in Witnesses. The context of Goldin’s show was the outbreak of AIDS and the continued epidemic in the 1980s in the United States, which I consider to be a social crisis and not the sum of individual fates. AIDS changed not only political consciousness and ethical values such as tolerance and accountability — as well as ideas about life and death, bodies and sexuality — but also initiated a shift in the articulation and function of contemporary art. With Paula A. Treichler, I define AIDS as an “epidemic of significance.” 83 The meanings and metaphors of the verbal and pictorial AIDS discourses not only mirrored social power relations, but created them. Talking about AIDS produced value judgments, which is why I define the epidemic less as a medical and more as a social phenomenon. AIDS challenged common assumptions about sexuality, illness, and death, and highlighted fears of the Other. I therefore lay great value in the question of who produced the knowledge, language, and images of AIDS. An analysis that focused on artistic questions alone would be too narrow. To describe the production of knowledge, language, and images, I use Michel Foucault’s classical definition of discourse as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to language and to speech. It is this ‘more’ that we must reveal and describe. 84 When I speak of an AIDS discourse I therefore mean a delimited body of knowledge within the American society of the 1980s. This body was also constructed by theoreticians in a variety of disciplines (discourses), such as sociology, literary theory, and art theory, or within the fine arts 82

83

84

I do not limit the sociology of art to questions of the conditions of production, but see it rather as a broad approach to social history that also integrates aspects of identity. I thus distance myself from the Marxist sociology of art practiced by Frederik Antals and Arnold Hauser. Treichler, “AIDS, Homophobia.” The fundamental link between knowledge and power was first delineated by Michel Foucault (see for example Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 35). Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 49.

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themselves. That is to say it was a specific, but not a closed system. Discourse does however function as a regulatory system that “brings forth all possible combinations of statements while forbidding the impossible,” 85 thus marking social hierarchies and actions. In the analysis at hand, AIDS discourse is divided into the “official” discourse of the public media, which was in keeping with the beliefs and policy of Reagan’s conservative government, and its counter-discourse, the written and verbal language of people with AIDS, AIDS theorists, and activists, who aimed to destabilize existing power structures from the margins.86 This division can also be applied to pictorial representations of and by people with AIDS. This pictorial discourse was a reaction to official, hegemonic images and their social and societal mechanisms of exclusion. With this definition as my starting point, I see Witnesses as a specific collection of images, knowledge, and formations of subjects that played a forceful role as an event within the AIDS discourse. To analyze Witnesses, I follow T. J. Clark and ask socio-historical questions about the specific conditions of production, distribution and reception of this collection.87 The context of the exhibition is not a fixed category, but one that can always be negotiated, as Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson explain from a semiotic perspective: “‘Context’ can always be extended; it is subject to the same process of mobility that is at work in the semiosis of the text or artwork that ‘context’ is supposed to delimit and control.” 88 Within the AIDS discourse, Goldin’s show is unique and can be described as a discursive event. Because of its singularity — less in terms of artistic innovation and more due to its function as a sociopolitical event — I use this terminology to underline the relevance of the exhibition and its specific effects. As the first group show about AIDS in New York City, it gave the participating artists a common voice. Despite its short run and small size, it was able to garner an unexpected amount of media attention for an exhibition by and for people with AIDS because of the ensuing conflict with the NEA. Said conflict brought to the fore questions about the political content of art and the state funding thereof. Following Foucault, we can say that Witnesses was an interruption of a relatively unified discourse. As a discursive event, the exhibition was able to disrupt the regularity of this structure and make long-term changes to the discourse.89 For Foucault, such discontinuities appear repeatedly: sudden, unexpected statements and events within the field of 85 86

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88 89

Eder, “Historische Diskurse,” 11. This distinction draws from James Jones’ terms for the official “discourse on AIDS” and the “discourse of AIDS” conducted by people with AIDS (Jones, “AIDS in West Germany,” 455). According to T. J. Clark, an artwork is always produced and discussed under specific conditions and thus itself becomes part of a historical process (see Clark, Images of People). Clark’s Marxist, class-based approach, which mainly concentrates on conditions of production, is here broadened following the feminist critique of Griselda Pollock. Thus in the course of the analysis, questions about the construction of identity shall also be explored. Bal and Bryson, “Semiotics,” 248. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 27.

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a discourse that displace other statements and events and are able to broaden the discourse over the long term. It is important to grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its conditions of existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlations with other statements that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statement it excludes. 90 In this way, I view Goldin’s show as a discursive event within the AIDS discourse; a caesura that produced something new and had an unexpectedly large impact on the larger societal level.91 These Foucauldian categories bring this study closer to discourse analysis. However this is not a methodology, but instead a research perspective that informs my interdisciplinary approach.92 The sociology-of-art perspective on Goldin’s show, which gives equal weight to all participants in and contributing factors to the creation, reception, and judgment of the exhibition, relies on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the artistic field. Bourdieu’s terminology provides the vocabulary that mirrors the reciprocal relationship of artwork, producer, and audience — in this case Goldin’s specific artistic community. It allows me to integrate all of the factors concerning the exhibition’s artistic field into my analysis. Bourdieu coined this term in his 1979 study La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement to denote the (more or less) autonomous social microcosm created through the process of increasing social differentiation.93 This social space has a specific nomos, the fundamental laws of the field with their own reference system, history, and rules, and a cultural capital that regulates the inner structure of the field of actors, institutions, and interests.94 Bourdieu expanded upon this concept in his 1992 book Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire,95 an analysis of the literary field in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the artistic field, social position and power, and the usual logic of the economy — the capital of the political and economic fields — are received indifferently. 96 Instead, the artistic field is determined by cultural capital — embodied capital (education, acquired knowledge, breeding), objectified capital (books or paintings), and institutionalized

90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Ibid., 28. Foucault, “Order of Discourse,” 67 – 69. Eder, “Historische Diskurse,” 13. Cited here in the English translation as Bourdieu, Distinction, 30 – 33. Ibid., 228. On the economic, social, and cultural forms of capital see also Barlösius, Pierre Bourdieu, esp. 187 and Bourdieu, Rules of Art. Cited here in the English translation as Bourdieu, Rules of Art. Ibid., 170.

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capital (degrees, university titles, and honors).97 Although representatives of the artistic field are often poor, their authority is grounded in this symbolic capital: The artist cannot triumph on the symbolic terrain except by losing on the economic terrain (at least in the short run), and vice versa (at least in the long run). 98 Bourdieu defines this authority more closely by splitting the artistic field into two subfields: one in which the only interest is in symbolic recognition, that is recognition within the field, and another that accepts external hierarchies in which the value of an artwork is measured by its commercial success and the artist’s achievements outside the artistic field.99 It follows that artworks are only considered to be such when their place within the artistic field is recognized.100 The production, distribution and judgment of this placement need to be analyzed within a material, economic, ideological, political, and aesthetic framework because the discourse on the work is not a simple side-effect, designed to encourage its apprehension and appreciation, but a moment which is part of the production of the work, of its meaning, and its value. 101 Bourdieu even sees the artists themselves as products of the field, created in a collective process by the values that dominate within the field, “discovered,” and then institutionalized and invested with (symbolic) capital as meaningful and valuable members of the community.102 Using these ideas, we can situate Goldin’s exhibition within an artistic field in which the members knew each other and cooperated with one another. While Bourdieu was interested in the creation of individual artworks, this study goes one step further by investigating the constitution of an entire show. American sociologist Howard S. Becker shares this understanding of art as a social event: “created by networks of people acting together.” 103 To express this, he suggests the term ‘art world(s)’, which he defines as analogous to a social structure in which artists are workers and art the result of collective work. Becker made use of Arthur C. Danto’s (1964) term, artworld, which Danto introduced in an eponymous article about the reception of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. Warhol’s work, Danto claimed, is only understood as art rather than everyday commodities because of their context. They “enjoy a double citi97 98 99 100 101 102 103

Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 242. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 83. Ibid., 165 – 169. This opposition necessarily leads to internal struggles over the power of definition to legitimize the respective understandings of art (Ibid., 280 and 142). Ibid., 238. Ibid., 170. Ibid., 262, 168 and 171. Becker, Art Worlds, 369.

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zenship … between artworks and real objects … separated and united by the is of artistic identification.” 104 Only the latter “takes [them] up into the world of art and keeps [them] from collapsing into the real object[s] which [they are].” 105 Bourdieu criticized Becker’s theory as merely descriptive. Rather than studying the artworld’s structure, Becker reduced it to the sum of individual actors bound only by interaction and cooperation.106 Neither was Bourdieu satisfied with Danto’s definition of the artworld, as it refers only to the artwork as an institution while ignoring the historical and sociological analysis of the genesis and structure of said institution. In so doing, Danto divided the analysis of artworks into two phases, production and perception, further reducing the latter to a purely aesthetic experience.107 For these reasons too, this analysis rests on Bourdieu’s theory of the artistic field, which goes beyond Becker and Danto to include the field’s historical and political conditions. In this sense, I view Nan Goldin’s community as an artistic field in which multiple factors and actors determined the production and collective showing of the chosen works. This artistic community was first formed by the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic and the concomitant societal crisis. Nan Goldin’s decision to create an exhibition about the consequences of AIDS arose from her perception of the epidemic as a collective affliction. Her personal success as a photographer gave her sufficient name recognition in the alternative art world of 1989 that the — equally established — Artists Space chose her to curate its program. These factors all contributed to the selection and exhibition of the show’s 25 artists. Goldin had enough authority within the field to become the “discoverer” of these works due to her symbolic and social capital, her recognition as an artist, her networks, and her contacts. That is to say the power to consecrate artists and artworks is imparted by and within the artistic field itself.108 This artistic field is constituted by not only the curator, but also the artists and catalogue authors — in particular David Wojnarowicz, a successful East Village artist and AIDS activist who contributed both artworks and a catalogue text. Bourdieu’s theory can also be applied to the participating artists. They eschewed justifying themselves to larger society because of their recognition within the artistic field: Associating elitism and anti-utilitarianism, the artist[s] mock[ed] conventional morality, religion, duties and responsibilities and despise[d] anything that might evoke the idea that art could render service to society. 109 104 105 106 107 108 109

Danto, “The Artworld,” 582. Emphasis in the original. Ibid., 581. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 205. Ibid., 287 – 288. Ibid., 168. Ibid., 135.

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This statement is true for the artists’ community in Witnesses and underscores the thesis of an artistic elite, which represented itself in Goldin’s show. However Bourdieu’s anti-utilitarian understanding of art-for-art’s sake must be relativized for Goldin’s community and its exhibition in light of the political AIDS movement. In the third chapter, the object of study encompasses more than only Witnesses; the individual artworks are the focus of the chapter. The way in which they deal with the topic of AIDS is — in keeping with Art about AIDS — so heterogeneous that no meaningful results could be expected from a search for common categories. Not wanting to ignore the content of the works, I compare the photographic portraits within the show with press photos of gays and lesbians and people with HIV and / or AIDS from 1983 to 1989. This allows me to situate the role of the artworks within Goldin’s specific exhibition concept and within the discourse on AIDS. This comparative pictorial analysis does not distinguish content-wise between the artistic photographs and the press photographs, but reads them as (re)productive media of a cultural memory.110 The press photographs are also subject to historical visual analysis. My questions focus on the “historical conditionalities and meanings of images and their perception” as (press) photographs are not objective, purely illustrative sources of history, but are themselves historical.111 Stereotyping and the construction of identities are at the center of the visual analyses. I draw from cultural studies for my understanding of identity, which Stuart Hall has described as collective and plural, determined by society, and fiercely contested.112 The struggle around the identity and representation of people with AIDS also motivated the artists to make the images in Goldin’s show.113 Foucault’s model of power relations — in particular the link between sexuality and power as explicated in The Will to Knowledge — was central to my analysis of the visual construction of (homo)sexual identity during the AIDS crisis. These ideas are also central to gender and queer studies, which emerged as academic disciplines in the United States in the mid-1970s and mid-1980s respectively. Both disciplines examine the construction of (non-heteronormative) identities that — like the photographs in Goldin’s show — push the borders of biological gender. They examine the ways in which social categories of difference such as sex, ethnicity, and class affect social processes of exclusion, discrimination, and hierarchization.114 The construction of sexual identity is fundamental to my analysis of representations of homosexuality within the exhibition. The artworks critiqued the “natural binary sex” (Judith Butler) and its heteronormative binary 110 111 112

113 114

Paul, “Visual History,” 13. See also Assmann, Cultural Memory. Jäger, Fotografie und Geschichte, 15. Hall, “Cultural Identity”: Jacques Lacan’s and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic and linguistic definitions of the subject, fundamental to both feminist theory and gender studies, are not a main concern of the study at hand. Here one could also make use of the sociological category of the image, formed by an appropriate representation of the artist. On this see Kautt, Image. See for example Whitehead, Moodley, and Talahite-Moodley, Gender and Identity.

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character is visually disrupted by the show’s works.115 Thus these artistic explorations can be studied with the terminology of gender studies and queer studies, both of which recognize sexuality and sexual desire as crucial aspects of the hegemonic construction of gender. Gender studies rescinds the equation of anatomical sex and social gender identity while queer studies goes further to deconstruct the male / female binary and normative heterosexuality.116

115

116

Butler, Gender Trouble, 31: “The institution of a compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality requires and regulates gender as a binary relation in which the masculine term is differentiated from a feminine term, and this differentiation is accomplished through the practices of heterosexual desire.” Ibid., 9 – 11. See also Marchart, Cultural Studies, 206 and 208.

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STATE of RESEARCH

This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the exhibition Witnesses and the people involved in it. Stephen C. Dubin (1992) and Dustin Kidd (2010) have both examined the exhibition as a political event in their analyses of the American culture wars, but they looked neither at the artworks, nor did they draw from Artists Space archival material.117 As mentioned above, that material was donated by Artists Space to the NYU Fales Library in the summer of 2011. AIDS as an object of study in the humanities and social sciences has to date been mostly restricted to the United States. The literature is therefore in the main interdisciplinary American research in the fields of sociology, history, art history, and literary criticism. Much of the literature on cultural reactions to AIDS was the result of research in the mid-1980s and motivated by the crisis itself. This literature centers on the importance of the epidemic and is replete with political rhetoric condemning the marginalization and stigmatization of (gay) people with AIDS. Many of the key theorists, such as Jan Zita Grover, Paula A. Treichler, and Simon Watney were brought together by Douglas Crimp, art critic and AIDS activist, in his special issue of October (1987). That publication was key to the discourse on AIDS as a social construct and as a crisis with metaphorical weight.118 Such contemporary analyses of the AIDS epidemic are characterized by the personal investment of the authors and their striving to achieve self-determination for gays and the power of definition over AIDS.119 They therefore mainly focus on the linguistic construction of AIDS. Visual representations are usually used only to support their theories. The lack of critical distance in these studies makes them of little use as secondary sources. Instead, I consider them as primary references in my comparison of pictorial and linguistic representations of AIDS. Michel Foucault’s reflections on sexuality and power are fundamental to this early discourse on AIDS. From the early 1980s, Sander L. Gilman conducted research on social minorities, sexuality, illnesses, and their manifestations. His comparative study of societal metaphors for AIDS and syphilis in October provided an important reference point for contextualizing AIDS in historical discourses on epidemics.120 Finally, from their publication to this day, Susan Sontag’s seminal essays “Illness as Metaphor” (1978) and “AIDS and Its Metaphors” (1989) have informed 117

118 119

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Dubin, Arresting Images and Kidd, Legislating Creativity, who wrote of his sources: “All I have to go on is the catalog, a set of images of the works — images that are also somewhat reductive of the show itself and the works contained therein” (Ibid., 85). See for example Crimp, “Cultural Analysis”; Treichler, Theory in an Epidemic; Watney, Policing Desire and Watney, “The Spectacle of AIDS.” See Crimp and Rolston, AIDS Demographics and Baker, Art of AIDS, who inserted short “Interlude[s]” between the chapters of his book with personal remembrances of lovers and friends who had died. Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis.”

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the discourse on AIDS as well as writing on illnesses and epidemics.121 Brigitte Weingart’s more recent discourse analysis of the language used to discuss AIDS offers important insights into the representation of AIDS in text and film.122 The introduction of combination therapy in the mid-1990s reduced the turmoil surrounding HIV/AIDS and allowed initial historicizations such as Jan Zita Grover’s periodization of the epidemic and its cultural debates.123 In the late 1990s, there was a marked fall in academic interest in the topic. Theoreticians such as Douglas Crimp revised and republished their earlier texts and in general, reflection on theoretical AIDS discourses took place.124 Since then, there has been a more encompassing debate on AIDS in the context of the conservative climate of the Republican era under Ronald Reagan (1981 – 1988) and George H. W. Bush (1988 – 1992), subsumed under the term culture wars. The above-mentioned studies by Dubin and Kidd and the anthologies edited by James L. Nolan (1996) and Richard Meyer (2002) make it possible to place Goldin’s exhibition within this cultural-political context. Meyer’s volume includes in-depth studies of the debates on government funding of art that are relevant to the study at hand, but Goldin’s show is dealt with only superficially. As a rule, these later analyses also remained the handiwork of the gay community. Having HIV/AIDS or having close friendships with people with AIDS has to this day been the main reason for, and plays a major role in, theorizations of AIDS. Relevant examples are Lutz Hieber’s many sociological studies on the activist discourse of ACT UP, in which he placed the political AIDS movement in the context of social movements or Simon Watney’s analyses of AIDS and the effects of the epidemic on gay identity.125 Art critic and former AIDS activist David Deitcher has criticized these academic studies of AIDS. In his view, historicization leads to the “normalization of AIDS” and does injustice to the continuing crisis for people with HIV.126 Recently, young researchers who no longer experienced the AIDS epidemic themselves are examining AIDS from a historical perspective, for instance the 2012 theater studies dissertation by Beate Schappach, AIDS in Literatur, Theater und Film: Zur kulturellen Dramaturgie eines Störfalls, or the 2013 history of medicine dissertation project by Lukas Engelmann on the pictorial construction of AIDS in medical atlases.127 These contemporary research projects in the humanities and social sciences are useful as regards their methodology and content. Nevertheless, 121 122 123 124 125

126 127

Sontag, Illness and Aids. Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter. Grover, “Visible Lesions.” See Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy” or Meyer, The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous. Hieber, “Grundriss einer Theorie”; “Postmodernismus als Politisierung”; “Politisierung der Queer Culture”; “Douglas Crimp”; “Appropriation und politischer Aktivismus”; and Watney, “Acts of Memory.” Deitcher, “Silence,” 124. Schappach, AIDS in Literatur, Theater und Film and Engelmann, AIDS Unseen.

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there has as yet been no critical analysis of artistic representations of AIDS. The study at hand hopes to close that research gap. General overviews of artistic representations of AIDS were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Baker’s The Art of AIDS (1994) looked to define an Art about AIDS in the fine arts, literature, dance, and film, and James Miller’s 1992 anthology Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS Crisis examined the art world of the times. Alongside these general overviews (which rarely examined individual artworks), research interest has been primarily in collective, activist art, for example Nina Felshin’s But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism (1995), Lutz Hieber and Paula-Irene Villa’s Images von Gewicht: Soziale Bewegungen, Queer Theory und Kunst in den USA (2007), and Gregg Bordowitz’s Imagevirus (2010) about the art collective General Idea. Very few of the artists exhibited in Witnesses have been dealt with in individual monographs. Research exists on Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, and David Wojnarowicz.128 With the exception of Wojnarowicz, AIDS plays a minor role in this research, as does Goldin’s function as curator. The study at hand also meets these research desiderata with its representation of an artistic community ravaged by AIDS. Alongside secondary literature, found predominantly at the New York Public Library, the MoMA and Whitney Museum libraries, my main source of information was the primary material collected in New York City. The exhibit materials archived at the NYU Fales Library provided my main source of research. This comprehensive archival material includes press releases, correspondence, documentation, reviews, and photos of the installation. It had not yet been completely archived at the time of my research in May and June 2011.129 David Wojnarowicz’s estate, also archived in the Fales Library and the P. P. O.W Gallery in New York, provided further key material for analysis. Information on the exhibitions with which Witnesses is compared, From Media to Metaphor and The Indomitable Spirit, was found in the archive of the Independent Curators International and in the International Center of Photography in New York. The exhibition catalogues of these shows and of Witnesses allowed insight into curatorial strategies as well as into the selection of both works and catalogue authors. Press photos of people with AIDS analyzed in the third chapter and reports on other exhibitions by artists shown in Witnesses from 1983 to 1989 were found by systematic searches in newspapers and art magazines. This body of material is complemented by interviews with members of the relevant New York art community at the time. These interviews were conducted between May and July 2011 in New York City. They were necessary because secondary sources provided no answers to questions about the criteria for an Art about AIDS and, concomitantly, the mean128

129

See for example Scorzin, “Authentizität und Fiktion”; Becker, Fotografische Atmosphären; Ruf and Seelig, “Introduction”; Colucci, “Some Sort of Grace”; and Maguire, “The Relics.” This material was archived in 2012.

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ing of this art. This information first enabled me to answer central questions about the choice of artworks for the group show and to shift my focus to the meaning of Art about AIDS during the epidemic in the United States. Art critic David Deitcher, curators Dan Cameron, Marvin Heiferman, and Thomas W. Sokolowski, and artists Kiki Smith and Ross Bleckner all agreed to 45-minute, semi-structured, topiccentered interviews.130 In March 2012, written correspondence with Susan Wyatt, the director of Artists Space at the time Witnesses was shown, provided important information on the genesis of the exhibition and on the conflict with the NEA.131 Transcriptions of these interviews and a statement on scientific treatment of these primary sources in the history of contemporary art can be found in the appendix.

130

131

Due to poor quality, the transcription of the interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski is only partial. The qualitative research interviews were conducted using Bernhard Russel’s method of semi-structured interviews (see Russel, Research Methods, 212). The correspondence can also be found in the appendix (see p. 345).

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CONCEPT and CONTEXT of WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING

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ACT UP / Silence = Death Project Silence = Death, 1986 Offset Poster

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Names Project Memorial Quilt Installation at the National Mall Washington D. C. , 1992

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Exhibition Catalogue Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (Cover) Artists Space, New York, 1989

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Gran Fury The Government has Blood in its Hands. One AIDS Death Every Half Hour, 1988 Offset Poster

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TABBOO! Stephen Tashjian Portrait of Mark Morrisroe, 1985 Acrylic on Canvas, 171,5 × 90,1 cm

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Edvard Munch The Kiss IV, 1902 Woodcut, 45,8 × 40,3 cm

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Nan Goldin Gilles and Gotscho embracing, Paris, 1992 Cibachrome, 76,2 × 101,6 cm

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Nan Goldin The Hallway of Gilles‘ Hospital, 1993 Cibachrome, 76,2 × 101,6 cm

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Nan Goldin Gotscho kissing Gilles, Paris, 1993 Cibachrome, 76,2 × 101,6 cm

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Nan Goldin Gilles' arm, Paris, 1993 Cibachrome, 76,2 × 101,6 cm

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Gran Fury All People with AIDS Are Innocent Banner at Henry Street Settlement New York, 1989

Visual AIDS Electric Blanket Installation at Cooper Union New York, 1990

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Visual AIDS Guggenheim Museum at Day Without Art, Dec. 1. New York, 1989

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Gran Fury Kissing Doesn‘t Kill, 1989 Colored Postcard

Gran Fury Kissing Doesn‘t Kill, 1989 San Francisco Municipal Transport Agency

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Gran Fury Art is not Enough, 1988 Offset Poster

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Andres Serrano Piss Christ, 1987 Cibachrome, 152,4 × 101,6 cm

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Robert Mapplethorpe Jim and Tom, Sausalito, 1977 Gelatin Silver Print, 40,6 × 50,8 cm

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Artforum (Cover) September 1989

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David Wojnarowicz A Fire in my Belly (Film In Progress) 1986 – 87, Super 8-mm Film

T

he exhibition space itself and two people in particular are key to this analysis of Witnesses: Susan Wyatt, the director of Artists Space from 1985 to 1991, and photographer Nan Goldin, the show’s curator. The main focus is on Goldin’s exhibition concept, her choice of artists, and the way in which the works were displayed. The main argument derives from the thesis that Goldin did not choose works, but rather artists with whom she was friends and who were affected by AIDS. She thus created pictorial confirmation of her threatened artists’ community, whose intimacy with the issue was reflected in the hanging of the works. Goldin’s own photographic works of the late 1980s and early 1990s aimed at visibility for and consolidation of her community, which included many gay people with AIDS. An excursus therefore examines some photos by Goldin in order to compare her exhibition concept with her own artistic strategies. The chapter ends with a comparison with three exhibitions: Images & Words: Artists Respond to AIDS, The Indomitable Spirit, and From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, all of which opened in New York City shortly after Goldin’s show. This comparison confirms the thesis that the artists involved were members of a close cultural network. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing was shown in Artists Space, a noncommercial exhibition space in Tribeca, Manhattan.132 From the 1970s, Artists Space shaped the New York alternative art scene independent of established Uptown and SoHo galleries. The venue provided space for the shows of artists including Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Andrea Fraser, as well as thematic exhibitions such as Pictures, curated by Douglas Crimp in 1977, which sought new (pictorial) concepts of post-modernity.133 Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times art critic, underscored the venue’s excellent reputation in November 1989, when Witnesses was shown: “one of the most respected and influential of the so-called alternative galleries in the United States […] best known for the diversity and open-mindedness of its activities.” 134 Artists Space was founded in 1972 /1973 by Trudie Grace and Irving Sandler to support unknown and promising artists without access to commercial galleries.135 Grace and Sandler received funding from their employer, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA); Grace was director of the NYSCA Visual Arts Program, and Sandler a consultant.136 Artists Space was independent and experimental, giving artists the opportunity to curate their own exhibitions and so retain control over their 132

133 134 135 136

From 1984 to 1993, Artists Space was located at 223 West Broadway. It thereafter moved to its current location at 38 Greene Street. Further literature on Artists Space can be found in Gould and Smith, 5000 Artists. Williams, “Artists Space,” 151. On the exhibition Pictures, see Crimp, “Pictures” and Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 580 – 583. Kimmelman, “Nonprofit Gallery in TriBeCa.” http://artistsspace.org/history/ (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). On the founding of Artists Space see also Grace, “Artists Space.” http://www.nysca.org/public/about/mission_values.htm (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016).

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work and its presentation. To enable contacts between potential buyers and artists, Artists Space provided a pricelist of all works exhibited in Goldin’s show, although it was not a commercial gallery and thus not primarily interested in selling the artworks shown.137 As a non-commercial gallery, Artists Space was and is financed by private and public donors. The total budget in 1989 was 725,000 dollars. 40 percent of this money came from public funding from the NEA, the NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Institute of Museum Services. The remainder was financed by benefits, members’ dues, and individual donations, sometimes in the form of artworks.138 As a rule, Artists Space showcased works by young and still unknown artists curated by established artists. For this reason, in the summer of 1988, Susan Wyatt invited Nan Goldin to curate an exhibition in the 1989 / 1990 season. As a celebrated photographer represented by a commercial gallery — she had contracted with Pace / MacGill in 1988 — it was clear to Goldin from the start that she would not be presenting her own work in the show, as was Artists Space policy, but only that of other artists. A member of the New York art scene who knew many other photographers through her own work, Goldin perfectly matched Artists Space’s criteria for curators. After graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, she moved to New York in 1978 and quickly became a central figure in the East Village alternative art scene. The first public presentation of some of her photographs was entitled The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and took the form of a slide show for Frank Zappa’s birthday party at the Mudd Club.139 From the mid-1980s, Goldin expanded her horizons beyond Manhattan to include the rest of the United States and parts of Europe. She began to make a name for herself as a photographer, as evidenced by her exhibition history: after participating in the Whitney Museum Biennale in 1985, she had her first solo show, again entitled The Ballad of Sexual Dependency at the Tim Burden Gallery in New York. The photo book published in conjunction with the exhibition had 125 stills and won multiple prizes in the United States and Europe in 1986 and 1987. Numerous solo and group shows followed, as well as participation in film festivals in Berlin and Edinburgh in 1986.140 A major retrospective of her work, I’ll Be Your Mirror, was shown at the Whitney Museum in 1996; the catalogue from this show contains material from her entire oeuvre up to that time.141 137 138 139 140

141

Document Artists Space n. d. Ibid. and Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 84. Alexander, “Nan Goldin,” 107. Alf Bold, programming director of the Berlin art cinema Kino Arsenal at the time, invited her to Berlin in 1986. Goldin and her camera were with him in the final months of his illness from AIDS-related causes (Sussman, “In / Of her Time,” 36; photo in Sussman, Nan Goldin, 364 – 365). Scorzin, “Authentizität und Fiktion,” 130. For a biography of Nan Goldin see http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/nan-goldin/biography/ (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016) and Sussman, Nan Goldin. Golden had first come to Berlin at Bold’s invitation in 1982. In 1991 she spent almost a year in the city on a DAAD scholarship.

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Her position in the downtown New York art scene meant she could draw from a large network of artists and — according to Susan Wyatt in 2012 — she had “a good eye” for potential contributors to the exhibition.142 Her central position is attested by her large and ever-growing collection of portraits of her artist friends, which she used to represent her community in slide shows in New York galleries, clubs, and discos. The first shows had no audio track; beginning in 1980, she added personal commentary and a soundtrack to her slide shows.143 Goldin thus cannot be limited to a certain photographic or art community — her concept of art transcended the limits of genre and incorporated images, music, and performance. Her success as an artist guaranteed media attention for the Artists Space exhibition, which was propitious for both the unknown artists and the artistic responses to AIDS.144 Artists Space guest curators had complete freedom to decide on the exhibition’s theme, size, and artists. Susan Wyatt very much supported Goldin’s proposal to do a show about AIDS, for one because the New York art scene had been hit so badly by the epidemic, and also because of Wyatt’s own activities in the organization Visual AIDS. This non-profit organization was planning a national Day Without Art on December 1, 1989, to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. Goldin’s show fit in perfectly with the Visual AIDS program and was associated with the Day Without Art from the very beginning, as verified by mention of the latter in the press release on the occasion of the show’s opening.145

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143 144

145

Email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 3, 2012 (p. 345). As mentioned above, I consider the interviews and email exchanges to be primary sources. Wyatt’s statement can therefore not be considered “proof” about her choice of curators in 1989, but is a retrospective commentary made in 2012, in which the history of the exhibition’s public reception naturally also plays a role. For more on the musical accompaniment of the Ballad, see Sussman, Nan Goldin, 33 – 35. Ibid. Wyatt on this subject: “We also thought her name and reputation would attract people in the art community to come and see a show of emerging artists / photographers that she [Goldin] believed were doing good and important work.” Email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 3, 2012 (p. 346). Ibid., 345 and Document Artists Space 1989. Email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 3, 2012 (p. 346) and Document Artists Space 1989.

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NAN GOLDIN as CURATOR: PROMOTING the VISIBILITY of her COMMUNITY

Nan Goldin began planning Witnesses in the summer of 1988 while recovering from addiction withdrawal. Upon returning to New York, she found the art scene had been ravaged by AIDS. Mourning the loss of so many friends inspired the show as a love letter to her community.146 Her personal involvement was key to her concept of the exhibition as a show for and about her circle of friends. The goal of Witnesses was “to celebrate the indomitable spirit of our community.” 147 Goldin wanted to show that although her community had been hit hard by AIDS, it was still very much alive and had a voice. Her catalogue text therefore ended with the imperative: “I have also witnessed this community take care of its own, nurse its sick, bury its dead, mourn its losses, and continue to fight for each other’s lives. We will not vanish.” 148 Goldin’s promise of love, friendship, care, and safety for her community indirectly referenced common stereotypes of homosexuals found in the moralizing rhetoric of conservative politicians and journalists: that gays were promiscuous, irresponsible, and egoistic.149 In the press release for the exhibition opening, Susan Wyatt stressed that the show was above all a tribute to Goldin’s friends. 150 She portrayed this circle of friends as representative of a larger cultural context that had been affected by AIDS, which can be read as legitimizing the narrow circle of artists selected for Witnesses.151 In her introductory catalogue text, “In the Valley of the Shadow,” Goldin recounted the genesis of the exhibition. The starting point for the show was her recovery from drug addiction in summer 1988, when she began to return to her community. Goldin noticed that her recovery, like the AIDS epidemic, had changed the glorification of a self-destructive sexand-drugs lifestyle previously cultivated by Goldin and her friends: “We were no longer playing with death — it was real and among us, and not at all glamorous.” 152 AIDS had rid her community of its death wish, as illness and death became all too real for many of her friends. As a result, the community had to change its priorities to include survival, recovery, and healing. 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

Goldin, “In the Valley,” 4. Ibid. Ibid., 5. Crimp, “De-moralizing Representations,” 267. Document Artists Space 1989. Ibid. and Wyatt, “Acknowledgement,” 2. Goldin, “In the Valley,” 4: “We can live the same lifestyle but in the light.”

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The importance of recovery is reflected by Nan Goldin’s first title for the exhibition, Sexuality, Spirituality and Recovery in the Age of AIDS, which she cites in her catalogue text.153 At the same time, the working title shows that a focus on sexuality had always been planned. Sexual difference outside heteronormativity was decisive for Goldin and her community of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals — both as regards representation in art and self-definition. Goldin’s photographs of Gilles and Gotscho and, in the exhibition, David Wojnarowicz’s photocollages Sex Series and Clarence Elie-Rivera’s photographs of transsexuals are all proof of this fact.154 AIDS had brought sexuality — and homosexuality in particular — to the forefront of societal attention, branding it as an immoral lifestyle that carried the risk of infection. While homosexuality became more visible — for example in Goldin’s show and in verbal and visual statements by AIDS activists — conservative politicians, particularly Jesse Helms, U. S. Senator from North Carolina since 1973, reacted to the AIDS epidemic with blatant homophobia. They mirrored the general population’s fear of a sexuality that was different and therefore perceived as dangerous, an attitude that AIDS made visible.155 The governments of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush also tried to ignore the topics of HI V/ AIDS, sexuality, and sexual minorities so as not to give these issues and people a platform on the public or political agenda. Although HIV/AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease that first spread among socially marginalized groups — and therefore brought the taboo subjects of homosexuality, prostitution, racism, drug use, and poverty into the public eye — no public dialogue began on these subjects. To the contrary, the general population met marginalized groups with fear, shame, and disgust and willfully ignored the importance of HIV/AIDS education.156 According to Brigitte Weingart, this fear of AIDS served the interests of authoritarian ideologies: the epidemic was an ideal blank screen onto which political paranoia about homosexuality could be projected. This sparked a “culture war against the 1960s,” a period in which more liberal ideas regarding sexuality and self-determination took hold.157 Goldin’s show wanted to bring people with AIDS back to the center of attention. In the societal crisis caused by AIDS, the show became a collective clarion call for political resistance, both because of the artists’ proximity to the topic and because Goldin claimed her community’s right to define sexual difference itself. The months-long debates on public funding of so-called obscene artworks, which we shall examine in the next chapter, also made these artistic representations of homosexuality or by homosexual artists, 153 154 155 156 157

Ibid. Here it should be noted that this was not the first working title, since Wyatt’s NEA grant application of July 1988 used the title Art in the Age of AIDS; see Document NEA n. d. Goldin, “In the Valley,” 5. Goldin’s photo series and Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series are examined in detail below. Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49 and 55. Watney, “Introduction,” 20. Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 123 – 125.

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most of whom had AIDS, into direct political statements. Goldin’s show was thus explicitly against government ignorance of the epidemic and against the marginalization of people with AIDS by politicians like Jesse Helms who — Goldin wrote in her catalogue text — used AIDS and homoeroticism as a means of sexual repression. In light of AIDS, sexuality became a political tool of power.158 For many people with AIDS, visibility of their oppressed sexuality was therefore decisive, as Goldin underlined in a 1992 interview: I think it’s especially important now to be showing this group that has been marginalized and allowed to die, and show the reality of them during these plague years. These are people who are being killed, either by intent or by negligence, and they need to be heard from. And I think people need to see what the reality of homosexuality is. 159 Witnesses was driven by the desire to promote politically motivated art that expressed the many facets of sexuality. Goldin wanted “to continue to create and exhibit art that portrays sexuality as a positive force. To prove that a gay aesthetic continues to flourish. To prove that sex = death is a false equation. To show that homoeroticism cannot be disappeared.” 160 These words make it clear that for Goldin, positive representations of sexuality are those that make sexual practices and desires visible, thus undermining the hegemony of a heterosexual male outlook on sexuality. In this way, she fought against the invisibility of non-heteronormative sexuality, which she saw as ignoring and revoking the social advances made by gays and lesbians. Above all, Goldin called in her catalogue for sex-positive images that were not necessarily linked to HIV infection, AIDS symptoms, or death. David Wojnarowicz expressed similar sentiments: “People with AIDS [are] not just diseases walking on two legs but people that also need to continue exploring their sexuality in responsible ways.” 161 Finally, Goldin’s term gay aesthetic has two meanings: it referred both to those artworks that dealt with gay sexuality as well as to those artists on the sexually margins to whom the exhibition lent a voice. By deconstructing the ideological link sex = death, Goldin took a stand against conservative and Christian fundamentalist rhetoric, which dubbed anything other than heterosexual sexuality a sin and claimed the deadly scourge of AIDS was God’s just revenge for the failings of homosexuals. At the same time, she was of course alluding to the AIDS organization ACT UP, whose motto, “SILENCE = DEATH”, p. 65, subverted the equation of 158

159 160 161

Villa, “Kritik der Identität,” 172. Nan Goldin shared this wish for more visibility for people with AIDS and homosexuals with ACT UP, who used kiss-ins as one of their main political actions, to end the fear of HIV transmission through kissing and to put homoerotic desire at the center of their AIDS activism. Interview with Nan Goldin by Stephen C. Dubin, cited in Dubin, Arresting Images, 211. Goldin, “In the Valley,” 5. Wojnarowicz, “In the Shadow,” n. p.

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(homo)sexuality and death. The catchphrase was the collective’s rallying cry for AIDS activism and became the high-profile trademark of the AIDS movement, displayed on posters, stickers, t-shirts, and buttons.162 Goldin’s use of the equal sign both signifies the ubiquity of the ACT UP graphic and suggests a certain closeness between the exhibition and the political AIDS movement. Nevertheless, in the catalogue Goldin distanced herself from a purely political show. She wrote that for her, the conceptual heart of the show was the loss of her friends, which moved her to make the show more personal and to allow the artists to deal with the topic in whichever way they chose. Thus within the AIDS discourse, her show was not an expression of political protest, but rather was meant as a collective memorial, a place for communal public mourning, leave-taking, and remembrance.163 Here Goldin was referencing the most prominent example of collective memorials for those who died of AIDS-related causes, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, p. 66 – 67. The NAMES Project, which continues to this day, was initiated by AIDS activist Cleve Jones in 1985 as a collaborative, temporary, nomadic memorial for those who had lost their lives to the epidemic.164 This collective patchwork quilt is made of panels sewn by relatives and friends in memory of their dead, an adaptation of the communal friendship quilts traditionally made by women.165 This “lower” form of art, a handicraft usually considered to be “women’s work” and relegated to the home, mirrors the minority status of many people with AIDS.166 Like the unknown creators of quilts that were never recognized as works of art, people with AIDS were also invisible members of society. In 1987, the 1,920 panels of the memorial quilt were unrolled publicly for the first time at the National Mall in Washington D. C. By 1992 the quilt had grown to over 20,000 panels.167 To this day, the quilt is regularly rolled out in a ritualized ceremony and the names of the dead are read aloud as a symbol of collective mourning and as an ephemeral memorial for those who often died anonymously of AIDS. As many church congregations rejected homosexuality, the project also served and serves as an alternative, secular mourning ceremony for the gay community.168 In 1989, the Memorial Quilt was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It has thus received a level of public recognition as a form of dealing with AIDS never gained by ACT UP’s activist protest or by “obscene” artworks like those by David Wojnarowicz. Daniel Harris has criticized the social 162

163 164 165 166 167 168

For a detailed look at ACT UP and their AIDS activism see for example Hieber, “Grundriss einer Theorie” and “Appropriation und politischer Aktivismus,” 216 – 227; Fiss, “Art and Community”; Bordowitz, “Picture a Coalition”; and Halcli, “AIDS, Anger, Activism.” Goldin, “In the Valley,” 5. Sommer, “Time Incorporated,” 38. In more detail also Becker, Art Worlds, 247 – 258. Weinberg, “The Quilt,” 39. Rateike, The American Quilt, 45 – 48. Weinberg, “The Quilt,” 37; see also http://www.aids.org/about/the-aids-memorial-quilt (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Harris, Gay Culture, 228.

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acceptability of this project. It could only lead to the “kitschification of AIDS” and the infantilization of gay people with AIDS as “beseeching poster child[ren]” thus creating, Richard Goldstein agreed, an innocent image of the gay community that the general population would be able to swallow.169 The closeness to American folk art was also criticized as nostalgic sentimentality that prevented any real understanding of and grappling with AIDS.170 Nevertheless, not unlike the quilt, the act of making a previously marginalized social minority public and challenging the negative stigmatization of homosexual relations as promiscuous and irresponsible also played a key role in Goldin’s exhibition. There were other connections as well: some of the artists, including David Wojnarowicz, had created panels for their friends and lovers and Susan Wyatt even referred to the show as “Nan Goldin’s AIDS Quilt.” 171 Finally, Goldin’s final title for the exhibit also expressed this personal approach to AIDS. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing calls up the immediacy of the crisis (witnesses) and rallies against forgetting those artists who were ill with or had died of AIDS. Unlike the exhibition From Media to Metaphor, the title of which already bridged varying artistic approaches to AIDS, in this case there was no historicization of the artworks, simply contemporary art from the frontlines of the crisis. Despite or because of the fact that the AIDS epidemic had been going on since 1981, Goldin’s title underlined the timeliness and immediacy of the artworks. Goldin combined this urgency with the topos of witnessing: the exhibition showcased the specific experiences of the participating artists and their personal losses to AIDS. It presented itself as a kind of witness testimony, suggesting the special authenticity of an artistic community that experienced and dealt with the epidemic as eyewitnesses.172 The show’s title itself thus claimed personal experience as a form of legitimation for the artists and characterized their art as Art about AIDS. The inclusive / exclusive “our” in the title also suggests that the community is raising a collective voice to report on its specific crisis. The aim was not only a call to the outside world, but also — as Goldin explained in detail in the catalogue — reassurance for the community. “It’s how we let each other know we’re here,” as Linda Yablonski wrote in her catalogue contribution.173 However this is a specific form of witnessing, differing from an autobiographical report of a past event.174 Unlike the testimony of Holocaust 169 170 171

172 173 174

Ibid., 224. Ibid., 227 and Goldstein, “The Implicated,” 310. David Wojnarowicz created a panel for Peter Hujar. On this see Tom Rauffenbart in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 144; and Wyatt cited in Loughery, “Frohnmayer’s Folly,” 24. We shall go into more detail below on the meaning and definition of authenticity as regards the assessment of the works in Witnesses. Yablonski, “Et Tu Brute?,” 13. Dulong, Le Témoin oculair, 43.

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survivors, only able to recount their traumatic experiences in Nazi concentration camps after the fact, so that they were seen as also speaking for the dead, the artists affected by AIDS were, in this exhibition, reporting directly from the frontlines.175 They were (not yet) survivors, many of them were HIV-positive in 1989 and would not live to see the end of the crisis. As people with AIDS, they were, so to speak, those who had not yet died, and often they expressed themselves publicly only in the last second. The urgency of wanting to bear witness has been explained by Alexander Garcia Düttmann with reference to Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on the dialectic of the certainty of death and the uncertainty of when it will come. Only acceptance of the fact that certainty and uncertainty exist together leads to a radical caesura and, finally, the urge to bear witness.176 In Witnesses, the asynchrony of the witnesses’ and listeners’ experiences played no role since the AIDS epidemic was already characterized by its localization within certain communities. Simon Watney described this phenomenon as follows: “As if the rest of the population were tourists, casually wandering through the very height of a blitz of which they are totally unaware.” 177 For this reason, the exhibition was more the “identity policy” of a collective rather than the testimony of witnesses, because bearing witness, in Sigrid Weigel’s opinion, is grounded either in non-simultaneity with the events witnessed or in the (impossible to share) experiences of the survivor of a past traumatic experience or crisis.178 One must also differentiate between artistic grappling and witness testimony. Weigel also delineated to the difference between testimony (Zeugnis) and a product (Erzeugnis): Testimony attests to singular experience and is characterized by the asynchrony of witnessing and listening. A product on the other hand is a metaphor for what has been experienced and is expressed on a fictional level as art, and thus not as a pure report of experience.179 As the presentation of artistic explorations, Witnesses belongs to this second category. The use of the term witnesses in the show’s title is thus open to multifarious interpretations: experiencing and remembering, bearing witness, and calling attention to. It is both an expression of being personally affected as well as a condemnation of outsiders. This specific link between witnessing, experiencing, and preserving can often be found in connection with AIDS: The 1988 exhibition Bearing Witness: Artists Respond to AIDS at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston also references witnessing in its title. The Witnesses Project, organized 175 176 177 178

179

Schmidt, Zeugenschaft, 48. The analogy with the Holocaust is a common trope in the American AIDS discourse. I shall take this up again further on. Düttmann, Uneins mit Aids, 32 and Heidegger, Being and Time, 303. Watney, “The Spectacle of AIDS,” 72. Weigel, “Zeugnis und Zeugenschaft,” 117. The photo portraits by David Wojnarowicz and David Armstrong can be seen as a mixed form of bearing witness. They are explorations of AIDS through art, but at the same time they bear witness to members of the gay community who had died. Ibid., 132.

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by art dealer and Visual AIDS member Simon Watson together with the author Jerry Saltz, also focused on the dwindling of the art scene because of AIDS. In this project, which attempted to calculate the extent of the epidemic, artists who had died of AIDS were tallied, and their art made public to give posthumous visibility to people with AIDS who had often been isolated in their lifetimes.180 During the epidemic, archiving the artworks of artists who had died young of AIDS was given great importance, as evidenced by the archive of Visual AIDS or the Art Matters Foundation for the support of experimental art. Simon Watney described this desire to archive in conjunction with the wish to write the gay community’s history: When so few value us in life, it is especially important to record our everyday experience of the epidemic from the perspective of those who cannot simply go away. We must define this history, or it will not survive us. 181 Goldin’s own viewpoint is reflected in her title. Her choice of pronoun (“Our Vanishing”) underscored her membership in the community of artists representing itself. While she showed none of her own works, she saw herself not as an outsider, but as a friend. While she did consciously choose the detached stance of a curator, at the same time she selected only works made by members of her own community. A subtitle suggested by Goldin during the planning phase is telling in this regard: The Family of Nan.182 Playing with the renowned 1955 photographic exhibition compiled by Edward Steichen for MoMA, Goldin wanted a title that reflected the concentration on photographic works and that placed the show in the American tradition of portrait photography. It is questionable whether she believed in Steichen’s universalism, which presented the conditio humana as a repeated cycle of ahistorical constants — birth, life, and death183 — also applied to the marginalized artists in her show. The specific historical situation of the AIDS epidemic, the concrete reason for the show, would be leveled by placing it into the life-death cycle. The Family of Nan instead stressed the closeness of the relationship between Goldin and her community of artists. Nevertheless, in contrast to Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, it would have placed a distance between the curator and the participating artists; it is an outside view and not a personal call in the first person plural, which evokes immediacy and group cohesion.

180 181 182

183

Atkins, “Day Without Art,” 65. Note also the title of the exhibition Bearing Witness (to AIDS): Photographs by Thomas McGovern, Visual AIDS 1999. Watney, “Acts of Memory”, 168. We can also assume that Goldin had seen Marvin Heiferman’s follow-up exhibition at P. S. 1 in 1985, The Family of Man 1955 – 1984. On this see Solomon-Godeau, “Family of Man” and email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 3, 2012 (p. 346). Haehnel, “Menschenbilder,” 29.

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For Goldin’s community, the exhibition was an event meant to create a sense of identity and motivate collective political action.184 As people with AIDS, the artists — like political AIDS activists — stopped being passive social subjects and denounced the ignorance surrounding AIDS. This position of the enunciating subject185 was both aided and consolidated in the conflict with the NEA around funding, and the resulting media attention. It was public interest that first forced the artists to make a political stand beyond their artworks, as seen in the joint declaration in the exhibition and the statements by Wojnarowicz, Goldin, and Yablonski calling for action to raise visibility of their endangered community. While the artworks in the show abstract from and reflect on AIDS and its consequences, these textual statements take a political stance, in particular David Wojnarowicz’s catalogue text. The 30-page catalogue was edited and printed by Artists Space, p. 68, in conjunction with Goldin’s show. The cover is in glossy red and features a partial black handprint. The gesture for stop, it underlines the clarion call of the show’s title, while visualizing the community’s disappearance, because the handprint can only barely be recognized. Finally, it is reminiscent of a 1988 poster by the Gran Fury artists’ collective: a red handprint in a black frame with “The Government has Blood on its Hands”, p. 69, written at the top and “One AIDS Death Every Half Hour” printed at the bottom. Gran Fury’s artwork railed against the inactivity of the Reagan government with a symbol of the consequences: the bloody handprint is the trace of a body no longer present, a body that — for lack of medical research and care — contracted AIDS and died. The bloody print can also be read as a symbolic reference to the many people with AIDS who paid for government passivity with their lives. It is quite likely that the cover of the Witnesses catalogue consciously referred to Gran Fury’s graphic, which was widespread after 1988 and printed on ACT UP posters, postcards, buttons, and t-shirts — once again placing Goldin’s show within the context of the political AIDS movement. In the catalogue, all artists are presented with a print of one of their works and a short statement about its relation to AIDS. The first catalogue pages feature five texts: acknowledgements by Susan Wyatt, an introduction by Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz’s controversial essay, a short article by art critic Linda Yablonski on the effects of the epidemic on New York’s alternative art scene and, lastly, a text by Cookie Mueller, a poet, actress, and good friend of Nan Goldin. Mueller’s text, which included the parting letter of a dead friend, was published posthumously — she died of AIDS-related causes on the day of the show’s opening.186 184 185 186

Weigel, “Zeugnis und Zeugenschaft,” 111. On this term see Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 95. Mueller, “A Last Letter.”

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Before the opening, David Wojnarowicz’s six-page text “Postcards from America: X-Rays from Hell” became the cause of a controversy between Artists Space and the NEA over the exhibition’s funding. Wojnarowicz described his personal experiences and everyday life as a person with AIDS. Topics included his physical condition, discrimination he had experienced from landlord and neighbors, and his anger over the fact that society refused to deal with death and mortality: My rage is really about the fact that WHEN I WAS TOLD THAT I’D CONTRACTED THIS VIRUS IT DIDN’T TAKE ME LONG TO REALIZE THAT I’D CONTRACTED A DISEASED SOCIETY AS WELL. 187 He also spat invectives at the Catholic Church, especially conservative New York Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor, who had been very vocal against abortion and safer-sex campaigns.188 Wojnarowicz called O’Connor the “fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas” and fantasized about murdering conservative politicians Jesse Helms and William Dannemeyer.189 He also took on the NEA and the artworld, especially museums and collectors, for their “selective cultural support and denial.” 190 Here he referred, as did Goldin, to ignorance regarding artistic explorations of a sexuality that does not fit in with the erotic fantasies of white heterosexual men. The only way to make sexual difference visible, he posited, and to fight the government’s “illusion of the ONE TRIBE NATION” was through texts and images. While revealing private acts and feelings might be a risk considering the current political climate, he felt that to turn our private grief at the loss of friends, family, lovers and strangers into something public would serve as another powerful dismantling tool. It would dispel the notion that the virus has a sexual orientation or the notion that the government and medical community has done very much to ease the spread or advancement of this disease. 191 In the end, Wojnarowicz’s text was also a call against the invisibility of a community whose sexual orientation and lifestyle did not fit in with the hegemonic ideas of the general population. He called upon this community to end the silence surrounding their suffering from AIDS. 187 188 189

190 191

Wojnarowicz, “Postcards from America,” 7; emphasis in the original. On this see Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper, 235 – 237. Wojnarowicz, “Postcards from America,” 7. Like Helms, William Dannemeyer fought against gay rights. His 1989 book Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America argued that homosexuality is a disease, and therefore curable. Wojnarowicz, “Postcards from America,” 7; emphasis in the original. Ibid., 9 – 11.

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GOLDIN’S CHOICE of ARTWORKS: The NETWORK on the WALL

Goldin chose almost 100 works by 25 artists — 17 men and 8 women — all of them personal friends.192 The photographs by Peter Hujar (1934 – 1987) were exhibited posthumously as were ultimately the works by Mark Morrisroe (1959 – 1989) and Vittorio Scarpati (1955 – 1989), both of whom died of AIDS-related causes shortly before the opening. Goldin’s first proposal for the show included 13 artists (David Armstrong, Tom Chesley, Larry Clark, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jane Dickson, Barbara Ess, Greer Lankton, Mark Morrisroe, Perico Pastor, Kiki Smith, Janet Stein, Stephen Tashjian aka Tabboo!,193 and Ken Tisa). In the end, all of them except Larry Clark and Barbara Ess were in the show.194 During the planning phase, Goldin added 14 more artists. Each person contributed between one (seven artists) and eight (two artists) works.195 This discrepancy was explained by Susan Wyatt: some of the participants had suffered from late-stage AIDS and were thus only able to create a limited number of pieces for the exhibition.196 Almost all of the artworks were made expressly for Goldin’s show.197 Thus 20 of the 25 artists showed only works from 1989. The exceptions were Peter Hujar, Robert Vitale (whose work is not in the catalogue), David Armstrong (five of eight of his photographs were from before 1984), Tom Chesley (two of four sculptures were from 1988), and Mark Morrisroe (seven pieces were done in 1982 to 1986, 1988, and 1989).198 This also speaks for the theory that most of the artists shown were still at the beginning of their career in 1989 — their average age was 35.5 — and could not draw from a large oeuvre.199 Their newness to the art world can be seen in the biographies they sent in: only four were written on gallery letterhead (Hujar, Morrisroe, Tisa, and Wojnarowicz). The others were done privately, and two (Pastor and Tabboo!) were even handwritten. Finally, their status as young artists can be seen in said biographies; only four of the artists had had solo shows before 1980 and five had not had their first solo show until after 1985. 192

193 194 195 196 197 198 199

Reports of the number of artists vary: while 23 artists are represented with one image each in the catalogue, the exhibition’s list of works (Document Artists Space n. d.) names two further artists, Ramsey McPhillips, who contributed an installation on Mark Morrisroe, and Robert Vitale, who had three paintings in the show. Although McPhillips’ work was exhibited as belonging to Mark Morrisroe’s photographs, in the following I treat this installation as his own. Robert Vitale, whose works can be seen in photographs of the exhibition, was not, according to Wyatt, officially one of the show’s artists. Nevertheless his work was hung (email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 21, 2012, p. 347). In the following, I consider 25 artists to verifiably have taken part in the show. In the following Stephen Tashjian is referred to exclusively by his alias, Tabboo! Document NEA n. d. Document Artists Space n. d. Email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 3, 2012 (p. 347). Ibid. In the exhibition’s list of works, the photographs are not dated. See on this however the photographs in Ruf and Corner, Mark Morrisroe, 139, 144, 157, 173, 222, 345, and 379. 20 of the 23 artists in the catalogue were between the ages of 24 and 38.

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39 of the artworks shown in Witnesses were photographic portraits; Goldin stressed their relevance by hanging 28 of them together in the second room. In this room were self-portraits by David Armstrong (born 1954), Philip-Lorca diCorcia (born 1953), Peter Hujar, Mark Morrisroe, and David Wojnarowicz, together with a painted portrait of the photographer Mark Morrisroe by Tabboo! (born 1959). In the first room were two self-portraits by Darrel Ellis (1958 – 1992), paintings of photographic portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar — shown next to Ellis’s work — as well as a photo series by Allen Frame (born 1951): adjacent 1950s and 1980s portraits of gay couples and groups of gay friends, meant to illustrate the continuity of gay communities.200 All of these portraits took on a specific meaning in the context of the exhibition. The photos and one painting by Armstrong, diCorcia, Hujar, Morrisroe, Tabboo!, and Wojnarowicz are all portraits of artists in the show. I theorize that this net of relations, more than the content of the individual artworks, reflected Goldin’s concept of belonging and took on the task of representing her community. It is no accident that these portraits of friends were made only by male artists and show almost exclusively male artists. Rather we can assume that the aim was to show how hard the gay community had been hit by AIDS. Furthermore, it suggests that taking portraits of one another was a specific reaction to the disease. I believe the visual presentation of people with AIDS worked against forgetting in two ways. First, it fought against physical and social death, against forgetting the artists portrayed. These portraits are a kind of memento mori of individuals whose selves and bodies have been targeted. Second, they are a public ritual of mourning — comparable to the AIDS Quilt — meant to fight stigmatization and relegation of people with AIDS into the anonymity of a homosexual subculture. In this regard, the personal and societal meanings of the photographs in Goldin’s show can be embedded in contemporary debates around the theory of photography. While postmodern theories of the photographic medium in the 1980s and 1990s — for example Richard Bolton’s 1999 anthology The Contest of Meaning — focused on the construction of a supposed photographic truth, newer publications such as Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson’s 2008 anthology The Meaning of Photography have revisited the question of the social relevance of photography.201 In their introduction, Kelsey and Stimson remarked that despite the postmodern criticism of evidence, photography is still used to garner attention from society. This reaffirmation of photographic meaning neither represses the connection of power and knowledge, nor the indexical guarantee of photography, but expands them. The question of dealing responsibly with the publication of photos continues to be debated because they are still used to raise awareness and to get our at200 201

Reid, “Beyond Mourning,” 55. Bolton, Contest of Meaning; Kelsey and Stimson, “Introduction.”

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tention: “Photographs retain promise of a reality to which we can point, and which in turn points, with its demand for accountability, at us.” 202 Photography’s indexicality — the authors see photography as having a double indexicality as it points outwards to the world and inwards to the photographer — is a value that cannot (any longer) be seen as the valid truth of photography and yet must still be used responsibly.203 After the October Moment (Bettina Gockel) in which photography was interpreted as a historical construct rather than a mirror of reality, Kelsey and Stimson have returned to photography’s power of definition: they argued that photography includes a social dimension that cannot be pushed aside by poststructuralist denials of meaning.204 In this way, the text at hand is part of an ongoing debate on the theory and history of photography and connects an analysis of Goldin’s exhibition with the discourse on the medium. Goldin’s interest in photographic portraits can also be explained by looking at her own artistic work, since she continually photographed her friends and herself from the 1970s on. Exhibiting the photographic portraits in Witnesses together, so that connections between the people portrayed could be made, shows the quantitative and qualitative importance she gave these images.205 The boom in photography since the 1970s and its recognition as an autonomous aesthetic discipline should also be mentioned. Although institutionalized by museums, the art market, and the academy, photography in the 1980s was still an experimental field of disparate and dynamic practices, and was a preferred means of expression for feminist and gay and lesbian artists because it was still considered a raw art form without a long art-historical tradition.206 The hanging of the photographic portraits in Witnesses underlined the personal relations of the artists and allowed the visitor to read them and think further about these relations. Thus across from Peter Hujar’s black-and-white photographs (1976 – 1981; room 2, no. 11) were three stills of him on his deathbed, taken just after his passing by his closest friend, David Wojnarowicz (room 2, no. 31). On the other side of the room hung a photograph by Philip-Lorca diCorcia of Vittorio Scarpati in his sickbed, across from drawings Scarpati had done in the hospital ( room 2, no. 33).207 On the wall between them hung David Armstrong’s portraits of friends and acquaintances, including Cookie Mueller, Scarpati’s wife and catalogue author. Two other Armstrong photos portrayed Nan Goldin and Tom Chesley, another contributor to Witnesses. Armstrong took both photos in 1989 expressly for the show. Another photo was of Tabboo!, whose large-format portrait of Mark Morrisroe hung in the same 202 203 204 205 206 207

Kelsey and Stimson, “Introduction,” xx and xxiv – xxv. Ibid., xxv. Gockel, “Introduction,” xvii – xviii. The portraits were also given special mention in reviews. See Brooks, “Witnessing a Controversy,” 18 and Nalley, “Witness This,” 58. Batchen, “Camera Lucida,” 86. See also Lebovici, “In the Darkroom,” 235. See the design of the exhibition, p. 307.

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room and created a visual axis with Morrisroe’s self-portraits, which in turn hung next to Wojnarowicz’s work, p. 71. The hanging presented the participants as a group of friends who posed for one another and, as in a family album, were sometimes in front of and sometimes behind the camera. This leveled the hierarchical relationship between photographer and subject; none of the artists retained their authorial authority behind the camera, but themselves became the motif of others. In this way both living and dead members of the group formed an exclusive community of images, an aspect which I shall go into in more detail later. As regards AIDS, these changing positions worked against reducing the photographic subjects to their status as sick people, separate and isolated from the realm of the healthy. While Philip-Lorca diCorcia portrayed Vittorio Scarpati as a person with AIDS in his sickbed and Scarpati’s own drawings reflecting on the decay of his body hung on the opposite wall, Goldin’s exhibition ensured that Scarpati remained recognizable as an active individual. Like the curator herself, who in the title of her retrospective, I’ll Be Your Mirror, defined herself as the mirror of her community, the varying photographers were chroniclers of a community that was trying to capture its members on film and express solidarity for one another under the threat of death from AIDS. Thus the show not only communicated the desire to be visible to the outside world, it also acted as an event that created a sense of identity for Goldin’s community.208 This analysis of the hanging of the works thus confirms the thesis that Goldin chose not artworks, but artists. More important to her than the work itself was the maker’s membership in her circle of friends. Not the content of the diverse artistic explorations of AIDS was the criteria for selection, but the HIV status of the artist. The content, form, and quality of the works seem to have played a secondary role — a thesis that must be verified in further analyses of the artworks.

208

Dan Cameron remarked that the aim was not only to become more visible to the general population, but also and explicitly to the art scene in Uptown Manhattan (author’s interview with Dan Cameron, July 11, 2011, p. 319).

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NAN GOLDIN’S PHOTOGRAPHS of GILLES and GOTSCHO, 1991 to 1993

In her concept for the show, Goldin clearly called for a positive representation of her community. Whether she also fulfilled this curatorial demand in her own work that dealt with AIDS can give insight into her exhibition concept and help place her ideas in the context of her work as a photographer. An understanding of Goldin’s work is also helpful for evaluating the pieces in Witnesses, as we must assume that the show’s artists were familiar with her photographs. The following short excursus shall have to suffice as an introduction to her oeuvre. From the late 1960s, Goldin compiled a “visual diary,” 209 photographing friends and lovers, and providing insight into life in the urban subcultures of Boston and New York.210 Her photos are observations of social outcasts — drag queens, gays and lesbians, drug addicts, artists — the circle of friends who she also brought together in Witnesses. This community makes up almost the entire subject matter of her photographs; she herself is the subjective bystander with a camera. Her intimacy with her photographic subjects and her desire to make the lives of outsiders visible was influenced by the photographs of Larry Clark, whom she originally wanted to include in Witnesses. Clark’s 1971 book Tulsa contained photographic portraits of junkies in his hometown, and reflected his own status as drug-addicted photographer.211 Elisabeth Sussman, the curator of Goldin’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum placed her photographs in the tradition of social portraiture. She claimed Goldin’s portraits of her milieu are related to the photography of August Sander (1876 – 1964), whose portraits of types within various milieus, photographed with pseudo-scientific neutrality, was published 1929 in Weimar as Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time).212 But in contrast to Sander, Goldin did not remain an aloof observer of her milieu; she was a critical witness who controlled the moment of her shots. She both reflected her personal environment and acted as a subjective participant by repeatedly photographing herself.213 Larry Qualls has aptly termed the simultaneity of intimacy and 209 210 211 212

213

Holborn, “Interview,” 38. Scorzin, “Authentizität und Fiktion,” 132. Becker, Fotografische Atmosphären, 53. In the film Nan Goldin: In My Life (video, directed by Paul Tschinkel) Goldin herself names Clark’s book as a source of inspiration. Sussman, “In / Of her Time,” 25. Grundberg compares Goldin’s work to Walker Evans’ American Photographs (1938) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) (Grundberg, “Ballad,” 97). Bronfen, “Wunden der Verwunderung,” 379.

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distance that characterizes both Goldin’s photographs and her role as curator as a “performance of her autobiography.” 214 As it played a decisive role in her community, AIDS also was central to her work. Many of her friends and many members of her chosen family — she herself referred to her “tribe” 215 — died from the infection. Goldin cared for many until their death and accompanied their journey with her camera. These series include the photos of Alf Bold, who first invited her to Berlin in 1982; the Cookie Mueller Portfolio 1975 – 1989; and the portraits of Gilles Dusein and his partner Gotscho, taken between 1991 and 1993 in Paris.216 The latter series is key to the question of an appropriate portrayal of her community and a positive representation of sexuality. Although created two years after Witnesses, Goldin’s artistic strategies remained the same as in her earlier works and thus the series can function as a reference. Gilles Dusein was a close friend of Goldin’s and owner of her Paris Gallery, Urbi et Orbi, where she first exhibited in 1991. She photographed him and his partner, the artist and bodybuilder Gotscho, for two years until Gilles died from AIDS-related causes in 1993. Like the photographs in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which can be expanded at will and which Goldin continually exhibits in different orders and contexts, there is no set order to the photographs of Gilles and Gotscho.217 However death gives them a chronology and temporal linearity that are constitutive for their interpretation. Goldin shows her protagonists in different settings, in public and private spaces, at home, at the movies, and in the hospital, together and alone. As a whole, the photographs tell the couple’s history, which Goldin does not limit to the time in the hospital and to leavetaking. While the individual photos rarely bring the epidemic closer, the late portraits of Gilles make AIDS the subtext of the entire series.218 For Goldin, the couple’s intimacy and tenderness is at the fore. In Gilles and Gotscho embracing, Paris 1992, p. 73, she creates a strong image for the love and affection between the protagonists and references historic iconography. In this photo, the men are sitting next to one another. Gilles is facing the camera and Gotscho has his back to the observer, so that their torsos and faces are turned toward one another. Gotscho’s head is turned toward the right to Gilles, who in turn looks left and rests his head lightly on Gotscho’s shoulder. Their heads are touching, but their faces cannot be seen, which heightens the intimacy of their pose. Their twisted bodies and touching heads form a spiral with its center near the top. The position of their bodies leads to the intimate convergence of their faces, the focus and apex of the composition: two bodies that meld into a single form as a sign of their unity. This round movement is mirrored in the coffee cup that Gilles is holding in his hand. 214 215 216 217 218

Qualls, “Performance,” 31. Goldin cited in Nan Goldin: In My Life (video, directed by Paul Tschinkel). Photos of Alf Bold and Gilles and Gotscho in Sussman, I’ll Be Your Mirror, 364 – 365 and 368 – 373. Photo of Cookie Mueller in Goldin, Cookie Mueller. Scorzin, “Authentizität und Fiktion,” 139. Scorzin called this the “melodramatization of the individual image” (Ibid.).

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While Guido Costa has seen an analogy to Michelangelo’s Pietà in this photo,219 another model seems more likely: Edvard Munch’s variations on the theme of The Kiss, p. 72 , drawings and woodcuts made between 1892 and 1902.220 Munch, whose variations also influenced Gustav Klimt’s oil painting The Kiss (1907 – 1908), portrays a pair of intimate lovers in his compositions; their faces flow into one another and become one. The lovers’ bodies also form a single silhouette.221 Munch creates symmetry in his work through the windowpane in the background. Goldin’s work is freed from this symmetry, but she also positions Gilles and Gotscho in front of a window with a light-colored wooden frame. Particularly in the dark, flat woodcut, the contours of the bodies and faces are lost completely. It is this unity of two individuals, who, faceless, can no longer be distinguished as such, that Nan Goldin cites in her photography. Here we can see an iconographic connection between Goldin and Munch, whom Goldin in 2001 named as an important source of inspiration.222 Like Munch, she has created a universal symbolism that goes far beyond the love between Gilles and Gotscho. Goldin’s use of a visual convention from painting demonstrates the calculation of her composition and her rootedness in art history. While her snapshot aesthetic evokes the visual language of amateur photography, lessening the distance between camera, subject, and observer,223 her iconographic references controvert her supposed “aura of the authentic.” 224 All shots in the Gilles and Gotscho series are about love and thus center around the protagonists’ physicality. Nevertheless, it is unclear which role sexuality or gay eroticism plays in their relationship. Knowing the entire series, the viewer might suppose that sexual relations between the two men have perhaps become a problem because of AIDS or that Goldin has decided against showing the couple’s sexual attraction to one another. In the latter case, she would not be following her own call to positively portray sexuality. It is also possible that she equates contracting HIV with relinquishing sexuality, a position sharply criticized by gay AIDS activists and artists. Alyce Mahon has also noted that Goldin’s portrayal of homosexuality and AIDS is very different from the aggressively sexual images of David Wojnarowicz, for instance. In the universality of her forms, Goldin creates an image of a gay relationship that can easily be presented to the homophobic general population.225 219 220 221 222

223

224 225

Costa, Nan Goldin, 78. Even after exhaustive research I fail to see this connection, as in particular the closeness of their heads is not found in any of Michelangelo’s Pietàs. Munch woodcut in Pahlke, Munch revisited, 78 – 82. Bisanz, “Der Kuss,” 230. Goldin and Jocks, “Glamour der Queer-Sicht,” 312. The exhibition Munch revisited: Edvard Munch und die heutige Kunst at the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund (2005) also supported the theory on this reference (see Kivelitz, “Nan Goldin”). Lange, “Soap zwischen den Buchdeckeln,” 122. The snapshot aesthetic is accomplished through the use of a 35mm camera, the direct perspective, and the use of a stark, highlighting flash that adds glare and contrast to the colors. Becker, Fotografische Atmosphären, 53. See also Kotz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,” 204. Mahon, Eroticism, 235.

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However she never negates her protagonists’ gay identity. Care of and for the sick partner takes place within the relationship. In this way Goldin portrayed her protagonists as a stable couple — countering the usual stereotype of the time according to which gay men were promiscuous and interested only in short-term, sex-driven encounters — just what she called for in her 1989 exhibition catalogue text. In the last photographs in the series, Gilles’ impending death is at the fore. The Hallway of Gilles’ Hospital, Paris 1993, p. 75, shows the clinical barrenness of the hospital hall and acts as the beginning of a new chapter in the photographic narrative. Here Goldin’s decision not to photograph people is a visual intimation of Gilles’ slow disappearance and impending death. The artificial light and closed doors also convey the claustrophobic seclusion and isolation of a world of sick people that exists apart from the circadian rhythm of day and night in the outside world. Wavering reflections on the polished blue-green linoleum floor awaken associations with the surface of water. In mythology, the crossing between the world above and the underworld is a journey over water; the Styx and the Lethe separate the worlds of the living and of the dead. In this way, the hallway marks a crossing, the border between healthy and sick, between life and death. This is portrayed particularly well in this photograph, which also marks a turning point in Goldin’s series. At the same time, in a hospital, oppositions such as day and night, internal and external or private and public no longer apply. The separation between healthy and sick is so decisive it pushes the other binaries of the world of the healthy aside. The series ends with a farewell (Gotscho kissing Gilles, Paris 1993, p. 76) Gotscho is tenderly kissing Gilles, who has died, on the nose. Their closeness highlights the difference in their physiques — the emaciated Gilles and the bodybuilder Gotscho. The kiss also symbolizes the continuation of their love beyond death.226 Goldin uses simple iconography here to portray lamentation and the loss of a beloved. It is also possible to read other meanings into this last kiss: a kiss can draw in a person’s soul with their last breath.227 Bion of Smyrna’s late Hellenistic poem about Adonis’ death tells of Aphrodite’s wish for a final kiss to take her lover’s essence into herself.228 This reference to the poetry of antiquity underlines the impression of the unity of the two lovers unto death. The use of existing iconographies of mourning in the publication of a private moment of leave-taking is, as Monica Lebovici has attested, the power of this photograph, which is free of any trace of voyeurism or pornography. Instead, Goldin shows the lifeless body without pathos or “morbid aestheticism.” 229 Elisabeth Bronfen in contrast believes that every portrayal of dying is an act of violence because the observer is 226 227 228 229

Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Bion von Smyrna, 4. Faxon, “Kiss,” 471. See also Friedrich Klingner’s (1967) interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid, pp. 684 – 685. Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Bion von Smyrna, 4. Lebovici, “An den Rändern,” 67.

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necessarily put into the position of the voyeur, and because the body is removed from its existence and taken out of context, fragmented, and idealized.230 While this argument seems merited, in the discussion about the appropriateness of Goldin’s photography, her intimacy with her subjects carries greater weight. The question here — and for the artists who exhibited in Witnesses — is Goldin’s power to define AIDS for herself in her art, a question explored further below.231 One photo in the Gilles and Gotscho series stands out from the soft lighting of the other hospital images: the brightly lit photograph of Gilles’ arm on the white sheets (Gilles’ arm, Paris 1993, p. 77). The image is almost medical, it seems like a sober attestation of physical death. Here Gilles’ corpse is fragmented, and Gilles’ arm becomes an indexical sign of the disappearance of the human body, which seems to have already dissolved into the bedsheets.232 It becomes a last reference to something that is no longer visible in the photograph. As early as 1963, Siegfried Kracauer noted that a photograph — as opposed to a memory, which carries its own meaning — loses its life when the subject it depicts can no longer be directly referenced. It then becomes a ghost, because “we are contained in nothing and photography assembles fragments around a nothing.” 233 The presence of death and the absence of life in the last shot of Gilles are accentuated by the characteristics of the medium of photography. For this reason, Susan Sontag has named photography “the inventory of mortality.” That which it portrays is not really there, making it most of all a sign of absence.234 Philippe Dubois also spoke of the deathly power of photography: in the moment a photo is taken, the photographic subject crosses the threshold of the living into the realm of the dead. Photography thus becomes “thanatography.” 235 The absence of a person becomes particularly clear in photos of a fragment of a body, or of a dead body, because it cannot create a bridge to the living despite the fact that the image attests to the presence of the body.236 Goldin’s photographs of Gilles on his deathbed cannot save 230 231

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233 234 235 236

Bronfen, “Violence of Representation,” 39 and 45. See also Nord, “Gegen feste Zeichen,” who shows that Goldin creates images that “bring to the fore the preciosity and precariousness of marginalized existence rather than shamefully denying them” (Ibid., 165). I define an indexical sign, as opposed to an icon or symbol, with Charles Sanders Peirce as having a physical connection to its referent. The index itself (such as pointing with a finger) is always without meaning; it derives such only from its relationship to its referent (Pierce, The Essential Pierce, 226 – 228). Philippe Dubois, in his exploration of Pierce, noted that in photography, only the moment when light is transferred can truly be considered an inscription (as an index or, with Barthes, a “message without a code”), because the moment the shutter is clicked is always framed by a before and after that is contingent upon cultural and personal factors (choice of subject, reception, etc.) (Dubois, “Der fotografische Akt,” 78 – 80 and 88 – 89; Barthes, “Photographic Message,” 196). See also Barthes, Camera Lucida, 77, in which he formulated his often-cited noeme of photography, “That has been.” Kracauer, “Die Fotografie,” 429 – 431, cit. 431. Sontag, On Photography, 70. Dubois, “Der Schnitt,” 164 and 166. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 96.

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him, but only show what is already lost. As indexes they provide merely “instant history, instant sociology, [and] instant participation.” 237 Roland Barthes sees here the melancholy of the photographic medium.238 The photographs of Gilles and Gotscho mark the desire to hold on to and remember people by photographing them — while only underscoring their impermanence.239 They tell a story against loss and forgetting and at the same time show the truth of the finality of death. This turns them into universal images of loss on a higher, iconographic level. Gilles and Gotscho become symbols, a screen onto which mortality and mourning are projected, not only in the age of AIDS.240 This contradicts the thesis that Goldin is portraying Others to counter the hegemony of the white, middle-class general population.241 Rather, Goldin’s photographs present an iconography of love, pain, and mortality that transcends purely homosexual connotations. Her art dissolves the borders between homosexuality and heterosexuality, between the private and the public, and between the general population and people with AIDS; it makes these differentiations obsolete. Goldin’s photographs cannot be viewed as only about AIDS or as a purely political statement by an artist who has been affected by AIDS.242 In this way, Goldin’s photographs also criticize the limited vision of the American general public, government, and the conservative media, all of whom viewed AIDS only as a “gay plague.” 243 She counters this stigmatization on two levels: on the one hand, she shows the normalcy of a gay relationship; on the other hand, she transcends this differentiation and thus takes from AIDS the power to stigmatize and marginalize. Goldin’s photographs of her community are images of friendship, love, and care, and follow the directives she set in the catalogue for Witnesses. James Crump has described Goldin’s focus on her protagonists’ intimate moments, to which she has access as a photographer and a member of the community, as “quasi- or insider documentary.” 244 It follows that the photos of Goldin’s community vacillate between subjectivity and documentation of her environment and can thus, Susanne Knaller posits, be seen as authentic.245 Goldin’s photographs purposefully seem to lack artistic intention. Her snapshot aesthetic appears to negate artistic composition; her subjects and their recognition value 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244

245

Sontag, On Photography, 75. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 96. Scorzin, “Authentizität und Fiktion,” 136. Bronfen, “Wunden der Verwunderung,” 377 and 382. Bronfen speaks of a “dedifferentiation” (Entdifferenzierung) by making the private public. Lange, “Soap zwischen den Buchdeckeln,” 123. In particular the ‘us against them’ attitude so important to the activist art of collectives like Gran Fury is something Goldin avoids. Watney, “The Spectacle of AIDS,” 74. Kruska, Boston School, 29. James Crump introduced the term quasi-documentary to describe the so-called Boston School, which will be examined in more detail below (Crump, “Quasi-documentary”). Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 35.

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create a subjectivity that Wolfgang Brückle has termed Verlässlichkeit (reliability, in this case meaning authenticity).246 Finally, with her photography, Goldin worked to consolidate her community. Particularly the presentation of her photographs as a slide show in which the same faces repeatedly appeared in quick succession (so that the spectator soon recognizes them) supports this thesis. The performative aspect of presentation, which makes the photographs available to a limited audience for a certain stretch of time, highlights the exclusivity of the circle of friends presented. Goldin’s photographs thus can be seen as an extension of her curatorial goals: the affirmation and visibility of her exclusive community.

246

Brückle, “Quests for Authenticity,” 189.

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COMPARISON with THREE OTHER EXHIBITIONS about AIDS, 1989 to 1994

Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing was the first group show about AIDS, but it was not a singular phenomenon as proven by three other shows from the same period. These shows also presented a wide diversity of artistic explorations of the epidemic and cannot be reduced to a single focus as regards content. In the following, the three exhibitions are introduced chronologically, with a short analysis of conceptual approach, selection of artists, and curatorial role. The artworks themselves play no role in this analysis, as they exhibit the typical diversity of Art against AIDS described above. There is one crucial manner in which all three of the later shows, in particular Images & Words and From Media to Metaphor, differed from Witnesses: Goldin’s show contained no activist artworks focused on the political context of AIDS. As activist art, I mean those works that articulate a decided political opinion, angry protest, and a call to fight against AIDS.

IMAGES & WORDS: ARTISTS RESPOND to AIDS, 1989

Like Witnesses, the declared goal of Images & Words was to draw attention to people with AIDS and to the social consequences of the epidemic. The exhibition opened on December 1, 1989 and ran for five weeks at the Henry Street Settlement, a social services and community center on New York City’s Lower East Side. The show was financed by private donations and a grant from the NYSCA. From November 6 to December 8, 1990 it ran at Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. The show was curated by Humberto Chavez, a New York City artist who — in contrast to Nan Goldin — exhibited one of his own works as well. This exhibition also ended up in the headlines because of an artwork by Gran Fury. The activist art collective sent in a banner reading “All People with AIDS are Innocent,” p. 78, to be hung not in but on the building. The Henry Street Settlement administration forbade hanging the banner over the entrance, prompting Chavez to initially withdraw the show.247 Altogether, the curator chose works by 47 artists or artist collectives, to whom he counted himself in his short contribution to the catalogue, “This is Our Response.” 248 As the title Images & Words suggests, there was one formal criterion that all artworks had to fulfill: the use or integration of text or textual elements. Outside of this stipulation, Chavez had no conditions for selection. Rather he aimed for an open 247 248

Dubin, Arresting Images, 221. See also Loughery, “Frohnmayer’s Folly,” 25. Chavez, “Our Response,” 2.

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show, as he stressed in a 1990 interview: “I wanted to include all kinds of views.” 249 The formal framework can be explained by his views on the role of artists in a (social) crisis situation: As artists, we have the freedom to express things that other people can’t, for different reasons. Sometimes we can speak for those who have been silenced in some way by society. I think that’s what this show is about. 250 The declared aim of the exhibition, to which all artworks needed to adhere, was the thematization of AIDS and protest against “AIDSphobia, homophobia, and censorship” — a triad that was also fundamental to Witnesses. The belief was that only by (through art) ending the discrimination and stigmatization of people with AIDS could a climate be created that promoted scientific research on a cure for HIV.251 Artists must, Chavez went on to demand in his catalogue text, put their art in the service of the AIDS movement. They thus carried great responsibility to inform themselves and follow the news about the epidemic so that they could transmit knowledge about AIDS through their art.252 Author and critic Anthony Holbrook also focused on the effectivity of political art in his contribution to the Images & Words catalogue. Using Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica as his starting point, he asked whether art was actually able to call attention to a contemporary political crisis and change the actions of the viewer outside the museum. As regards the artworks in the exhibition that — like Gran Fury’s banner — made a direct call for action, Holbrook answered his own question with yes.253 Like Simon Watney, he believed that the medium of text was more effective than images in fighting the AIDS crisis and so positioned activist works in the American tradition of socially engaged art.254 This belief explains why the artist was quoted next to the catalogue image of each artwork. These statements gave the artworks an extra, contentrelated dimension. However they also suggested that the artworks alone did not speak clearly enough in light of the urgency of the AIDS crisis. Positioning the artists as enunciating subjects in the fight against AIDS thus became the show’s declared function.

The INDOMITABLE SPIRIT, 1990

The Indomitable Spirit was both an exhibition and a fundraiser. After the show (February 9 to April 7, 1990 at the International Center of Photography in New York City and May 13 to June 17 at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery), all 94 photographs were auctioned at Sotheby’s. 249 250 251 252 253 254

Hirsh, “The Warmth and the Heat,” 31. Chavez cited in ibid. Chavez, “Our Response,” 2. Chavez cited in Hirsh, “The Warmth and the Heat,” 31. Holbrook, “The Clarity of a Mirror,” 3. Watney, “Kunst, die kämpft,” 33 – 34.

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The proceeds of the auction and of the exhibition itself (catalogue, posters, postcards, entrance fees) were donated to the non-profit organizations American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFar) and Northern Colorado AIDS Project (NCAP).255 The show was funded by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and many New York galleries donated photographs to be auctioned. The Indomitable Spirit was the first project by the non-profit organization Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS, which sold photos to collect money for HIV/AIDS research and social services. Parallel to the exhibition, a limited-edition portfolio was compiled of works by prominent artists, including John Baldessari, Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cindy Sherman. These 50 portfolios were also auctioned.256 The exhibition was curated by Marvin Heiferman, an art critic and curator with a photography focus. He had been director of Castelli Graphics and Photographs since the mid-1970s at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, and he was also close to Nan Goldin due to his interest in contemporary photography.257 In 1989 he curated the exhibition Image World: Art and Media Culture at the Whitney Museum.258 Similar to Goldin’s exhibition, lamentation of the loss of friends and wayfarers and the frustration surrounding this loss was the motivation for The Indomitable Spirit.259 The photographs shown were meant to give hope and courage to uphold the indomitable spirit of those fighting against AIDS. Goldin uses the same phrase in her catalogue text, but while Heiferman frames it as an imperative, Goldin meant primarily the continued existence of her community’s will to fight.260 Heiferman chose photographs from all areas of the field — commercial photography including fashion and sport photography, photojournalism, and art — to show that the participating photographers were in fact “united against AIDS.” 261 In contrast to the participants of Goldin’s show, the photographers did not belong to a particular locality or social group. Many of them had never had any contact with AIDS and this was the first time they had exhibited their works in the context of the epidemic. Heiferman stressed that he was not looking for representatives of a certain community and described the participating photographers as followed: 255 256

257 258 259 260 261

Photographers + Friends, The Indomitable Spirit, appendix, n. p. John Baldessari, Chuck Close, Jan Groover, Duane Michals, Annette Lemieux, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Weber, and William Wegman. A second portfolio entitled In a Dream… was issued in 1991 in an edition of 25. In this portfolio were works by Tina Barney, Sara Charlesworth, Jenny Holzer, Frank Majore, Thomas Ruff, Andres Serrano, and Jeff Wall (ICP archival material Photographers + Friends, brochure, n. d.). Author’s interview with Marvin Heiferman, June 28, 2011 (p. 332). Hirsh described him as an internationally renowned curator (Hirsh, Review of “Indomitable Spirit,” 28). Joseph Hartney in Photographers + Friends, The Indomitable Spirit, n. p. In his interview with the author on June 28, 2011, Heiferman expressed dislike of the title of his exhibition (p. 332). Heiferman, “Introduction,” n. p.

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We asked people to respond to the notion of indomitable spirit. We asked gay and straight image-makers to participate, people who did and who did not have direct exposure and/ or experience with AIDS. The project was not shaped by my going out as a curator and saying: I’ve selected this or that particular work. 262 Neither did Heiferman direct the content. He asked everyone “to celebrate human strength, compassion, and endurance in the face of challenge and adversity.” In other words, he did not want depressing images of people with AIDS, but of stamina and perseverance.263 After all — as art critic Andy Grundberg also wrote in his foreword to the catalogue—many members of the art world had no need for more images of people with AIDS in order to understand the epidemic, AIDS had long become bitter reality.264 Yet Grundberg also stressed the relevance of the exhibition in his discussion of the power of photography to influence political opinion. He saw it in the tradition of social documentary photography that reveals societal ills and works to address social injustice.265 However in this he was referring only to the function of the exhibition and not the content of individual works, which did not portray misery or the visible symptoms of AIDS. Heiferman’s aim in choosing the 94 participating photographers was to raise as much money as possible; name recognition and market value were the most important criteria. As Heiferman was quoted in a 1990 New York Native article: “I had to be careful that we’d be able to raise money. So it was basically putting together a Who’s Who list in the photographic world and soliciting people.” 266 Like most curators, he stayed in the background and allowed the photographers he approached to choose their own contributions for the show. In a 2011 interview, he even said that at the time he would have found it disrespectful to shape the exhibition according to his own concept. His main aim, with an eye toward the auction, had been “to bring together as many photographic perspectives as we could.” 267 Of the artists involved with Witnesses, Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, and Dorit Cypis donated a photograph to the show.268 Heiferman had already worked together with Goldin on various projects. They had edited The Ballad of Sexual Dependency together in 1986 and he had worked alongside Goldin and others on the 1990 Visual AIDS’ Artists Caucus project, The Electric Blanket.269 Thus in this case too, the personal networks and friendships of both Heiferman and Photographers + Friends played a decisive role in getting well-known photographers to participate in the project. 262 263 264 265 266 267 268

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Author’s interview with Marvin Heiferman, June 28, 2011 (p. 334). Heiferman cited in Grundberg, “Preface,” n. p. Ibid. Ibid. Hirsh, Review of “Indomitable Spirit,” 28. Author’s interview with Marvin Heiferman, June 28, 2011 (p. 334). Eight artists who had exhibited in From Media to Metaphor were also present in The Indomitable Spirit: Nancy Burson, General Idea, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michaels, Donald Moffett, Rosalind Solomon, Brian Weill, and David Wojnarowicz as well as Ann Meredith (who had shown in Images & Words). Author’s interview with Marvin Heiferman, June 28, 2011 (p. 333).

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From MEDIA to METAPHOR: ART ABOUT AIDS, 1992 to 1994

The final comparison shall be with the travelling exhibition, From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, curated by art critic Robert Atkins and Thomas W. Sokolowski, at the time director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery. The show opened on January 20, 1992 at Hamilton College’s Emerson Gallery in Clinton, NY and travelled to nine stations in the United States and Canada until February 1994, ending with a two-month run at Sokolowski’s Grey Art Gallery in New York City. The show was a project of Independent Curators International (ICI), a non-profit organization founded in 1975 for the production of contemporary art exhibitions, and was financed by the NEA, the ICI Exhibition Patrons Circle, and private donations. Atkins and Sokolowski wanted to show the variety of Art about AIDS — the curators mentioned 500 American artists. This art ran the gamut from public representations of people with HIV/AIDS (“from media”) to more indirect and personal artworks (“to metaphor”).270 Their thesis was that this range of artistic approaches followed a linear history: while mostly portraits of people with AIDS were created after 1985 — they specified the photography of Rosalind Solomon and Nicholas Nixon, shown in the exhibition as a kind of prelude — approaches later became more diversified at the end of the decade. The exhibition focused on this second phase and aimed to present an overview of the artworks’ medial and thematic diversity.271 The show explicitly aimed at the historicization of Art about AIDS and at placing this art within the history of the epidemic and within art history as a whole. This can be seen in the curators’ catalogue text, in which they linked Art about AIDS to the way in which the Black Plague was dealt with in art in fourteenth century Siena, and also claimed that AIDS activist art built upon the visual tradition of Andy Warhol.272 Finally, Atkins and Sokolowski situated the exhibition in the contemporary obscenity debate of 1989, of which Witnesses was a part. They saw their show as a follow-up to the 1991 Whitney Biennale, which they called the emotional barometer of artistic explorations of AIDS.273 In so doing, they both placed their show within the framework of previous exhibitions and also suggested a (temporal) distance to these debates about art, legitimizing their periodization and historicization of artworks about AIDS. This distancing, in comparison with Witnesses, can also be seen as regards the curators. Atkins and Sokolowski were chosen as guest curators by ICI. Both were part of the New York City art world and mem270 271 272 273

The curators stressed that the term media referred not to artistic means of expression, but to representation in the (mass) media (Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 19). Ibid. See also author’s interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, July 1, 2011 (p. 344) and Document ICI.MM.3. Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 25. Ibid., 26 and 24. In the exhibition’s documentation is a list of selected group shows in non-commercial exhibition spaces, supporting this contextualization of the exhibition (Document ICI.MM.4).

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bers of Visual AIDS — Robert Atkins was a Village Voice columnist and Thomas W. Sokolowski was director of the Grey Art Gallery — yet neither articulated their personal loss. Instead, their attitude to the artworks and artists was reserved; they saw their position as ordering, in contrast to Nan Goldin, who stressed her own membership in the community. Atkins and Sokolowski also held back as regards selection of the artworks. They did not place any thematic limits, justifying this decision with the AIDS crisis itself: “There is little room for the sonorous voice of authority, including the art historian’s often reflexive impulse to categorize.” 274 In contrast to Witnesses, artists were not chosen so they could represent themselves as a particular community. From Media to Metaphor was aimed at a larger public. The curators wished to reach both the general population, meaning people who had not necessarily had personal contact with the disease, as well as AIDS activists and people with AIDS. They used a thematic division to speak to such a heterogeneous audience in an attempt to be both art exhibition and provide AIDS education. The exhibition included not only the artworks, but also educational material on the risk of infection, protection against HIV, and services for people with AIDS. Many books accompanied the artworks across the country, including Douglas Crimp’s special issue of October, exhibitions catalogues such as Rosalind Solomon’s Portraits in the Time of AIDS (1988), and multiple binders with educational material.275 This gave the exhibition an additional function, blurring the borders between art, activism, and AIDS education.276 Besides these New York City exhibitions, there were many other shows in the United States with varying curatorial concepts that presented artistic explorations of HIV/AIDS in the course of the 1990s.277 Unlike the three shows examined above however, they were not in New York City and opened at least five years after Goldin’s show. In light of my research interest in the self-representation of a group of New York City artists, their perusal is not relevant to this study.

274 275

276

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Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 17. See Document ICI.MM.2 and Document ICI.MM.5. In addition, Atkins and Sokolowski wrote to the organizers of the local shows asking them to set up a program of screenings, lectures, and actions by local AIDS organizations to augment the exhibition (See Document ICI.MM.6). Atkins and Sokolowski stressed this in their catalogue: “Maybe this exhibition is unusual because we acknowledge a sometimes blurry divide between art and activism; we don’t always see them as synonymous” (Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 27). These include the exhibitions Significant Losses: Artists Who Have Died From AIDS at the Art Gallery at the University of Maryland; Art’s Lament: Creativity in the Face of Death at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; and Consecrations: The Spiritual in the Time of AIDS at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (all 1994).

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VISUAL AIDS’ DAY WITHOUT ART and WITNESSES, 1989

Like the other exhibitions examined above, the Day Without Art also shows that Witnesses was an integral part of a network of similar projects to promote artistic processing of AIDS and the visibility of people with AIDS. Day Without Art: A National Day of Action and Mourning in Response to the AIDS Crisis took place on December 1, 1989, the second World Health Organization AIDS Awareness Day, and thus during the run of Witnesses. It was a pilot project organized by the non-profit art organization Visual AIDS, founded in mid-1988 in New York City, where it is active to this day.278 Visual AIDS aimed and aims to bridge the art scene and the direct political activism of ACT UP.279 The Day Without Art thus linked political protest and personal loss as reactions to the AIDS epidemic. In 1989, AIDS theorist Douglas Crimp demanded that any broad cultural reaction to AIDS must include just such expressions of both mourning and militancy.280 While in 1987 he had radically supported militancy alone, two years later Crimp stressed that not only activism was urgent, but also mourning for the many who had died of AIDS. Activist militancy alone led to suppression of personal experience and was therefore dangerous, because it could only lead to AIDS activism fatigue over the long term.281 To this day, Visual AIDS continues to raise awareness about AIDS through art projects and — in contrast to AmFar — not to see artworks “only” as commodities to be sold at auctions. The organization supports art projects by HIV-positive artists, archives the works of artists with HIV/AIDS in an enormous database, and takes part in education and prevention campaigns. 282 Visual AIDS was founded by members of the New York City art community to fight the stigmatization of people with AIDS in the press; founding members were Robert Atkins, William Olander, Thomas W. Sokolowski, and Gary Garrels. Garrels was curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis at the time and Olander, who died in March 1989 from AIDS-related causes, was curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.283 All members of Visual AIDS, 278

279 280 281 282

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Founding member Thomas W. Sokolowski called Visual AIDS “an information-gathering service on AIDS-related programs at arts institutions” (cited in Yarrow, “Day Without Art”). See also http://www.thebody.com/visualaids/index.html (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Atkins, “Visual AIDS,” 214. Douglas Crimp’s eponymous article first appeared in 1989 in October (Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy”). Ibid., 149. Atkins, “Day Without Art,” 63. Visual AIDS organizes exhibitions and other events by and about HIV-positive artists, thus connecting the New York art scene and AIDS activism, as in their exhibitions Not Over (2013) or Party Out of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980 (2015) at La MaMa Galleria, New York City. Author’s interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, July 1, 2011 (p. 343); see also Atkins, “Visual AIDS,” 124 and Baker, Art of AIDS, 164 – 168.

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including Nan Goldin and Susan Wyatt, used their contacts to artists and art institutions to promote the organization’s visibility. As Philip Yenawine, then director of education at MoMA, explained to the New York Times in 1989: “We want to use the prestige and credibility of cultural institutions to dramatically call attention to how widespread and serious the problem is.” 284 Goldin had various personal connections to Visual AIDS: active in the organization since its founding in the summer of 1988, in 1989 she formed the Artist’s Caucus of Visual AIDS together with Allen Frame, Frank Moore, and Paul H-O. The caucus organized the Electric Blanket project on December 1, 1990 as a continuation of the Day Without Art. Electric Blanket, p. 78, was a slide show that ran for many hours made up of political slogans, AIDS statistics, statements by politicians, and photographs of people with AIDS and of ACT-UP demonstrations. It was projected on the façade of the Cooper Union in New York City.285 Like ACT UP, it rejected separate spaces for art and used the public-protest strategies of the political AIDS movement by choosing projection as its medium. Originally, the Day Without Art was planned as a national moratorium. Museums, commercial and university galleries, alternative art spaces and theaters were all called upon to close their doors, cover paintings, or interrupt performances. This cultural void was to be a memorial to those in the art world who had died of AIDS and remind people of the artistic losses yet to come.286 Around 600 art institutions, most of them in New York City where Visual AIDS had the strongest presence, followed the call, interpreting it in myriad ways.287 Many museums covered individual paintings, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which took down Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein for five days, replacing it with a poster with information about AIDS. The Guggenheim Museum put a black mourning band around the building, p. 79, and many galleries, including commercial galleries like Mary Boone and Leo Castelli, closed their shows for the entire day.288 284 285

286 287

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Yenawine cited in Yarrow, “Day Without Art.” Williams, “Artists Space,” 149. Electric Blanket was conceived as a project that could be expanded indefinitely and after 1990 toured through the United States and Europe. One thing that came out of it was the designation of the red ribbon as a symbol of the struggle against HIV and AIDS. For more on the AIDS ribbon see Finkelpearl, “Interview” and the author’s interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, July 1, 2011 (p. 343). Author’s interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski, July 1, 2011 (p. 343). Estimates vary between 400 (Deitcher, “Day Without Art,” 125) and 700 institutions (Snow, “Country Without Art”). In the following, I look only at institutions in New York City. These numbers also vary between 225 (Snow, “Country Without Art”) and 150 (Yarrow, “Day Without Art”). Thomas Rhoads of the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Los Angeles said on this topic: “If you live in New York, you’re much more conscious of that impact of ACT UP on the community. You sense the strength of the crisis of AIDS much more in New York than you do here. It sort of dominates the consciousness of people there. I think Los Angeles has a lot of catching up to do in terms of consciousness” (cited in Snow, “Country Without Art”). Yarrow, “Artists Offer.”

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Other institutions used the day to express their affliction, lamentation, and anger regarding AIDS with exhibitions, readings, performances, or memorials. For example the Whitney Museum in New York gave out 8000 postcards printed with Gran Fury’s graphic Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do, p. 80.289 Many art spaces showed works by gay or HIV-positive artists, for example the P. P. O.W Gallery, which screened German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim’s documentary about how AIDS had hit the New York City art scene, Silence Equals Death. Finally, in many places including New York City, parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were laid out.290 MoMA screened a documentary about the NAMES Project, Common Threads; actress Elizabeth Taylor, who had advocated for research and education from the inception of the AIDS epidemic, introduced the film.291 For Witnesses, planned as a small, intimate show, the link to the public action of Visual AIDS meant a clear contextualization within the AIDS discourse. Press coverage of Witnesses also mentioned the upcoming Day Without Art. Shauna Snow for instance, in an article for the Los Angeles Times, linked A Day Without Art to Witnesses and Images & Words. She posited that the debate about funding art rested on a fundamental homophobia within society, which the three projects were now fighting.292 Artists Space and thus Goldin’s show closed on December 1, 1989, as the press release at the occasion of the show’s opening had announced. Clearly, the opening of Witnesses had been timed to allow participation in the Visual AIDS action.293 Furthermore, on November 28 and 29, Nan Goldin and the author Barbara Barg organized readings with texts by David Wojnarowicz, Linda Yablonski, Cookie Mueller, and others — proceeds were donated to ACT UP. Both of these readings were radio broadcast on December 1 as part of the Day Without Art program.294 On the same day, Susan Wyatt spoke on the TV show Good Day New York about the NEA controversy, and Artists Space em ployees volunteered for the day at AIDS organizations such as People With AIDS Coalition or God’s Love We Deliver.295 Finally, Goldin took part in a discussion in Washington D. C. with John Frohnmayer, then president of the NEA, and 30 other Visual AIDS members, some of whom were HIV-positive artists. The 90-minute discussion had been organized by Visual AIDS, as a result of the controversy surrounding Witnesses, to discuss with Frohnmayer ways in which the NEA and art community members could raise awareness around AIDS 289 290

291 292 293 294 295

Ibid. The quilt was shown for example at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (in cooperation with the Bronx AIDS Community Service Project), at the Museum of American Folk Art, and at the New-York Historical Society (Deitcher, “Day Without Art,” 126). Atkins, “Visual AIDS,” 217. The film was based on Ruskin, The Quilt. Snow, “Country Without Art.” See also Atkins, “Day Without Art,” 65. Document Artists Space 1989a. WBAU, 99.5 FM Radio. Document Artists Space / Day Without Art n. d. Ibid.

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and meet the needs of people with AIDS.296 Because of the Witnesses controversy, the topic of the following chapter, Goldin played an important role at the meeting and automatically brought questions about censorship and freedom of opinion to the debate about federal support of art.

296

Yarrow, “Artists Offer.”

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EXHIBITING ART about AIDS

Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing was the first New York City group show of artistic explorations of AIDS, but it was not unique. As we have seen, three group shows followed between 1989 and 1994 that had similar concepts and exhibited significant commonalities. These exhibitions all anchored artistic responses to the epidemic in a political discourse on AIDS related to other social, political, and medical discourses. None of these shows were relevant because of the value of the art alone; they were functionalized in the service of the AIDS movement. (1) All of these exhibitions, as canonizations of Art about AIDS, were rather late reactions to the epidemic, which had been raging in the United States since the early 1980s. The artworks presented were very heterogeneous, because Art about AIDS was defined not through criteria imminent to the works themselves, but was a label used first and foremost for the works of artists who have been affected by AIDS and / or infected with HIV. (2) All three exhibitions were temporary and were curated by people won expressively for this purpose. None of the shows were created by curators responsible for their museum’s regular program. Rather they were special projects shown in alternative art spaces such as university galleries and community centers. Between 1989 and 1994, as an art topic, AIDS was (still) at the margins of the mainstream art world and was not a topic for traditional art institutions. Thus these first exhibitions about AIDS took place on the artistic and social margins, the territory of homosexuals and people with AIDS. Not until 1994, when Art’s Lament: Creativity in the Face of Death ran in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, did the theme of AIDS enter traditional and established art institutions. The Indomitable Spirit, shown in the New York International Center of Photography, was an exception to this rule. It also differed from the other three group shows in that it was planned as a fundraiser. (3) Without exception, the curators chose artists and not artworks. Many artistic responses to AIDS were commissioned for the exhibitions. This strategy makes one key constant visible: in all three shows, neither content nor form of the work was important, nor choosing artworks that fit together. Content took backstage to the representation of a group of artists who had been affected by AIDS. At the same time, these artists were found within the curators’ artistic and personal networks; Goldin for instance chose her friends to help her represent their community, and Heiferman attempted to win over renowned artists from his circle of friends and acquaintances in order to have works that he could sell for a lot of money. Chavez and Atkins / Sokolowski on the other hand, tried to find artists who were as different as possible in order to show the wide variety of Art about AIDS.297 297

A note scribbled on Atkins und Sokolowski’s first list of artists (Document ICI.MM.I) illustrates this well. After Ross Bleckner’s name, who was to be in the show, is a handwritten margin note: “Best works yet to come”, which shows the difficulty of choosing by artist, rather than by work.

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However Sokolowski too stressed that it was not the artworks, but having the “right” names that was decisive for the choice of artists.298 Having the artists belong to a certain network as a specific criteria for the canon of Art about AIDS functioned to help create identity both for the community itself (Witnesses) as well as for the public (From Media to Metaphor) and brought together relevant social and moral artworks regardless of their artistic quality. This theory is supported by the fact that some artists were in more than one of the three exhibitions. Jo Shane and David Wojnarowicz, for example, were in Goldin’s and in Chavez’s shows, while Gran Fury exhibited in Images & Words and in From Media to Metaphor. (4) That all four exhibitions reacted to the epidemic relatively late should be placed within the context of the AIDS discourse of the time. Activists such as Douglas Crimp demanded that art become politicized and artworks and exhibitions put in the service of the AIDS movement. Crimp explicitly stipulated that art — because of the lack of government education and the spread of false information about HIV and AIDS by the mass media — disseminate information, create visibility, and mobilize for direct action until a cure was found.299 He named Gran Fury’s activist art as paradigmatic, especially their emblematic poster Art is Not Enough, p. 81, which expressed precisely Crimp’s message. Crimp’s stipulation stemmed from his infinite unhappiness about the many deaths within the gay community. Leaning on Sigmund Freud, he defined this sadness not as mourning, but as melancholy, which, Freud said, unlike mourning does not include a return to normality.300 The loss of friends and lovers can only end in melancholy for gays and people with AIDS, because for them as stigmatized minorities, no return to a “normal” life was possible.301 This argumentation makes it clear why Crimp believed it important to foster a sense of identity beyond isolation, silence, humiliation, and death. Judith Butler also called for radical AIDS activism and a politicized language of AIDS when she wrote: “As grief remains unspeakable, the rage over the loss can redouble.” 302 Thus the exhibitions about AIDS were more than just a presentation of artworks; they were also political evocations within the AIDS discourse. In the show Images & Words, whose title already named a characteristic of activist art, curator Humberto Chavez called on the presenting artists to rise up and raise their voice. His politically motivated show was a direct answer to Crimp’s “Art is Not Enough.” 298 299 300

301 302

Sokolowski in Yarrow, “Day Without Art.” Crimp, “Cultural Analysis,” 6 – 8. Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy,” 141. On this see Sigmund Freud: “The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in selfreproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment” (Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 243). Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy,” 134. Butler, Psychic Life, 132. See also Eng, “Value of Silence,” 89.

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The Indomitable Spirit in contrast had another goal: its task was not to incite political action through art, but to auction the works of renowned photographers to raise money for AIDS research and the medical support of people with AIDS. Art historian Robert Rosenblum saw the functionalization of art as countering Crimp’s 1987 position. Rosenblum did not believe that art could save lives. He thought it was important in order to deal with the epidemic on an emotional level and as an expression of love for and solidarity with people with AIDS. Nevertheless he called on artists and curators to sell their works as commodities to raise money for scientific research.303 (5) Finally, the four exhibitions have a common thematic denominator. All curators placed the visibility of marginalized groups at the center of their shows. Like Nan Goldin in her photographs, they thus created visible support for a community that had been stigmatized and decimated by AIDS. These exhibitions were meant not only to represent minorities, but to give them a voice and work to meet their needs. The statements by the individual artists in the catalogues of Witnesses and Images & Words, adding to their artworks their political opinions about AIDS and personal expressions of mourning for friends and lovers, must be understood in this light. They give the impression that the artwork alone was not strong enough in the struggle for visibility or was too open to misinterpretation, necessitating these verbal positionings within the AIDS discourse. Taking this one step further, it seems as if the works themselves were reduced by their creators to their AIDS-related message. Thus Greer Lankton wrote in Goldin’s catalogue: “I have found it very difficult to relate my emotional responses to my art work. It seems like nothing I could make would adequately describe the grief I feel.” 304 Both Goldin and Chavez saw themselves as members of the art community they exhibited. Witnesses took a special standpoint in this respect, because the show was a call to Goldin’s own circle of friends not to give up in the fight against AIDS, a desire reflected in her choice of artists who knew one another and who produced images of each other for the exhibition. Heiferman and Atkins / Sokolowski took a more distanced position. The broad scope of art shown in their exhibitions drew less attention to the traumatic experience of the epidemic. Rather they aimed to present the wide variety of artistic responses to AIDS. From Media to Metaphor must be seen as a show that historicizes, rather than a show about the epidemic itself. However this approach was balanced by the dissemination of educational material that spoke to the urgency of the epidemic. It should also not be forgotten that From Media to Metaphor ran from 1992 to 1994, three years after Goldin’s show. This explains in part its distanced position, as the creation of a historicizing overview of Art about AIDS also implies that it belonged to a limited (and past) 303

304

Rosenblum cited in Crimp, “Cultural Analysis,” 5. The focus on the auction is also reflected in the comparatively expensive catalogue, the only one of the four exhibition catalogues to have color reproductions. Artists Space, Witnesses, 22.

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period. That perhaps mirrors a fundamental fatigue in cultural responses to AIDS. Beginning in the early 1990s, a clear drop in media interest in AIDS could be observed. In the mid-1990s, activist collectives such as Gran Fury disbanded. Their militant activism had lost its drive in light of George H. W. Bush’s loss of office to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, and the introduction of combination therapy. An HIV infection was no longer a death sentence but, with medication, a chronic but treatable disease.

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WITNESSES in the CONTEXT of the CULTURE WARS

In contrast to the three exhibitions discussed above, Witnesses received national press even before its opening. As a study of the archival material shows, in November 1989 the exhibition found itself in a public conflict with the NEA, which threatened to withdraw support for the exhibition. The NEA’s reason for no longer wanting to fund was supposedly obscene images and texts in the exhibition and in the catalogue. In the following I shall go into this conflict in more detail, as it is exemplary for the linkage of art and politics — not just during the AIDS epidemic. Thanks to previously inaccessible archival material, the complete chain of events from the NEA grant application in 1988 until the show’s opening in November 1989 can now be presented for the first time. By placing the conflict and the way in which it was seen by the media, the artists, curator Nan Goldin, and Artists Space director Susan Wyatt, we can place the exhibition and its work in the context of the so-called culture wars. This term refers to the conflicts between American liberals and conservatives / Christians in the 1980s, which flared up again as a result of the AIDS epidemic. The conflict between Artists Space and the NEA had been preceded by the ‘art battles’ surrounding the photography of Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. These conflicts allow us to see Goldin’s group show not only within the discourse on AIDS, but in the cultural and political context of the late 1980s, which set the stage for the artistic responses to AIDS presented in Witnesses. In November 1988, Susan Wyatt, as director of Artists Space, applied to the NEA for a project grant for the group show Witnesses. The show’s working title at the time, The Age of AIDS, already made its focus on the epidemic clear.305 On July 13, 1989 they were granted 10,000 dollars for the show, one-third of the total budget for exhibition and catalogue.306 The grant had been approved by NEA president Frank Hodsoll (1981 – 1989), who was at the end of his term. His successor, John E. Frohnmayer, a lawyer from Oregon, had been appointed by George H. W. Bush in July 1989, and began his term on October 3, 1989. He had had nothing to do with the authorization of the grant for Witnesses, but immediately after taking office entered the controversy about the NEA’s funding policies, including support of Goldin’s exhibition.307 From early 305 306 307

Document NEA n. d. and email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 2, 2012, p. 345. Document Wyatt / Art in America n. d. und email correspondence between the author and Susan Wyatt, March 2, 2012, p. 346. Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 101. On the history of the NEA and the role of federal funding of art in the United States see Camp, “Freedom of Expression,” 54 – 58; Dubin, Arresting Images, 278 – 293; and Brenson, Visionaries and Outcasts, 109 – 139. On the prehistory and founding of the NEA see Larson, Reluctant Patron, 202 – 231.

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1989, the NEA had been a target of criticism by Republican senators and members of Congress including Jesse Helms, Dana Rohrabacher, and William Dannemeyer. Together with fundamentalist Christian groups, they accused the NEA of funding obscene art.308 The nationwide controversy was sparked by Piss Christ, p. 82, by New York City photographer Andres Serrano, a close-up photograph of a white crucifix in a yellow liquid. The highly aesthetic image itself does little to incite outrage; the provocation comes from the title, which identifies the liquid as urine. The photograph was first shown with seven more of Serrano’s works in the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art (SECCA) exhibition, Awards of Visual Arts 7 in Winston-Salem, NC. Every year, SECCA chose ten artists from ten regions and awarded them with participation in the exhibition and 15,000 dollars each.309 SECCA received 75,000 dollars annually from the NEA for promotional programs; thus Serrano’s photography was indirectly funded with federal money. In April 1989, the president (Reverend Donald Wildmon) and several members of the Christian fundamentalist American Family Association protested in U. S. Congress against NEA support of this “anti-Christian bigotry.” 310 This religious mobilization triggered action: one month later, senators Jesse Helms and Alfonso D’Amato voiced their indignation over NEA support of Serrano’s “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity.” 311 D’Amato’s short speech focused on the burden of art funding on the American taxpayer. Accordingly, the words “taxpayer,” “taxpayer’s money” or “people’s tax dollars” appeared six times in the page-long text.312 D’Amato avoided any mention of curtailing freedom of speech or freedom of opinion, to prevent the opposition from accusing him of conservative censorship of Serrano’s artistic freedom. The debate flared up again in June 1989 on the occasion of a retrospective of the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, who had died of AIDS in March 1989. In 1988, the NEA had promised the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) a sum of 30,000 dollars for the travelling exhibit of Mapplethorpe’s work, The Perfect Moment.313 After the 308

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310

311 312 313

The 1989 definition of obscene art had been set by the Supreme Court in 1973 (Miller v. California, 413 US 15 (1973), cited in Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49). Helms’s accusation implied among other things that something obscene could not be art and therefore did not deserve support. For a deeper discussion of the pornography debates in the 1980s and 1990s see Heartney, “Pornography” and Meyer, “Rock Hudson.” The travelling exhibition was in Los Angeles and Pittsburg in 1988 and 1989 and ended on January 29, 1989 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, NC. On the debate about the photographs see Fox, “NEA under Siege” and Pindell, “Breaking Silence.” Letter by Wildmon from April 5, 1989 in Bolton, Culture Wars, 27. Wildmon sent a total of 380,000 letters, 178,000 of which were sent to church congregations (Phelan, “Money Talks,” 5 and Meyer, “The Red Envelope,” 4). On the AFA and Donald Wildmon see Hunter, Culture Wars, 228 – 237 and Dubin, Arresting Images, 226 – 248. On the AFA and its use of publicity see Bruce, Pray TV. Congressional Record (May 18, 1989) National Endowment for the Arts, S5594 – S5595, cited in Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 10. Ibid. The exhibition’s entire budget was 200,000 dollars. After showing in D. C. , the exhibition was planned to be shown in Hartford, CT, Berkeley, CA, Cincinnati, OH, and Boston, MA. However after the controversy it travelled only to Cincinnati (Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 12).

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show had already been at the University of Pennsylvania in December 1988 and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in February 1989, it became the center of a national debate on federal support of obscene art when it was about to open at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D. C. on June 8, 1989. In this case too, the controversy was sparked by individual photographs. The images in question were from the series X Portfolio, p. 83, sexually explicit portraits of members of the gay sadomasochistic subculture, which made up 13 of the show’s 175 photographs.314 The director of the gallery, Christina Orr-Cahall, bowed to pressure from Jesse Helms, other conservative politicians, the AFA, and the Christian Coalition, and cancelled the show on June 3, 1989. Beth Eck explained Orr-Cahall’s move, criticized by artists and members of the art world as self-censorship, as motivated by fear of future funding cuts. The Corcoran Gallery had no independent foundation and was dependent upon federal funding.315 On the evening of the planned opening date, people protested the cancellation of the exhibition. As part of the protest, slides of Mapplethorpe’s photographs were projected from the street onto the gallery’s entrance, including an early self-portrait (1980) of Mapplethorpe. A photo of the projection appeared on the September 1989 cover of Artforum, p. 84.316 Richard Meyer named this process an example of the dialectical moment of censorship. Censorship of artworks does not make the works disappear, but brings them even more into the public eye. Censorship generates limits (of visibility), but at the same time also reactions to those limits. While silencing artists, it provokes reactions to the silence.317 Here Meyer drew from Judith Butler’s thesis on the censorship of texts, in which she spoke of a “productive form of power.”318 Forbidding or closing the exhibition led to a reinterpretation of Orr-Cahall’s self-censorship and drew the public’s attention to the discredited works. Mapplethorpe’s self-portrait on the cover of Artforum supports the thesis that this attempt to take his images out of the public eye led to their increased dissemination.319 Five weeks after the Corcoran Gallery’s cancellation, the exhibition ran for almost three weeks at an alternative art space, the Washington Project for the Arts, and was seen by 40,000 people, an overwhelming public response.320 Rather than next go to Hartford, Connecticut as planned, the show was brought to the University Art Museum in Berkeley and opened at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati in April 1990. As a result, the center’s director Dennis Barrie was charged 314

315 316 317 318 319 320

Meyer, “Jesse Helms,” 136. These photographs were to be exhibited in high tables so that children could not see them. For a detailed examination of the Mapplethorpe controversy see Crimp, “Painful Pictures”; Dubin, Arresting Images, 171 – 193; and Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 52 – 80. Eck, “Cultural Conflict,” 93. See also Meyer, “Barring Desire,” 208. The protest was led by the DC Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Oppression Under Target. Meyer, “The Red Envelope,” 15. Butler, “Ruled Out,” 251. Meyer, “Barring Desire,” 208. Phelan, “Money Talks,” 7.

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with obscenity and using minors in pornography.321 He was found not guilty after a ten-day trial in fall 1990.322 In reaction to NEA funding of Serrano’s and Mapplethorpe’s photographs, on July 26, 1989, Jesse Helms proposed an amendment to the guidelines for NEA grants and a general ban on funding “indecent or obscene art.” To Helms, this meant works: 1.

2. 3.

including but not limited to depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts; or, material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or non-religion; or, material which denigrates, debases or reviles a person, group, or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, handicap, age, or national origin.323

Helms also demanded decreasing the NEA budget to 400,000 dollars annually and barring both SECCA and the ICA, organizers of the controversial exhibitions, from receiving further NEA grants.324 Fundamental to what was known as the Helms Amendment was its definition of obscene art. It was based on the 1989 Supreme Court decision that defined an artwork as obscene when it fulfilled all three of the following — broadly interpretable — conditions: 1.

2. 3.

the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest, and the work depicts, or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specified by the statute, and the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.325

On October 7, 1989 the Helms Amendment was modified and a more moderate version was passed for a period of three years.326 The law combined Helms’ first demand with the Supreme Court’s third definition and left the NEA with power of discretion: “[material], which in the judgment of 321

322

323 324 325 326

Mahon, Eroticism, 229. The photo in question was a portrait of five-year-old Jesse McBride from 1976, in which the boy sat naked on the back on an armchair (on this see Meyer, “Jesse Helms”). Meyer, “Barring Desire,” 213. This was the first time that charges had been brought against a museum in the United States. For more extensive information see Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper, 202 – 203 and Carr, “Mapplethorpe,” 264 – 280. Helms cited in Phelan, “Money Talks,” 7. Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49; see also Jensen, “Cultural Politics,” 8. 413 US 15 (1973), cited in Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49. On the legal definition of obscene art see also Adler, “Post-Modern Art.” On the perception of the Helms Amendment in the art world, especially as regards the Mapplethorpe controversy see Meyer, “Jesse Helms” and Dubin, Arresting Images, 240 – 245.

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the National Endowment for the Arts or the National Endowment for the Humanities may be considered obscene.” 327 It also cut the NEA budget by 45,000 dollars and barred SECCA and ICA from further funding for a period of “just” five years. Finally, an independent committee was set up to monitor NEA grant processes. The new law applied to all grants accepted by the NEA after October 1, 1989, which means that the application for Goldin’s exhibition did not fall under the ban on funding supposedly obscene art. The show itself however, ran after this deadline, which might explain Frohnmayer’s harsh reaction. Carole S. Vance in 1990 warned that although the art world celebrated the law as a victory for the freedom of art and of opinions, it could result in increased self-censorship — such as the cancellation of the Mapplethorpe retrospective. A regulatory law moved the discussion about obscenity in art out of the public scrutiny of the law and into the private sphere of the NEA, where “anxious arts administrators, untrained in law” would ask themselves which works were to be classified as obscene. The Miller Standard, in place since 1973, was now replaced by vague intuition.328 The Helms Amendment was a censure of the NEA’s grant practice with wide-reaching consequences. Although the NEA was still allowed to make its own decisions about artworks, conservative politicians had greatly limited the institution’s scope of action. In 1990, the “obscenity clause” entered into force, forcing all grant applicants to pledge that they would not use NEA money for the production or presentation of so-called obscene material.329

The CONTROVERSY between ARTISTS SPACE and the NEA, FALL 1989

The events described above led Susan Wyatt to contact NEA program director David Bancroft in October 1989 out of concern that Witnesses could lead to a new funding scandal since some contributions — Wyatt did not specify but spoke only of a catalogue text and some photographs — might be construed as obscene.330 Wyatt’s later justification for taking this step was to protect the NEA and, more so, the artists and artworks in the exhibition, from public defamation. She proposed funding the catalogue (with David Wojnarowicz’s incendiary text) and the exhibition separately, since the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation had offered to give 5000 dollars for the catalogue (total cost: 7,000 dollars). Bancroft accepted Wyatt’s proposal with the stipulation that the original exhibition budget be cut from 37,000 to 30,000 dollars to make the separation clear, which postponed the process. 327 328 329 330

Public Law 101 – 121, October 23, 1989, cited in Bolton, Culture Wars, 121 – 123. See also Oreskes, “Senate Votes.” Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49. Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper, 185. Document Wyatt / Art in America n. d. and Frohnmayer 1989. See also Vince A. Carducci, who quoted Wyatt as saying the following: “In order for the NEA not to have a controversy on its hands without having an opportunity to get prepared for it, I decided to contact the NEA” (Carducci, “NEA Recalls,” 11).

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While these negotiations were in progress however, the exhibition announcement was sent to everyone on the Artists Space mailing list with the information that the NEA had funded both exhibition and catalogue. While Wyatt and Bancroft were corresponding about changes to the budget, NEA president John E. Frohnmayer was informed by Ana Stele, a member of the NEA administrative staff, about the Witnesses case. Frohnmayer then also contacted Wyatt and, on October 31, 1989, sent program director Andrew Oliver to New York City to examine the artworks and the exhibition catalogue.331 At the meeting of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations in Washington D. C. on November 3, 1989, Frohnmayer gave Wyatt a confidential letter telling her that the exhibition was a “violation of the spirit of the Congressional directive.” He asked her to reject the NEA funding since the exhibition was inappropriate in light of “our current political climate.” He also demanded that Artists Space openly declared that neither exhibition nor catalogue had been funded by the NEA.332 Before Wyatt could respond to this demand, Frohnmayer published an open statement on the withdrawal of NEA funding: The show had become so politicized that it no longer met the artistic criteria. There is a certain amount of sexually explicit material, but the primary problem is the political nature. I can understand the frustration and the huge sense of loss and abandonment that people with AIDS feel, but I don’t think the appropriate place of the National Endowment is to fund political statements. 333 A few days later, the board of Artists Space decided not to retract their grant application, but to insist upon the sum originally offered by the NEA. On November 8, 1989, Wyatt sent Frohnmayer a fax informing him of this decision.334 On the same day, the New York Times reported on the conflict and printed excerpts from Wyatt and Frohnmayer’s correspondence, in which the latter named the political nature of the exhibition as the reason for the withdrawal of funding.335 In a speech before the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies on November 10, 1989, Frohnmayer retracted his statement and claimed that he had inadvisably used the word “political.” He now criticized the show for an “erosion of the artistic content.”336 This was now—after his charges of obscenity and political content—his third justification for rescinding support. 331 332 333 334 335

336

Document Wyatt/ Art in America n. d. See also Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 99. Document Frohnmayer 1989. See also Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 244. Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 100. Frohnmayer cited in Parachini, “Arts Groups.” Document Wyatt 1989. Wyatt gave the fax and Frohnmayer’s letter of November 3, 1989 to the press. Accordingly, the New York Times cited him as saying “I believe that political discourse ought to be in the political arena and not in a show sponsored by the Endowment” (Honan, “New York Art Exhibition”). Frohnmayer cited in Kastor, “NEA Chief.”

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Five days later, one day before the show’s opening, Frohnmayer visited Artists Space for the first time. In his 1993 memoir, Leaving Town Alive, he described this meeting and the exhibition: “It wasn’t as crude as Drew Oliver had described, but more oppressive and hopeless and depressing.” 337 In an interview following this visit, he made it clear that he believed the Helms Amendment was unnecessary and at first signalized willingness to compromise.338 He officially retracted the withdrawal on November 16 and (again) funded the Artists Space exhibition with 10,000 dollars. The catalogue was financed by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, as Wyatt had proposed from the beginning. On the evening of the same day, more than 1000 people thronged to the opening.339 In front of Artists Space, visitors protested against the Helms Amendment and the conduct of the NEA. In the first days alone, around 5000 people saw the show. The expected number of total visitors was thus exceeded in the very first week. Publicity due to media interest in the conflict helped to bring a daily average of 600 visitors until the exhibition closed on January 6, 1990.340 This step-by-step overview of the conflict makes it clear how politically charged art could be in the heated political climate of 1989, and that the NEA was floundering in its role as a federal organ of the Republican-led government that still wanted to support a broad spectrum of art. The discussion surrounding Serrano, Mapplethorpe, and Witnesses show how inescapably this situation led to controversy in the late 1980s, although the artworks in Goldin’s show had not even been seen by the public during the conflict.

337 338 339 340

Frohnmayer, Leaving Town Alive, 83. Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 102. Loughery, “Frohnmayer’s Folly,” 23. Shepard, “The Arts.” See also the press release on longer opening hours from December 26 to 30, 1989, because already the show had had more than 9000 visitors (Document Artists Space 1989b).

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FUNDING WITNESSES: PERCEPTION of the CONFLICT

The conflict with the NEA brought enormous publicity to Witnesses. National press followed the conflict as demonstrated by the multitude of articles, news items, and commentaries. It is important to remember that at the time of the conflict, neither the catalogue nor the artworks were available to press and public. The supposition that the exhibition and catalogue contained obscene material was enough to reignite the public controversy about federal funding of art that had surrounded Serrano’s and Mapplethorpe’s photos. We can therefore divide the perception of the conflict between Artists Space and the NEA into two phases: in reports before the opening, when it was only possible to make presumptions about the content of the artworks (and which therefore concentrated on the conflict between Wyatt and Frohnmayer), and in reports after the opening, in which the often hysterical statements made previously about supposedly obscene art were, on the whole, relativized.

The CONTROVERSY in the PRESS

The first articles on the funding conflict found in the exhibition’s archive are from November 8, 1989. They presumed the show included explicit images of homosexuality and named it the first test of the Helms Amendment, although Witnesses did not yet fall under the directive.341 At the same time, support of the exhibition with its assumedly obscene content was named as the first challenge for John Frohnmayer, whose actions the press was following closely. On the one hand, most reporters recognized the difficulty of his position in upholding the ban on funding so-called obscene art and at the same time supporting artists, including alternative exhibitions. On the other hand, he often met with critique and malice and was called inconsistent and a laughingstock.342 Both the press and the art community doubted his integrity and many news reporters described him as a weak NEA president. Nan Goldin herself was quoted on Frohnmayer in the New York Tribune: “It seems he’s playing to the people with the most influence. But the show has gotten the attention it deserves. It’s too bad it had to be this way.” 343 In his large-scale 1992 study on the American controversy around federal funding of art, Stephen C. Dubin found that Frohnmayer could only lose this conflict.344 341 342 343 344

Honan, “New York Art Exhibition.” Robinson, “NEA Restores Grant”; Kramer, “Art Show on AIDS”; and Kastor, “NEA Panel Fears.” Watson, “NEA Switches.” Dubin, Arresting Images, 207. In 1991, Frohnmayer was cited in the Los Angeles Times as saying “I screwed up” about the conflict around Witnesses (Parachini, “NEA Chief Admits Misstep”).

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The press branded Witnesses as the “latest art-versus-obscenity controversy,” which took place immediately after the debates about Serrano’s and Mapplethorpe’s photographs.345 These earlier conflicts on funding socalled obscene photographs were continually cited by the press, for example in Ben Currie’s claim that a new conflict had erupted between the “country’s best-known homophobes” and the art community or its current representative, David Wojnarowicz.346 These early articles focused on the conflict between Wyatt and Frohnmayer, who were both directly quoted. As director of Artists Space and president of the NEA respectively, they were decision-makers and representatives of their institutions. Before the opening, neither Nan Goldin nor the participating artists were asked to give opinions. In an article for the Washington Post, Elizabeth Kastor did quote the NEA’s Visual Arts Organizations Panel, the commission that originally decided to fund the exhibition, which expressed concern that Frohnmayer was undermining their decision and acting of his own volition — something he could do by virtue of his office.347 These reports circled around the fundamental question of whether Goldin’s show was an artistic or a political statement. John Frohnmayer’s three different justifications for withdrawing support were often cited,348 while Susan Wyatt’s counterarguments were quoted. “It [Witnesses] has not changed from art to politics. It is art.” 349 she stated, as well as: “The Congress is setting up a situation of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ art. And that is just what we criticize the Soviet Union for.” 350 With this she took up the topics of censorship and freedom of opinion, opposing the common charge — brought in particular against Serrano’s photography — that the NEA was squandering American tax money to support art of dubious value. While the press usually remained objective and informative or supported NEA funding of the exhibition, some conservative authors were quite critical. William H. Honan for example spoke against NEA funding of the catalogue because David Wojnarowicz’s text disparaged public figures (Helms, O’Connor, Dannemeyer) and wrongly blamed them for AIDS.351 James Gardner also expressed criticism in an article for the National Review which began as follows: How many times does it need to be stated that the government never sought to prohibit the display of these works of art, only that it questioned, for a moment, the necessity of its sponsoring them? 352 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352

Currie, “Gay Artists.” Ibid. Kastor, “NEA Panel Fears.” Frohnmayer cited in Russell, “Images of Grief.” Wyatt cited in Honan, “Arts Endowment Withdraws Grant.” Wyatt cited in Treen, “A Mixed Bag.” Honan, “AIDS Show Opens with Grant.” Honan mainly reported on the controversy for the New York Times. Gardner, “False Witness.”

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Right-wing columnist Patrick Buchanan, whose explicitly homophobic rhetoric had brought him a loyal following of conservative readers, argued in a similar vein. In an article for the New York Post he accused the gay and art communities of an “infantile disorder” when they demanded federal funding for their “filthy speech.” He further called for the erection of a wall between “the arts and the gay community on one hand, and the U. S. Treasury on the other hand,” because the former had already alienated themselves from the general population. He believed the AIDS epidemic and the many deaths in the gay community were the deserved punishment of these immoral outsiders and wrote: “Surely a showdown is coming.”353 This kind of defamation led AIDS activists such as Douglas Crimp to insist that the debates about supposedly obscene art had nothing to do with the social meaning or legality of art, and everything with the oppression of gays and people with AIDS. In Crimp’s view, many members of the art community had already accepted the language of the Helms Amendment, and with it the equation of obscenity and homoeroticism.354 Neither Wyatt and Frohnmayer nor the press attempted to answer the difficult question about the border between art and politics. There were simply no criteria for an objective judgment of legally obscene art that was per definition void of any real value. This wording shows how useless the Helms Amendment was for the appraisal of artworks and exhibitions, and that its main purpose was determent and upholding conservative values.355 An examination of the content of artworks was secondary for Helms and his cohorts. In general, the American press mirrored the heated political climate surrounding art that had existed since the first controversy about Andres Serrano. However in the case of Witnesses, lack of information about the suspect artworks encouraged a rather hysterical discussion on the presentation and promotion of so-called obscene art. Many authors, such as Patrick Buchanan, used the press as a vehicle for the promotion of their own political views. In contrast, the New York Times presented a broad spectrum of conflicting personal views with long articles by journalists including Grace Glueck, William H. Honan, and John Russell. After the opening of the exhibition, the media rhetoric died down and the tone became much less emotional. In these reports, the main question was whether or not the artworks were legally obscene. Most of the articles answered this question with a clear “no,” and made a point of stating that the turmoil surrounding the show could not be explained by the works shown. When the doors opened to the public, it became clear to most that the charge of obscenity was unfounded: “None of the works 353 354 355

Buchanan, “Why Subsidize Defamation.” Crimp cited in Glueck, “Border Skirmish.” Barnes, “Art Grant Ping-Pongs.” See also Adler, “Post-Modern Art,” who argued that the legal definition of obscene art could not be applied to postmodern strategies of appropriation and the combination of images and texts.

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seem particularly political,” wrote Joseph Treen in the Boston Globe,356 and Paul Richard remarked flippantly in the Washington Post on Mark Morrisroe’s photographs: “That is as threatening as it gets.” 357 The show was seen as neither obscene nor scandalous but as “no better, and no worse, than most young artists’ group shows seen in urban alternative spaces.” […] It is a surprisingly innocuous, often amateurish, cry of lamentation.” 358 Richard shared this view with other authors who (depending on their political views) described the exhibition as unremarkable and unimportant or as personal and emotional.359 In general, these reviews focused not on the individual works, but on the show as a whole as a communal expression of a group that had been affected by AIDS, as John Zeaman also emphasized: “It is the sense of community, more than the quality of any specific work, that gives this show its power.” 360 In the controversy surrounding Serrano and Mapplethorpe, the site of contention was individual works. While this underscored the impact of these works, necessitating their removal from the sphere of the general population, reports on Witnesses belittled the power of the individual artworks, reading them only en masse as a statement by artists affected by AIDS. This perception of the show had much to do with David Wojnarowicz’s invective in the catalogue. His clear political stance was read as representative for the entire exhibition. After the uproar surrounding the NEA grant, the works themselves were pushed to the background and media interest centered on Wojnarowicz’s text. Few articles even referred to individual artworks. Whether this disinterest was due to the one-dimensionality of the works, or whether it was the youth of the artists themselves — gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who were themselves (mostly) HIV-positive — some of whom had never before exhibited and who failed to meet the criteria of the established art scene or the general population, shall be explored in the following through a closer look at the individual works. The conflict between the NEA and Artists Space was of greater interest to the American daily newspapers than to art journals and magazines. The latter’s response to the exhibition, positive without exception, came rather late, in January 1990. In Art in America, Calvin Reid praised the show’s social relevance as an attack on the repressive social climate in which people with AIDS must live each day.361 John Loughery in New Art Examiner and Sylvia Hochfield in Art News also underlined the exhibition’s importance and exalted Susan Wyatt as the heroine of the controversy who had exposed Frohnmayer’s inexperience and 356 357 358 359 360 361

Treen, “A Mixed Bag.” Richard, “Witnesses.” Ibid. See Gibson, “Art, Moral and NEA”; Kramer, “Art Show on AIDS”; Lipson, “Controversial AIDS”; and Honan, “AIDS Show Opens with Grant.” Zeaman, “Beyond Politics.” Reid, “Beyond Mourning,” 56.

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weakness.362 As expected, the art scene supported Artists Space and read the Witnesses controversy as an attack on free speech and freedom of opinion.363 But like the daily newspapers, the art magazines also failed to examine the individual artworks or the exhibition concept, treating the show instead as a sign of the visibility of Goldin’s community. The authors did give the works themselves some attention, but Reid too spoke of a modest and personal show that did not merit the attack it suffered from the George H. W. Bush administration.364

The CONTROVERSY in the EYES of ARTISTS SPACE and GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY

Susan Wyatt, Nan Goldin, and the participating artists also made statements about the conflict with the NEA, whether in articles, letters, or interviews. These statements show that although they presented a united front, they held very different opinions about the NEA, and about Wyatt’s actions. Not unlike the art journals, Wyatt in her January 1990 interview stressed her worries about the threat to freedom of opinion and of expression. She compared her exhibition to a public library, which is also financed by taxes even though not every taxpayer agrees with the political opinion of every book. But it is this diversity that is key to the vitality of a democratic society.365 Wyatt was criticized sharply by David Wojnarowicz and other artists for separating the exhibition and the catalogue. He felt that as the person in charge of the show, she had a responsibility to stand up and support the artists involved, which included standing up for his catalogue text. 366 He said her compromise was egoistic and accused her of bowing to a law made to silence homosexuals.367 In doing so, Artists Space was helping a law that promoted AIDSphobia and (self-) censorship and deliberately prevented AIDS education out of a fear of budget cuts, giving more power to conservative politicians and fundamentalists.368 While most of the artists who contributed to Witnesses, like most members of the art and gay communities, had signalized support for the fight against the NEA and for freedom of speech, Artists Space had acted in a way that implied that “the structure of the 362 363

364 365 366 367 368

Loughery, “Frohnmayer’s Folly,” 23 and Hochfield, “Caught in the Crossfire,” 148. As an aside in this vein, after the controversy, composer Leonard Bernstein demonstrated his protest of the NEA by turning down the National Medal of Arts, which was to have been presented to him by President George H. W. Bush on the day of the exhibition’s opening (see for example Robinson, “NEA Restores Grant”). Reid, “Beyond Mourning,” 55. Wyatt cited in Stix, “Interview,” 51. Document Wojnarowicz 1989a. Wojnarowicz was referring here to the Helms Amendment, which came into force in early October 1989. Document Wojnarowicz 1989a. Wojnarowicz also claimed that the NEA’s retraction would not have held up in court. On this see also his interview with lawyer Steven Pico, who said that basing the retraction of the exhibition’s funding on political grounds put the NEA on weak legal standing (Interview on Jan. 15, 1990, cited in Dubin, Arresting Images, 215).

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art world will not go to bat for people’s rights beyond a certain extent; and that that is acceptable.” 369 Wyatt justified her actions as motivated the wish to avoid a destructive controversy such as the ones around the works of Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. Both artists were defamed as vulgar, their works labelled “morally reprehensible trash” and SECCA and ICA besmirched as irresponsible institutions. Wyatt wanted to protect the artworks in Witnesses from the consequences of such debates; after all, Serrano’s photograph did not become the subject of controversy until after the exhibition was closed.370 Her forthrightness with the NEA was motivated by the desire to give Frohnmayer a chance to make up his own mind about the exhibition without pressure from the outside.371 She also believed it important that the NEA continued to exist. It fulfilled an important function within a democratic society and should not let its decisions be clouded by the contemporary climate of fear.372 The same was true for the art community, which could not simply hope for a better political climate, but needed to stand up for the freedom of speech, opinion, and art. The art community should not make concessions out of fear of Jesse Helms’ slander. Such cowardice could only end in witch-hunts such as those against SECCA and ICA, and in the worst case in a fascist or totalitarian society.373 Wyatt’s actions were also condemned as cowardly, Dubin explained, because of the conflict of interest between the financial security of Artists Space and the needs and desires of the artists. Dubin claimed the Artists Space financial policy, which stipulated that new sponsors be found each year, contributed to Wyatt’s cautious behavior as regards her institution’s public stance, forcing the director to react defensively.374 In a declaration released on November 16, 1989 Nan Goldin backed Wyatt’s decision to finance exhibition and catalogue separately, but she also expressed disapproval of John Frohnmayer. Like Wyatt, she used the controversy to call for an increased struggle against the restrictions of the Helms Amendment.375 Unlike Wyatt, she was not dependent upon future support from the NEA, nor did she have to deal with the effects of the conflict on Artists Space. As guest curator, she represented only herself and the artists in her show and could afford to express more biting criticism of the NEA. 376 Wojnarowicz shared Goldin’s disdain of Frohnmayer and called his behavior the “legalized 369 370 371

372 373 374 375 376

Document Wojnarowicz 1989a. See also Document Goldin et al. n. d. Document Wyatt / Fear or Freedom n. d. Wyatt felt that it was dangerous to draw national attention to the small exhibition space, which had forced Artists Space into the eye of a political firestorm: “The risk of such attention is deadly serious for an organization which strives to present the non-flashy aspect of art” (Ibid.). Document Wyatt / Art in America n. d. Document Wyatt / Fear or Freedom n. d. Ibid. Document Goldin 1989. Dubin, Arresting Images, 212.

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and systemic murder of homosexuals and their legislated silence; it is about the legislated invisibility and silencing of people with AIDS.” 377 Like Wojnarowicz, catalogue author Linda Yablonski in a November 12, 1989 letter to the editor of the New York Times, stated that Frohnmayer’s defunding of art exploring AIDS could and must be defined as political.378 In her text for the catalogue, “Et Tu Brute?,” she called for a war against AIDS in which exhibitions and artworks are the weapons. Yablonski used this war metaphor to describe both the fight for the rights and visibility of people with AIDS and for the medical fight against HIV.379 This use of the language of war and siege — metaphors that Susan Sontag found in particular in descriptions of cancer380 — is a sign of the lack of fitting terminology for the discussion of AIDS and its meaning, also after 1989. The sudden appearance, unknown origin, and deadly danger of the HIV virus all contributed to the inability to find an appropriate language for the discussion of the epidemic; recourse to the metaphor of war shows the helplessness of the speakers. Brigitte Weingart has therefore also diagnosed AIDS as a linguistic crisis. Speechlessness in face of the epidemic led to the use of war metaphors that anthropomorphized the virus in order to describe it as an active subject to be fought.381 Judith Williamson also spoke against the virus as a subject, because a virus has no meaning and is first accorded certain characteristics and functions through its entry into a culture that is already encoded as homophobic and focused on blame and guilt. It is not the virus that provoked the hysterical and fearful reactions to AIDS — its lack of meaning made this impossible — but its embeddedness in pre-existing concepts of perception was fed by societal horror scenarios.382 HIV/AIDS thus became an independent subject that intentionally attacked certain people, i. e. actively sought out its victims. Those infected thus must be guilty of something that justified their infection and legitimized their ostracization from society.383 This belief, which Williamson criticized, is exactly what can be observed in statements by the religious right. Lack of knowledge about the origin of HIV and AIDS’ sudden appearance — Weingart continued — led even medical jargon to become mixed with similar linguistic constructions and the borders between metaphoric and scientific language became permeable. She dubbed this language “contagious words” that move between medical, political, 377 378

379 380

381 382 383

Document Wojnarowicz 1989. Yablonski criticized the NEA for endangering the living situations of HIV-positive artists. Their ignorance about the exhibition allowed them to simply equate art by people with AIDS with obscenity and thus deny its funding (Document Yablonski 1989). Cookie Mueller, in her catalogue text, also spoke of AIDS as a war zone in which her friends were dying (Mueller, “A Last Letter,” 14). Sontag, Illness and Aids, 64. Philipp Sarasin too has clearly shown that since the time when Ludwig Fleck worked on bacteriology, war metaphors have been used to describe microbiological processes in the human body (Sarasin, “Infizierte Körper,” esp. 192 – 193). Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 21. Williamson, “Every Virus,” 69 – 70. See also Willen, “Viren.” Williamson, “Every Virus,” 74 – 76.

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and social discourses.384 The continuum of metaphorical and biomedical discourse was upheld and stereotyping language found its way into science, transporting societal prejudices against homosexuals.385 AIDS does and did not exist without the linguistic system that theorizes and represents the epidemic. Susan Sontag, in her seminal essay AIDS and its Metaphors, also discussed the history of the military metaphor in the discourse of medicine, for example terms such as the body’s “defenses” or the “invasion” of viruses.386 She also pointed out the damage to and stigmatization of people with AIDS because of this metaphorical demonization of illness as foreign, the enemy or invader, and called for describing illnesses without recourse to metaphors.387 She also saw the body itself as a metaphor for society.388 If the body is ill and no longer functions, this mirrors the social condition. Thus these metaphorical meanings apply not only to AIDS, but to every illness. Particularly in Western societies, which treat illness as taboo, sickness is explained with metaphorical rather than medical language, although “nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning — that meaning being invariably a moralistic one.” 389 The artists in the Witnesses show signed a militant joint statement that was hung in the exhibition space.390 Because of the continuing decimation of their community, they proclaimed their right to self-expression and promoted an authentic and diverse artistic response to AIDS. They stressed the credibility of the artworks because of the artists’ intimacy with AIDS. Like curator Nan Goldin, the artists themselves believed that art about AIDS should first and foremost send a message to speak for their specific community. Membership in this group seemed to have been key to “authentic” art that derived its legitimation through personal experience with AIDS. It was the controversy with the NEA that made Goldin’s show into a mouthpiece for people with AIDS beyond the exhibition itself. But its political potential did not come from the artworks shown. Goldin had encouraged the artists in her show to worry less about making a political statement and rather deal with the impact AIDS had had on them through their art; the politicization of the show came through the public debate about its financing.

384 385

386 387 388 389 390

Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 30 – 34. Ibid., 21. Jan Zita Grover also noted that social and historical processes are mirrored in language. AIDS is thus a cultural construction, not only a physical disease, but also an artifact of social and sexual transgression, fragile identities, and other projection screens (Grover, “AIDS Keywords,” 17 – 18). Sontag, Illness and Aids, 97 – 99. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 94. Ibid., 58. Document Goldin et al. n. d.

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UNDERSTANDING and CONTEXTUALIZING the ART BATTLES of 1989

In general, the cultural and political controversies centered on whether and how art should be political and whether political art should receive funding from a federal foundation such as the NEA.391 Fundamental to these questions was the search for a universal definition of art and the question of who had the authority to define art as such. Important to the 1989 controversies and to their position within the American culture wars was that these questions were debated in the very different discourses of politics, media, law, and art.392 Some fundamental differences between the three art battles can be observed: Serrano’s Piss Christ was shown in SECCA’s travelling exhibition until early 1989 and did not inspire protest during the show. Donald Wildmon (AFA) became aware of the photograph after the exhibition had closed, so that the debate began without direct connection to the work in question. The photograph had been on public display beforehand and was presented in material on the exhibition. Mapplethorpe’s photographs also came into crossfire from conservative politicians and Christian groups after Orr-Cahall reacted to the criticism and cancelled the show. Both photographs had thus been open to public view, at least temporarily, before the debate about their supposed obscenity began. Furthermore, the controversy was about one photograph and one photographic series, which were attacked and politicized, while the other works in the exhibitions played no role.393 The controversy about Witnesses in contrast found its way into the public eye after what had originally been an internal conflict between Wyatt and Frohnmayer. Unlike the controversies about Serrano and Mapplethorpe, characterized by pressure from conservative politicians on the exhibiting institutions and the NEA, Wyatt and Frohnmayer acted of their own volition without political pressure from the outside. Not until the conflict with Frohnmayer peaked did Wyatt go public. At this point in time, the show was open neither to the public, nor to the NEA. While concrete accusations of blasphemy and pornography were made about Serrano’s and Mapplethorpe’s works, such charges could not be made against the artworks in Witnesses. The obscenity of their content was a matter of speculation. This explains why the NEA demanded the entire exhibition be closed rather than individual works — which Frohnmayer had not yet seen at the time — removed. The exhibition as a whole was simply deemed too political for the reigning 391 392 393

Kidd, Legislating Creativity, 81. Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper, 10 and Mahon, Eroticism, 229. Dubin, Arresting Images, 207.

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societal climate. That this reduction of the individual works to their common statement continued after the opening was more than anything a result of Wojnarowicz’s catalogue text. Its provocative message seemed to validate the NEA’s accusations and made what was a rather introspective and personal art exhibition more political. It is also important to look more closely at the relationship between the political character of Goldin’s show and the charge of obscenity. Witnesses was discussed in the media as an exhibition of so-called obscene art, but Frohnmayer had only objected to its political character. Both accusations — against politicization and against supposed obscenity — were meant to classify the exhibition as unworthy of funding and thus elicited the same reaction. Frohnmayer’s accusation and his unease with Goldin’s show was related to its exploration of AIDS and, as a result, with the issue and presentation of homosexuality: in the artistic theme of the exhibition, in the fact that most of the artists were affected because they were gay or bisexual, and in David Wojnarowicz’s catalogue text in which he described his life as an HIV-positive gay man. In the Mapplethorpe conflict as well, his homosexuality and death from AIDS-related causes dominated the discussion about the homoerotic and pornographic content of his photographs. Jesse Helms spoke of the images as “spreading obscenity,” equating the artist’s homosexuality and HIV status with his photography.394 In Witnesses too, the artists’ sexual orientation and their personal encounters with AIDS were carried over to the works even before they were shown. In both cases, the biography or sexual orientation of the artists was equated with the exhibition or the works. To counter this lack of differentiation, Richard Meyer underlined the fact that artworks have no sexual orientation, but are (unnecessarily) sexualized through their reception and associated with their content.395 Here we can see a decisive phenomenon as regards the Art about AIDS presented by Goldin. While the biographical interpretation of the works was criticized in retrospect by queer theorists such as Meyer, the artists themselves, and Goldin as curator, brought just this personal experience to the fore. They stressed the authenticity of the works due to their specific experiences as a gay minority affected by AIDS, and demanded their personal crisis be integrated into interpretations of their artworks. As the analysis of the individual works that follows shall show, outsiders were not allowed to judge this Art about AIDS using the same criteria as Goldin’s artists. The joint opinion of those opposed to the exhibition could thus be attributed to their clearly homophobic attitudes which made them see (homo)sexual content in the works in Goldin’s show.396 Carol S. Vance 394 395 396

Meyer, “Jesse Helms,” 137. Meyer, “The Red Envelope,” 22. The theory that the equation of sexuality and obscenity formed the foundation of the debates is borne out in Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 51 and Phelan, “Money Talks,” 13.

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has described the AIDS epidemic in the United States as a time of antisexual hysteria, expressed in the controversies surrounding federal funding of art.397 What had formerly been in the realm of the private and the intimate — sexuality, illness, and death — was brought to the surface in artworks about homosexuality or in works by homosexuals. This threatened long-held cultural orientations, as illustrated by Serrano’s attack on the Catholic Church, which was anti-contraception and thus also against effective HIV prevention.398 Finally, the outrage over homoerotic art, which makes diverse sexual practices and a sex-positive attitude visible, demonstrated the low level of acceptance for homosexuality in American society in the late 1980s.399 The controversies about federal funding of art, censorship, and freedom of speech mirrored a fear of the power of images that deal with taboo topics. Art about homosexuality became a catalyst for smoldering conflicts and, like the AIDS epidemic itself, could intensify social debates. The year 1989 marked a highpoint of a fundamental social and cultural crisis in United States, the culture wars. Sociologist James Davison Hunter described them in 1991 as the polarization of American politics and culture in two opposing weltanschauungs: “Culture war emerges over fundamentally different conceptions of moral authority, over different ideas and beliefs about truth, the good, obligation to one another, the nature of community and so on.” 400 These debates about societal values were headed by two opposing camps in the late 1980s: fundamentalists (religious traditionalists such as Jesse Helms and the religious right), who subsumed themselves under a higher moral instance (religion), and progressive, secular protagonists (marginalized groups such as homosexuals and people with AIDS), who defined moral authority as rational, subjective, and subject to discursive negotiation.401 Hunter saw the origins of these culture wars in the transformation from an industrial society to an information society, expressed in the social changes that began in the 1960s.402 Dubin on the other hand located the start of the culture wars in fin-de-siècle-America, characterized by the secularization of society in the 1960s and 1970s and the federal excesses of the Reagan government. He described the culture wars as an effect of Reagan’s policy of New Federalism, which dictated the political and social climate through economic liberalization, tax cuts, increased military spending, and anti-communist ideology: in other words, through radical neo-conservatism.403 As a result of this policy, the gap between the rich and the poor grew; homelessness, drug trafficking, criminality, 397 398 399 400 401 402 403

Vance, “Misunderstanding Obscenity,” 49. Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper, 236. Phelan, “Money Talks,” 13. Hunter, Culture Wars, 49. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 62 – 63. On this see also Zimmermann, Skandalöse Körper and Eck, “Cultural Conflict.” Dubin, Arresting Images, 197.

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and an overburdened health system had been problems in American urban centers like New York City well before the outbreak of AIDS.404 Concretely, Reagan’s political line was expressed by the return to the conservative values of family, church, and patriotism spurred by a desire to turn back the “general decadence since 1968.”405 Reagan shared his aggressive condemnation of abortion and his ignorance about sexual minorities and AIDS with fundamentalist conservative politicians such as Senator Jesse Helms, who fought for banning foreigners with HIV/ AIDS from entering the country and against dissemination of educational material about HIV and AIDS. He successfully stopped federal funding of safer sex comics, including those by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York.406 The struggle for freedom of speech and minority rights were informed by two very different value systems, fought on the territory of the body and self-determination (abortion and gay rights), and on questions of social responsibility, for instance health care and social services for people with AIDS. These culture wars became visible in the art battles about decent and respectable art that is worthy of federal funding: Ultimately the battle over this symbolic territory reveals a conflict over world views — over what standards our communities and our nation will live by; over what we consider to be ‘of enduring value’ in our communities; over what we consider a fair representation of our times. 407 Art and culture became political targets and, by defaming them, conservatives sought to win over voters.408 In the end, the war over funding and the NEA’s open attacks were only covering deeper social ressentiments.409 The offense of the “offensive” artworks by Serrano and Mapplethorpe and the Witnesses artists was that they made visible sexual minorities who were not supposed to have a social or political voice. Cynthia Carr has therefore claimed that Jesse Helms and the religious right acted out of fear; they understood these artworks as symbolic challenges to the reigning sexual and religious order.410 Thus seen, the controversy over funding so-called obscene art stems from a fundamental fear of boundary-crossing. In the case of Mapplethorpe and the Witnesses artists, thematization of homosexuality and AIDS dissolved the boundary between private and public, threatening conservative 404 405

406 407 408 409 410

Ibid., 15. Dubin compares the late 20 th century in the United States with Italy in the late 15 th century, which suffered from government overspending and syphilis outbreaks. Heideking and Mauch, Geschichte der USA, 264 – 265. This swing to the right was comparable with Margret Thatcher’s politics and her upholding of Victorian values during her time as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990 (Mahon, Eroticism, 227). Poirier, “AIDS,” 147 and Dubin, Arresting Images, 241 – 242. See also Meyer, “Barring Desire” and Meyer, “Jesse Helms.” Hunter, Culture Wars, 248. Document Wyatt / Fear or Freedom n. d. Eck, “Cultural Conflict,” 89. Carr, “Sexual Politics,” 252 – 253.

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value systems. Serrano too overstepped bounds by mixing in his photograph the sacral iconography of a crucifix with profane human bodily secretions, or waste products, which suddenly, because of AIDS, symbolized a life-threatening danger. Mary Douglas has said that this merging of private and public or of sacral and profane can be seen as a danger to the social or Christian order, which Serrano, Mapplethorpe and the Witnesses’ artists symbolically destroyed. For Douglas, the human body — which makes these transgressions visible — is a model “which can stand for any bounded system. The boundaries can represent any borders which are threatened or precarious.” 411 Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject and Kiki Smith’s installation All Our Sisters embody just this view. Summing up, the culture wars of the late 1980s were mostly an attempt by the religious right to defend their traditional Christian and patriarchal value system from the so-called threat of visible homosexuality within a society that had already become very secularized.412 The fights around the funding of controversial art acted as a symbolic mirror of boundary-crossings that stood for the dissolution of traditional values and orders. They were also paradigmatic of the AIDS epidemic, which is why Witnesses could, for the third time, reignite the American culture wars with a debate on NEA funding, making AIDS the starting point of the conflict for the first time. These culture wars have not lost in intensity since the 1980s, as can be seen in two more recent debates on the inclusion of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ in a 2011 exhibition in Avignon, and a screening of David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly, p. 85, which he shot during a trip to Mexico in 1986 – 1987.413 Serrano’s photograph was part of the exhibition Je croix aux miracles at the Collection Lambert from December 12, 2010 to May 8, 2011. In April 2011, the fundamentalist Christian group Institut Civitas held protests after which the photograph was attacked and destroyed.414 Wojnarowicz’s circa 20-minute film was part of the group exhibition HIDE / SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D. C., which opened on October 30, 2010. The controversy was sparked by a shot of around ten seconds which shows ants crawling over a crucifix that is lying on dark stones or coal.415 411 412 413

414 415

Douglas, Purity and Danger, 142. Eck, “Cultural Conflict,” 94 – 97 and 103. Curator Jonathan D. Katz added a soundtrack to the video for the exhibition: a recording of an ACT UP demonstration found in Wojnarowicz’s estate in the NYU Fales Library. David Deitcher believed this change was a breach of Wojnarowicz’s rights as an artist and linked it to the censorship of his work in 1989 and 1990: “The issue of censorship is all too familiar for lesbians and gay men because our history is constantly being denied or erased or distorted.” (Author’s interview with David Deitcher, May 23, 2011, p. 325). Le Monde, “Une Photographie.” Colucci, “All I Can Feel.”

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Shortly after the show opened, protests by the conservative National Catholic League put such great pressure on the Smithsonian Institute that Wojnarowicz’s work was removed from the exhibition one month after the opening. Across the country, museums — including MoMA, the New Museum in New York City, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh — reacted to this act of self-censorship by screening the movie in their spaces, confirming Meyer’s theory about censorship. Finally, the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington both offered to show the complete exhibition when it left the Smithsonian. It opened in New York City in November 2011 and in Tacoma in March 2012.416 What reads like an extension of the 1989 art battles shows the artworks’ continued evocative power to provoke on the one hand, and how topical the debates on political content in art, on censorship, and on freedom of opinion remain, independent of the specific situation of the AIDS epidemic on the other hand.

416

Smith, “Gay American Life.”

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PHOTOGRAPHIC SELFREPRESENTATION in WITNESSES and in the PRESS

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David Armstrong Kevin at St. Luke‘s Place, New York, 1977 Gelatine Silver Print, 40,6 × 50,8 cm

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David Armstrong Stephen at Home, New York, 1983 Gelatine Silver Print, 40,6 × 50,8 cm

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Mark Morrisroe Sweet 16: Little Me as a Child Prostitute, June 6, 1984 C-Print, Negative Sandwich (retouched with ink and inscribed with marker 50,8 × 40 cm.

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Mark Morrisroe Self-Portrait (to Brent), 1982 C-Print, Negative Sandwich (retouched with ink and inscribed with marker) 50,7 × 40,5 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Untitled from “Sex Series” (for Marion Scemama) (tornado), 1988 – 89 Gelatine Silver Print, 50,8 × 61 cm

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Previous pages: New York Times, Feb. 4, 1988, B1 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 31 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 32 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 39 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 35 Newsweek, April 18, 1983, 80 Newsweek, July 4, 1983, 20 Newsweek Cover, Jan. 13, 1986 Newsweek Cover, Aug. 8, 1983

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Philip-Lorca diCorcia Vittorio, 1989 C-Print, 50,8 × 61 cm

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Mark Morrisroe Untitled, 1988 Photogram of X-ray, Colored Gelatine Silver Print, 50,5 × 40,3 cm.

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David Armstrong Kevin at Avenue B, New York, 1983 Gelatine Silver Print, 40,6 × 50,8 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Untitled (Peter Hujar), 1989 Gelatine Silver Print, Triptych each 25,4 × 35,6 cm

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Mark Morrisroe Untitled [Self-Portrait], 1989 T-665 Polaroid, 8,5 × 10,7 cm

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Gail Thacker Mark Morrisroe in Bed, 1989 Gelatine Silver Print, 24 × 18,6 cm

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Robert Mapplethorpe Self-Portrait, 1988 Gelatine Silver Print, 61 × 50,8 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Untitled (face in dirt), 1990 Photograph by Marion Scemama Gelatine Silver Print, 50,5 × 60,3 cm

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Previous pages: Newsweek, Aug. 12, 1985, 28 Newsweek, Jan. 30, 1984, 50 New York Times, Dec. 23, 1985, B8 Newsweek, Aug. 18, 1986, 46

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Nicholas Nixon Tom Moran and his Mother, Catherine Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, August 1987 Gelatine Silver Print, 19,6 × 24,5 cm

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Nicholas Nixon Tom Moran, Boston, 1987 Gelatine Silver Print, 19,6 × 24,5 cm

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Oliviero Toscani Benetton Advertisement, 1987 Offset Poster

N

an Goldin’s group show presented works by 25 artists from the curator’s circle of friends. Her selection focused neither on the works nor on a common iconography, but on the artists’ membership in this community and their personal relationship to AIDS. For the purposes of this study, not only the curator, the artists, and the director of Artists Space are relevant actors in the artistic field of the exhibition, but also the works themselves, which act as messengers from the artists and curator to the public.417 Many artistic strategies are reflected in the visual forms chosen, one-third of which are photographic self-portraits and portraits of friends. These portraits shall be the focus of my analysis, which examines them in light of Goldin’s demand to create affirmative images of her community, as expressed in her catalogue text. Goldin wished to present a differentiated vision of sexuality and described love, caretaking, and reliability as fundamental values within her circle of friends.418 In so doing, she was countering the existing stereotypical images of homosexuals and people with AIDS circulated by the press since HIV was discovered in 1983 / 1984.419 While activist art and AIDS prevention and education campaigns explicitly refrained from using images of the bodily ailments of people with AIDS, these images were the focus of the media discourse and were constitutive for the public image of people with AIDS.420 The photographic portraits in Witnesses can only be read as self-representations of artists affected by AIDS in connection with the negative connotations of the usual press images. This interest in the discourse of media images focused on their specific modes of representation — within the context of the supposed objectivity of journalistic photography — and the political, ideological, and social construction of the meaning of AIDS. Affinities and differences in the representation of (homo)sexuality and people with AIDS in the press and in Goldin’s exhibition shall be delineated through a comparison of the photo portraits in Witnesses and press photos of people with HIV/AIDS in the New York Times and the weekly magazine Newsweek from 1983 to 1989. A selection of prototypical photos from the exhibition is used to determine whether and how the photographs in the show are different from the press photographs and whether and how they disturb, subvert, or perpetuate existing stereotypes. Since the show’s artists produced almost all of their works in 1989, it is logical to assume that Goldin’s concept for the show influenced these images. We can thus also assume they are a visual interpretation of her demands. In general, an examination of the exhibition’s heterogeneous images as regards Goldin’s call for empowering representations is fruitful for the analysis of photographs of homosexuality and of people with AIDS. At the same time, this process upholds the binary construction of correct 417 418 419 420

On this chapter see also Junge, “Images” and Junge, “Bilder homosexueller Männlichkeit.” Goldin, “In the Valley,” 5. Sander L. Gilman defined stereotypes as “crude set of mental representations of the world,” which draw a line between the self and others (Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 17 – 18). See Grover, “Opportunistic Identification.”

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(positive) images and incorrect (negative) images, with the concurrent danger of reducing them to their role as allies or enemies of socially marginalized identities. Without a doubt, images produce knowledge about AIDS and have concrete social and societal effects on the people with AIDS they depict. This “linking of visual and political argumentation” 421 makes images of AIDS into a political issue and calls up the question of the visual, social, and political visibility of people with AIDS. Yet it is difficult to see the photographs only as political statements. Doing so both ignores the concrete content of the photos and supports a positive-negative binary framework—or the conditions of the images’ production — hindering their placement in a critical discourse. Such a view neglects questions about the control of images of AIDS, the representation of people with AIDS, and the power of definition of the categories positive and negative.422 Johanna Schaffer makes a more differentiated queer critique of oppositional and affirmative images. She shows how leftist activist groups in the early 1990s pushed for the visibility of non-heteronormative identities while at the same time critiquing this activist affirmation of visibility.423 Although visibility promised strengthening non-heteronormative identities in social, political, and artistic discourse, it simultaneously incorporated them into normative ideas of identity within parameters of control and discipline. Visibility and invisibility are thus equal parts of a shared discursive order and shape each other reciprocally.424 These fundamental ideas on the visibility of marginalized identities also apply to depictions of homosexuality and AIDS. Positive images of people with AIDS create a counterdiscourse to the dominant order of representation, but they remain dependent upon this order.425 Since the nineteenth century, as Christina Nord has shown, increased visibility of homosexuality can lead to pathologicization.426 Images of people with AIDS face a similar danger; presenting individuals who have AIDS risks their stigmatization as synonymous with AIDS. Douglas Crimp spoke of this same dilemma: “On the one hand, we were fighting against the notion that AIDS is an inevitable death sentence, and on the other hand, we wanted it known that people were dying from a terrible disease.” 427 This danger holds for all images of people with HIV/AIDS; they can support rather than undermine stereotypes of deviant bodies, which proved to be a problem for Nan Goldin’s exhibition as well.428 421 422 423

424 425 426 427 428

Paul and Schaffer, “Einleitung,” 7. Nord, “Gegen feste Zeichen,” 158. Schaffer, “(Un-)Formen,” 60 – 62. As an example she names activist and author Sarah Schulman, who fought in the early 1980s, also as a member of ACT UP, for the affirmative existence of all disenfranchised groups (Ibid., 62). Ibid., 61. Ibid., 66. Nord, “Gegen feste Zeichen,“ 158. Takemoto, “Melancholia of AIDS,” 85. Brandes and Adorf, “Einleitung,“ 7 and 10.

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Queer theorists such as Antke Engel thus call for the rejection of pigeonholing and categorizations and for strategies of non /equivocation (VerUneindeutigung) in order to fight this normativization and hierarchization.429 They demand the right to polysemy and to portray sexual difference — and in the context of AIDS the separation into healthy and sick — as “processual, contextual, and constituted” in existing power structures in order to destabilize these structures and subvert new normative appropriations.430 Notwithstanding this critique of the division of images into binaries, the following uses Nan Goldin’s desire for positive representations of gay men and people with AIDS as one criterion. While this is the starting point, any examination of the photos in Witnesses and in the press that utilizes art history and iconography cannot reduce the images to their function as quasi-allies or enemies and instead aims towards a critical close analysis of the works. Goldin’s demands are used only as a signpost. Furthermore, the individual analyses of these works must be read in the context of the entire study, the main goal of which is to delimit the discursivization, contextualization, and genesis of Art about AIDS. AIDS activists criticized not only media images of people with AIDS, but also the photographs of American photographer Nicholas Nixon for creating stereotypical portrayals of people with AIDS in the last stages of their lives. Nixon’s photos also provide a counter-reference for the photographs in Witnesses, particularly since his controversial Pictures of People exhibition had shown at MoMA just one year before. Enough has been published about Nixon’s photography — in contrast to the press photographs — that it does not seem necessary to analyze these photos in any detail here. His photos of people with AIDS shall be introduced in an excursus and their impact and reception is compared to that of the photographs in Witnesses. Comparison makes it possible to see changes in the portrayal of people with AIDS and to site the exhibition’s photographs within a visual discourse about people with HIV/AIDS that had begun in the early 1980s. The analysis of media images is restricted to photographs from the New York Times and Newsweek. This decision was both methodological and pragmatic because it allowed the systematic examination of a limited number of images and because clippings from both can be found in the Witnesses archive. It is thus safe to assume that Goldin and her art community read these liberal publications and were particularly interested in their perspectives on the exhibition. No text-image relations (location and size of photo, etc.) are examined in this analysis of the visual discourse in the media, because the press photographs are examined purely to compare them to the exhibition photographs. Of greater interest is the sphere of influence of the 429 430

Engel, Wider der Eindeutigkeit, 224. See also Paul, FormatWechsel, 11 and Zimmermann, “Einführung,” 22. Engel, Wider der Eindeutigkeit, 224 – 225.

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press photos and the exhibition photos, and their respective relations to their site of publication. In the end, the discursive framework of the photographs is crucial to their meaning.431 The artistic content of the exhibition photos is thus brought to the fore by the context of the exhibition situation, while press photographs are read more for their power of depiction. There are relatively few images (as compared to the amount of text) of people with AIDS in the New York Times and Newsweek. A search in the online archives of the New York Times with the key words HIV/AIDS from 1983 to 1989 had 7,420 hits, only 16 of which were accompanied by a photo of a person with AIDS. In the 1980s, the theoretical discourse was mostly textual, as the New York Times press coverage, which uses almost no photos, confirms. Starting in 1987, the number of images of people with AIDS in the press decreased even more, because of pressure from AIDS organizations such as ACT UP. Activists began fighting against representation, motivated by a homophobic media, that led to the social stigmatization of gays and people with AIDS, demanding another visual discourse.432 That was reflected in the photos printed in the New York Times and Newsweek, which after 1987 only portrayed other socially marginalized groups as victims of the AIDS epidemic: prostitutes, inmates, drug addicts, and homeless people. This served to further marginalize the crisis, because these people with AIDS, in contrast to the gay community, had no way of taking their self-representation into their own hands. Thus the artists in Goldin’s show were not reacting to immediate images in the daily and weekly press, but rather to a collective visual memory or to common stereotypes that had appeared for many years in the media and that were perhaps published less, but had not been reinterpreted in a positive manner. In general, AIDS theorists including Robert Atkins, Richard Goldstein, and Jan Zita Grover, who conducted the first periodization of photographs of people with AIDS after 1989, have shown that artistic responses to AIDS were a delayed reaction to the epidemic’s outbreak. Some of the first visual responses to AIDS were photographs of people with HIV/ AIDS and, from the mid-1980s, photographic documentation of the AIDS movement, by which time there had already been many press photographs of people with AIDS.433 Not until 1988 did MoMA and the Grey Art Gallery in New York run exhibitions of photographic explorations of AIDS: the above-mentioned show of Nicholas Nixon’s works, Pictures of People, and Rosalind Solomon’s Portraits in the Time of AIDS.434

431 432 433 434

On this see Sekula, “Photographic Meaning.” Atkins, “In Grief and Anger,” 71. See also Crimp, “Portraits of People With AIDS” and Takemoto, “Melancholia of AIDS.” Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 20. Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 39 and Atkins, “In Grief and Anger,” 70. Solomon’s show was curated by Thomas W. Sokolowski, Nixon’s show by Peter Galassi.

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Key for all artistic explorations of AIDS was the introduction of the HIV-antibody test in 1985, which had a considerable impact on the perception of the epidemic.435 Before 1985, an AIDS diagnosis could not be made until symptoms appeared, meaning once the illness had begun it was equivalent to a death sentence — life expectancy after diagnosis was under ten months in most cases. With the advent of the HIV-antibody test, the viral infection could be detected long before the illness broke out.436 This increase in the time between an HIV-positive diagnosis and the final stages of AIDS led to changes in the identity of those with HIV/AIDS. Because of the long incubation period, people who were HIV-positive could live for years with no visible symptoms.437 For the first time people could learn to develop an identity as a person living with AIDS that included taking part in political actions or creating Art about AIDS. This may explain the delayed artistic exploration of the epidemic. As Elizabeth Kastor wrote in the Washington Post: Artists at that time [before 1985] spoke of feeling ambivalent about creating art while their friends and lovers were dying around them, and dedicated themselves instead to caring for friends, raising money and volunteering service. 438 The works in Goldin’s exhibition, almost all made in 1989, must be seen within this context.

435

436 437 438

Initial reactions to the test were ambivalent because Jesse Helms and others wanted to make testing mandatory and called for mass quarantine of all so-called AIDS carriers (Watney, “Photography and AIDS,” 179). Grover, “Opportunistic Identification,” 112. Goldstein, “The Implicated,” 316. Kastor, “The Content.”

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DEPICTING HOMOSEXUALITY in the PHOTOGRAPHS in WITNESSES

From the onset of the gay liberation movement in the late 1960s at the latest, the visibility of homosexuality had been a topic for any American social and political analyses that embedded sexuality — thinking with Foucault — in constellations of power.439 In 1976, in the first volume of History of Sexuality, Foucault rallied against the hypothesis of repression, which assumes that Western societies repressed speech about sexuality.440 Rather he made out a “veritable discursive explosion” as regards sex, putting sexuality into the spotlight of power.441 The will to know about sexuality led to its institutionalization through (state) systems of surveillance and control in order to manage deviation. This will incited discourses around sexuality, bringing forth confessions and interrogations — in short the pathologization of deviance.442 Foucault’s theory of political mechanisms that “produce knowledge, multiply discourse, induce pleasure, and generate power” can easily be applied to American society’s dealings with people with AIDS and the construction of (homo)sexuality during the AIDS epidemic.443 For example, the Reagan government said people should reveal their sexual orientation, for example in job applications, and public health institutions tried to instate mandatory testing which would have labeled those who were infected and made their HIV status public.444 This desire to mark those who were ill was brought to extremes by conservative politicians such as Jesse Helms and William F. Buckley, who demanded that people with HIV/AIDS be tattooed, an image used by Oliviero Toscani in ‘shockvertising’ for Benetton in 1993.445 An HIV infection thus became key to people’s identity and social status, and stigmatization of people with AIDS was a state-organized method of marginalization. This is also reflected in the term public health, which differentiates between a general, healthy population and those who are HIV-positive and denied certain rights, such as the right to health insurance. Through an HIV infection, personal identity became public knowledge: public discussions were opened on the sexual orientation, relationships, and health of people with AIDS. Homosexuals or others in so-called risk groups no longer had a right to privacy. Here too we can apply Foucault’s analyses of power and the 439 440 441 442 443 444 445

Villa, “Kritik der Identität,” 165. Foucault, History of Sexuality, esp. 15 – 51. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 73. Holloran and Hunt, Social History of the United States, 116. Poirier, “AIDS,” 142 – 143.

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way in which disciplinary societies retain power by constant surveillance of individuals, for which Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon is paradigmatic.446 During crises in particular, for example the Black Plague (or the AIDS epidemic) — moments of social confusion — control can be guaranteed only by disciplining through the registration and pathologization of individuals. The public representatives of power thus determine private behavior and force individuals to allow access to their intimate spheres: “The relation of each individual to his disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the registrations they make of it, the decisions they make on it.” 447 For people with HIV/AIDS, there was danger involved in revealing their sexual orientation and their health information because “visibility is a trap.”448 The Supreme Court decision Bowers v. Hardwick also exemplifies the surveillance of sexuality.449 In 1982, police arrested defendant Michael Hardwick in his bedroom for engaging in consensual sodomy. In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the Georgia law against “any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another.” This state invasion of privacy was thus declared to be in accordance with the constitutions.450 The general population’s perception of the epidemic as an outsider’s illness that affected only those who had rejected the moral values of the white heterosexual middle-class long before the advent of AIDS was first shaken by the July 1985 outing of actor Rock Hudson. Only when Hudson — who had been the epitome of American masculinity since the 1950s451 —publically admitted to having AIDS was the epidemic first perceived as a danger to the heterosexual population. Newsweek, for example, wrote on the title of their August 1985 issue: “Once dismissed as the ‘gay plague,’ the disease has become the No. 1 public-health menace.” Hudson’s public admission of having AIDS also led to hysteria about transmission of HIV by kissing or casual contact, because his film kiss with Linda Evans in the TV-series Dynasty had been broadcast at the same time.452 Fear of contracting AIDS led the general population to marginalize so-called risk groups even more and uphold an image of AIDS as an epidemic restricted to particular social groups that had brought it upon themselves through promiscuity. The direct link of illness and sexuality made the latter even more taboo; marginalizing homosexuals and people with AIDS seemed the only way to safeguard social values and mores. Drawing this line should protect heterosexual practices — and related structures such as marriage and the family — from any connection with AIDS and demonstrate their ideological superiority.453 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 216. Ibid., 196 – 197. Ibid., 200. 478 U. S. 186 (1986), cited in Hunter, “Banned in the U. S. A.,” 80 – 84. Adam, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 126. On the presentation of Hudson’s masculinity see Meyer, “Rock Hudson.” Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 235. Treichler, Theory in an Epidemic, 23.

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In this context, the importance of Goldin’s call for a positive and differentiated image of sexuality is clear. The forms it was given in the exhibition’s images of intimacy and nakedness, of homoerotic desire, and of gay relationships were diverse: for example, David Armstrong’s photos of his former lover Kevin, David Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series, and Mark Morrisroe’s self-portraits, all of which are analyzed in the following.

SEXUAL EXPOSURE of the MALE BODY: DAVID ARMSTRONG and MARK MORRISROE

David Armstrong contributed eight photographs to Goldin’s exhibition, five of which were shot before 1984, and three of which were created in 1989. The gap was due to his drug addiction, because of which he left New York City for Boston in 1984 and stopped taking photos. Armstrong did not pick up his camera again until encouraged to do so by Nan Goldin in 1988 or 1989, when Goldin had also just kicked addiction and was planning Witnesses.454 At that time, Armstrong was no longer an active member of the art scene in either Boston or New York, and his participation in the show can be seen as Goldin’s attempt to bring him back into the fold. The black and white photo of his former lover, Kevin at St. Luke’s Place, New York City 1977, p. 148, portrays the 20-something Kevin in front of a neutral background, as in a classic studio portrait, drawing attention only to the young body and smooth face. Kevin’s body language is relaxed and expresses the intimacy of the moment; dressed casually in jeans and a low-cut sweatshirt that shows off his muscular pectorals, he is leaning sideways on a wooden folding chair and his arm is resting lightly on the adjacent window sill. Bright light is falling through the window, softening his chiseled face and full lips. His body is diagonal in the frame, and his torso curved only slightly toward the viewer. His bent arms form the circular center of the composition. Kevin’s head is turned slightly to the left and he is looking directly at the photographer — and the viewer — from the corner of his eyes. Because the photo is shot from below, his eyes are half closed and his chin pushed forward; he seems self-assured and his gaze is both challenging and condescending. Kevin’s lascivious performance of his body is created by this seductive, provocative gaze and the self-assured, almost smug, pose.455 As Roland Barthes and others have shown, the pose in front of the camera is always a consciously adopted staging of the self in a specific situation and does not mirror a natural attitude, but is dictated by a certain idea of an image.456 Sigrid Schade built on this idea, describing the situation of portrait-taking as a creation of oneself and a shifting of the

454 455 456

Armstrong,“Untitled,” 6. Armstrong allowed his models to pose as they wished (Kruska, Boston School, 45). About the pose see also Owens, “Posing,” 210. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 11 – 15.

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self in the gaze of the Other.457 Kevin’s suggestive pose is thus not only theatrical self-presentation, but also reveals the sexual tension between the photographer and his model.458 Armstrong’s sexual desire becomes visible in Kevin’s pose, as Craig Owens has argued from a psychoanalytical viewpoint: “The subject in the scopic field, insofar as it is the subject of desire, is neither seer nor seen; it makes itself seen.” 459 The intimacy between Armstrong and Kevin contradicts the idealistic idea behind classic studio portraiture in which a person’s appearance is read as a direct reflection of their inner being, a mirror of the soul.460 That traditional understanding of portrait photography is broadened by Armstrong’s subjective camera, which Kevin yields to as a sexually available object. Norman Bryson speaks in such cases of a “queering of portrait convention that appropriates those conventions,” 461 because Armstrong’s subjectivity brings to the fore his relationship with the subject of his photo. In so doing, in keeping with the poststructuralism of his times, he adds an element of media reflexivity to the nineteenth century’s idealized understanding of portrait photography: his portrait of Kevin is a reflection on his own subjective viewpoint and his perspective as photographer, in contrast to the neutrality of photographs as a purely mechanical transfer of light.462 One allusion to the explicitly homoerotic gaze, which in this case stages the male body as a sex object, is Kevin’s seductive and submissive physique, traditionally attributed to the female body.463 This play with gender roles is also present in Armstrong’s photograph of Stephen (Tashjian aka Tabboo!), p. 149, who posed as a standing nude draped in white muslin that reveals his back and buttocks.464 This feminine pose cites the traditional opposition between men as those who gaze and women as the objects of their desire — described by Laura Mulvey as early as 1975 in her study of women in Hollywood movies465 — and is an indication of the homoeroticism of the photograph, as here a man is both in front of and behind the camera.466 457 458

459 460 461 462 463

464 465 466

Schade,” Der Schnappschuß,” 298 and Schade, “Posen der Ähnlichkeit,” 75. Richard Brilliant stressed the theatrical nature of the portrait, because “the portrait presents a person to the viewer,” it is always geared toward an audience (Brilliant, Portraiture, 40). Owens, “Posing,” 215. See for example Frizot, “Body of Evidence,” 259. Bryson, “Boston School,” 28. Dubois, “Der fotografische Akt,” 89. See also Kruska, Boston School, 13 and Kotz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,” 208. Heinrich and Zbikowski (“Fünf aus Boston,” 23) see exactly such seductive physical presence as quoting the advertising industry, in which female bodies also fill this role (on this see also Mahon, Eroticism, 41 – 42). Kruska, Boston School, 46. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure.” Abigail Solomon-Godeau has shown that the male body did not first become the object of desiring gazes in postmodernity. There have been phallic and non-phallic (“feminine”) framings of masculinity in both mental and cultural frameworks since the 18 th century (Solomon-Godeau, “Irritierte Männlichkeit,” esp. 238). In Antiquity as well, the male body was pictured as the object of homoerotic desire (on this see for example Foucault, Use of Pleasure).

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However homoeroticism or homosexuality is only suggested and not explicit in Armstrong’s photographs, which have no unambiguous homosexual iconography. The sexualization of the male body only intimates homoeroticism. Unlike Robert Mapplethorpe’s stagings of naked male bodies or Peter Hujar’s photograph of an erect penis — also in Witnesses — Armstrong’s photos are missing those characteristics that Allen Ellenzweig has defined as belonging to homosexual iconography, such as the accentuation of body parts or genitals or the sculptural shape of the male body: The homoerotic engages in varying degrees those feelings of desire, intimacy, admiration, or affection between members of the same sex, whereas the homosexual engages the actual physical, or more properly, the sexual — the genital — expression of those sentiments. Homoerotic feelings may therefore encompass the full range of male and female bonding. 467 While Armstrong alludes to homosexual desire, it is not an explicit part of the work itself. Rather it is present in the gaze of the male photographer, who reveals his longing for his subject.468 The sexual availability of the male body is also an important theme in Mark Morrisroe’s self-portraits, in which he explores his body and his sexuality. His self-portraits Sweet 16: Little Me as a Child Prostitute, June 6 (1984) and Self-Portrait (to Brent) (1982), pp. 150, 151, are examples of his candid gaze upon his own body and at the same time of his photographic fictionalization of his biography, which he continually embellished upon with ever-new anecdotes.469 In the former photo, he is lying spread-eagle on a bed, naked; in the latter he is standing naked in the shower. In both photographs, he is staring directly and brazenly into the camera. In contrast to Armstrong’s sleek studio shots, Morrisroe consciously used a snapshot aesthetic that seemingly ignores formal criteria, as can be seen in the careless cropping, dim lighting, and indistinct colors of the 1984 photo.470 Both self-portraits are “sandwich prints,” a technique developed by Morrisroe, which explains the grainy texture, the slight blurriness, and the splotches and shadows in the lower right-hand corner of the first image.471 On the one hand, this technique adds another layer of reflectivity to the creative process and to the situation in which the self-portrait 467 468

469 470 471

Ellenzweig, Homoerotic Photograph, 2 – 3. The fact that simply presenting a male rather than a female body gives the impression that the photo is homoerotic reveals viewing habits and gender stereotypes which view women as sexualized objects and not as active subjects who could be behind a camera. Joselit, “Mark Morrisroe,” 195 and Kruska, Boston School, 17. Kruska, Boston School, 18. Sandwich printing is a print of two negatives, one of which is a black-and-white copy of the color negative, visibly taped together. For a more in-depth description see Gruber, “Nachlassübersicht,” 505.

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was taken. There is a distancing from the immediate referentiality of the photographic medium, as David Joselit has pointedly described: “To open up a space of manipulation and self-invention which transforms the ostensibly ‘truthful’ spontaneity of photography into a meaningful texture of ‘lies’.” 472 On the other hand, the Polaroid suggests the authenticity of analog photography because the factor of immediacy plays such a central role: the short exposure period reduces the time for manipulation of the shot to a minimum. As soon as the shutter is pressed, the photo appears within seconds. The immediacy is not only temporal, but also spatial: the physical intimacy in Morrisroe’s photographs increases the seeming authenticity. This is heightened by the direct gaze at his own body — for example the presentation of physical weaknesses such as acne (1982) — and by writing a title, date, and signature directly on the photograph.473 What is more, Polaroids are particularly suited to intimate subjects because they do not have to be developed in a laboratory. In his 1984 self-portrait, this intimacy is increased by the pose in which Morrisroe draws the viewer’s gaze to his naked genitals — intensified by his hand on his inner thigh. Unlike in Armstrong’s work, here the uncovered, sexualized body is made explicitly visible and oscillates between masculinity (the fully developed genitals and dark pubic hair) and femininity (the youthful, otherwise hairless and androgynous body and the long hair falling onto the still childlike face).

SEXUALITY and POLITICS: DAVID WOJNAROWICZ’S SEX SERIES

Different from both Armstrong and Morrisroe, David Wojnarowicz created a tightly woven web of associations in the four of his eight-part photocollages displayed in Witnesses, Sex Series (1988 – 1989). He is the only artist in the exhibit who linked the topic of sexuality to the political and social dimensions of the AIDS epidemic as well as to his own experiences as someone infected with HIV. These collages are Wojnarowicz’s first purely photographic works, produced as artworks in themselves and not integrated into a painting.474 The black-and-white collages combine landscape and urban shots that fill the entire frame and small round “peepholes” that show explicit homosexual and heterosexual practices. This creates a double layer of meaning, with a third, textual, level sometimes added. By combining these two narrative levels Wojnarowicz also tried to safeguard against pornography charges — and censorship — because sexual images were restricted to fragments in the peepholes.475 While Sex Series played no role in the conflict between Artists Space and the NEA at the beginning of 1989, in early 1990 the collages sparked a similar controversy in the Wojnarowicz retrospective Tongues of Flame 472 473

474 475

Joselit, “Mark Morrisroe,” 197. See also Zbikowski, “Mark Morrisroe,” 108. Lebovici, “In the Darkroom,” 234. In this, Lebovici attested proximity to the photos of Diane Arbus. On other prints, Morrisroe added scratches and fingerprints: manipulations which give the photographs a dramatic character (Ibid., 236). Marion Scemama in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 128. Spooner, “David Wojnarowicz,” 348.

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at the Illinois State University gallery in Normal. The NEA had also supported that exhibition with a 15,000-dollar grant and, like Wojnarowicz’s catalogue text, the collages reignited the debate on federal funding of supposedly obscene art.476 After the end of the show — as in the case of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, nothing was said while the exhibition was running — Donald Wildmon from the American Family Association (AFA) sent out around 200,000 flyers with the title “Your Tax Dollars Helped Pay for these ‘Works of Art’” to politicians, AFA members, and other congregations. In the flyer, Wildmon had selected sections of Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series and his photocollage Untitled (Genet) and recombined them to form 14 images of pornographic scenes and one image of Jesus as a junkie shooting up.477 As in the earlier controversies, conservative politicians backed Wildmon and Dana Rohrabacher described Wojnarowicz’s art as “sickeningly violent, sexually explicit, homoerotic, anti-religious and nihilistic.” 478 While Susan Wyatt tried to reach an agreement with the NEA in 1989, David Wojnarowicz went on the offensive and filed suit against Donald Wildmon and the AFA for defamation and copyright infringement.479 He argued that Wildmon’s images showed only 2.05 to 16.63 percent of the entire artworks in order to present Wojnarowicz’s work as purely pornographic.480 On August 8, 1990, the U. S. District Court declared Wildmon and the AFA guilty, but Wojnarowicz won only one symbolic dollar because, as the court explained in its justification, he had suffered no financial losses as a result of the controversy.481 The Sex Series photographs are dark and grainy, a result of Wojnarowicz’s printing technique: he used an enlarger to expose colored slides onto black-and-white photographic paper, so that light and dark were reversed. Mark Alice Durant interprets this as a “counterhistory to the tyranny of the faux veracity of the usual documentary photograph,” thus relating the technical process to the thematic level of the photocollages.482 One of the four collages, which were unframed, rear-mounted, and hung in a square, is a large image of a tornado with six peepholes in two vertical rows of three near the outer edges, p. 152.483 On the grainy, 476 477 478 479 480

481 482 483

For more detail on the controversy see Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 247 – 260 and Rizk, Nature, Death. Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 255. On the envelope was printed: “Warning! Extremely Offensive Material Enclosed” (Carr, “Sexual Politics,” 260). Rohrabacher cited in Dubin, Arresting Images, 216. Spooner, “David Wojnarowicz,” 344 – 346 and Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 257. On this see the court transcript, printed in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 213 – 255. DW v. American Family Association and Donald E. Wildmon, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Civil Action No. 90 Civ. 3457 (WCC), 7 – 8 and 12, cited in Dubin, Arresting Images, 218. Meyer, “Vanishing Points,” 258 and Durant, “Sustained Rage,” 38. Durant, “Sustained Rage,” 38 and Spooner, “David Wojnarowicz,” 350. Wojnarowicz followed the same aesthetic principle in all eight Sex Series prints. I have simply chosen as an example that print which I feel expresses the main theme of the series most clearly and which, because of the six peepholes, is able to awaken the most associations.

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turbulent image of the tornado, Wojnarowicz placed the following pictures: on the left are two naked women in a sexual pose; a section of a picture of dollars and coins over which two ants are crawling; and a photo of a detail of a painting of Saint Sebastian that shows his lower body pierced with arrows. On the other side are a tower receiving or sending radio waves; a microscope image of human blood cells; and an x-ray of a human embryo. Wojnarowicz also added another layer of meaning through three rather difficult to read blocks of text printed onto the photo of the tornado. They describe a sexual encounter with a stranger and move from his status as a person with AIDS, for whom sexual desire is forbidden, towards rage against conservative media and politicians who would like to use AIDS as a weapon to protect their political agenda.484 This textual linking of AIDS and sensual desire is singular in Witnesses. None of the other visual responses to the epidemic do anything similar. Wojnarowicz himself said of the series: I wanted to place some of the variations of sexual acts in various environments that connected the naturalness of any of these acts to the naturalness of any of the environments in order to resist and dispel the idea of perversity. 485 Nevertheless, the visibility of sexuality is limited; it is not immediately apparent what is going on in the peepholes; they are half-hidden, by which Wojnarowicz comments on their taboo status or protects them from outside judgment. The peepholes, like the microscopic image and the x-ray, work as “optical lenses for surveillance and observation”486 to study, observe, and bring to light the private spheres of human beings, just as is done with the inner workings of the body. This quickly makes the viewer a voyeur watching without the protagonist’s knowledge. Here too, we can apply Foucault’s theories on a power-generating will to know and to make visible. James Crump sees them at work in Wojnarowicz’s photos and his use of mass media images with which he takes control over the misrepresentation of homosexual identity and AIDS.487 Crossing the borders of the body — a motif often used as an analogy for HIV — and the stigmatization of people with AIDS are visualized in the photo of the arrow-riddled Saint Sebastian. It is said that Sebastian, as a soldier of the Roman emperor Diocletian, was sentenced to death for being a Christian and shot by Numidian archers in 288 C. E. He is 484

485 486 487

“It is the use of AIDS as a weapon to enforce the conservative agenda that is what is heavy. Homosexuals and intravenous drug users are expendable in this society and AIDS is treated in the same way that homosexuals and drug-users are and that is why there has been this legal and social murder on a daily basis” (excerpt). Wojnarowicz, “In the Shadow,” n. p. Realismus Studio, Vollbild AIDS, 44. Crump, “Quasi-documentary,” 22 – 23.

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honored as the personification of suffering and beauty.488 Daniela Bohde has pointed out the unusual sensuous and erotic portrayal of his body in art since the fifteenth century and found that Saint Sebastian was already a favorite motif of homoerotic artworks in the early nineteenth century.489 He has also been a figure of identification for artists, whose ability to suffer is (as Susan Sontag has shown) said to be the source of their creativity.490 In the late Middle Ages, he was also venerated as a protector from the plague. The arrows were read as symbols for God’s punishment in the form of the plague, which is why the patron saint is shown in a state of martyrdom.491 Thus Wojnarowicz symbolically linked the plague and AIDS in the figure of the saint — a topos also often found in linguistic AIDS discourse. As a symbol of youthful beauty and eros, Saint Sebastian inserts the iconography of homoerotic art into Sex Series, becoming an emblem of homosexual suffering from stigmatization (not only) during the AIDS epidemic.492 While Wojnarowicz’s photo of the skeleton intimates fleshly mortality, the physical death of the martyr is a manifestation of a higher, metaphysical meaning — it is AIDS instilling nobility. On the visual and textual level, Wojnarowicz’s work places the visibility of sexuality within the context of the epidemic, which he sees as a complex of individual experiences, power politics, and dissemination of false information (radio tower) by the media. The dollars in the middle peephole refer to the greed of the American pharmaceutical industry and to the Reagan and Bush governments, which were unwilling to invest more money into AIDS research and care institutions. The ants crawling over the money are a recurring topos in Wojnarowicz’s visual language and represent the morbidity of American society, which seemed to be facing imminent collapse as symbolized by the tornado in the background.493 Wojnarowicz invoked an apocalyptic war scenario, propelled by the storm of the AIDS epidemic. He examined the diversity of sexuality, “a diversity whose propagation is barely tolerated or even forbidden,”494 and, through multifarious combinations of factual and symbolic material, created a complex image of AIDS as a social and an individual crisis that brought together sexism, homophobia, and greed.

488

489 490 491 492

493 494

According to legend, he recovered and, after a second time admitting his Christianity, was clubbed to death and thrown in the Cloaca Maxima so that his body could not be venerated as a relic of his martyrdom (Heusinger von Waldegg, Der Künstler als Märtyrer, 14). Bohde, “Ein Heiliger der Sodomiten,” 81. Sontag, “Exemplary Sufferer.” Pulver, Tribut der Seuche, 82. Belting, “Der Kult Sebastians,” 164. Belting discusses this link between suffering and the erotic gaze in his analysis of Andrea Mantegna’s painting of Saint Sebastian (ca. 1470) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Blinderman, “Compression of Time,” 58. Wagner, “Übers Sofa,” 44.

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DEPICTING HOMOSEXUALITY in AMERICAN PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS, 1983 to 1989

No such diversity of sexuality can be found in the visual discourse within the pages of the New York Times and Newsweek between 1983 and 1989. On the one hand, particularly in the New York Times, articles on homosexuality during the age of AIDS were mostly text; on the other hand, homosexuality was mentioned almost only in the context of AIDS and, from 1984, gay men were reduced to their status as sick people without sexual relations — women played no role in this visual discourse. We can make out two approaches to the representation of homosexuality in press photos: on the one hand, gay couples, named neither in caption nor text, are presented as symbols of an explicitly sexual gay lifestyle. On the other hand, gay experts are cited, mostly representatives of respected occupations such as doctors or judges, and argue for their rights as a sexual minority or speak about their sexual orientation without being reduced to the latter in the text. While reports in Newsweek use both of these visual strategies, there were only two articles in the New York Times that integrated photos into the text. The first, from February 4, 1988, had a photo of a representative of a gay rights organization (“Thomas B. Stoddard, executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the nation’s largest group working for the civil rights of homosexuals”; p. B1; p. 153), whereby his sexual orientation was not mentioned in the article. The second article, from June 25, 1989, simply showed a picture of the Stonewall Inn (p. 25), the site of the riots that sparked and symbol of the American gay liberation movement. In Newsweek too, only four issues between 1983 and 1989 contained articles with photos that delved into homosexual relationships and lifestyles in any depth. Despite the early connection between homosexuality and AIDS, an August 8, 1983 reportage entitled “Gay America. Sex, Politics and the Impact of AIDS” focused on the diversity of homosexual lifestyles in the United States. While the text described the effect of AIDS on gay male identity and the fear of a “panicky backlash” (p. 35) threatening the liberalization gays had fought for, the 17 photos that illustrate the text show a differentiated picture of lesbian and gay life in the United States. 12 photographs are printed on a two-page spread on pages 31 and 32: photos of urban gay communities in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; a cowboy at the National Gay Rodeo in Reno; two gay farmers in Minnesota; 195

members of the Society of Gay and Lesbian Senior Citizens; a family at the Los Angeles gay pride parade; as well as a photo of the gay (white) lawyer Ron Ehemann from Chicago; and Republican Gerry Studds, the first openly gay congressperson in the United States, p. 154–155. On the following pages (35 – 39), individuals and groups such as gay judge Richard Failla and Chicago’s Windy City Gay Chorus, p. 157, are introduced. The article’s final pages (36, 39) show two gay couples — taken from the back and therefore unidentifiable — the first under a bathhouse entryway and the second entering the back door of a bar in Dubuque, Iowa, p. 156. The many photos in this issue that show lesbian and gay people at work or engaged in various activities contradict the concept of a homosexual lifestyle focused only on sexual orientation. Many of the photographs were taken at gay pride parades or in San Francisco’s gay Castro district, but they do not reduce the protagonists to their sexuality. Rather the visual information portrays the heterogeneity of lesbian and gay lives as opposed to a unified, mostly urban, gay community with a lifestyle very different from that of the general population. Anticipating the study of Goldin’s community to follow, it should be noted that the gays and lesbians portrayed, despite the diversity of their lifestyles, are all white and members of the American middle class if their clothing, occupations, and hobbies are any indication. Despite their status as sexual minorities, their skin color and social status meant they were decision-makers within American society. The first Newsweek photo of gay men in the time period studied appeared on April 18, 1983. It was in the article “The Change in Gay LifeStyle” and is a comparatively undifferentiated, stereotypical photo of an anonymous gay couple at a (gay pride) parade. Their names appear neither in the article, nor in the caption (“Fears and doubts among urban gays”; p. 158). While the text discussed the physical, emotional, and social consequences of AIDS for members of the gay community, the photo ignored the epidemic completely. It was of a shirtless couple hugging loosely; they are standing on the street and one is holding a beer can. The men are dressed identically in tight jeans and leather police hats, and have neatly trimmed beards, as was the fashion of the early 1980s. Their anonymity and their conformist masculine dress marks them as symbols of an urban gay community associated with excessive partying, the cult of the body, promiscuity, and alcohol. Their uniform expresses their homosexuality and is the identifying feature of the “gay lifestyle” of the title, which is undergoing (necessary) changes. In the context of the suffering of AIDS patients described in the text, the photo becomes proof of the misconduct of gay men who are now confronted with the consequences of their lifestyle. While the text described in detail the fear of linking homosexuality, AIDS, guilt, and punishment, this topos of guilt is explicitly drawn upon in the combination of title, caption, and photo. The photo becomes an emblem for the risk-taking of gay men, which ends in an HIV infection brought on by their own behavior. 196

This image of homosexuality as promiscuous and, in times of AIDS, dangerous is given form in Newsweek in a photograph of a San Francisco bathhouse printed three times between 1983 and 1985, p. 159. The photo shows a young naked man with a towel around his neck, obviously a bathhouse visitor and, over his shoulder, a poster with information on HIV prevention that reads: AIDS is everyone’s problem. Protect yourself and those you love. Use condoms/Avoid any exchange of body fluids/Limit your use of recreational drugs / Enjoy more times with fewer partners. Within the photo and in all three articles, homosexuality is reduced to promiscuous and anonymous sex and linked directly to AIDS. The photo was published on July 4, 1983 (p. 20 in the article “The Panic over AIDS” with the caption “Warning in San Francisco Bathhouse: A somber mood,”) in reference to the emotional consequences of AIDS for the gay community. On May 7, 1984, the photo appeared a second time to illustrate a debate on the danger of HIV transmission through saliva (“The Saliva Scare,” p. 103). While the article says that HIV cannot be transmitted through kissing, some of the text’s statements (“Undercover officials investigated in bathhouses”), the caption (“Risky Business: Bathhouse warning in San Francisco”), and the photo make it clear that the danger is in homosexual practices. Finally, the photo appeared a third time on August 12, 1985 with the caption “Bathhouse poster: Fighting back with facts.” The article, “A Disease Shrouded in Myths,” tried to correct the stigmatizing myths and false information associated with AIDS. This is a good example of how differently the same image can be used and interpreted in connection with texts. At the same time, all three issues used the photo to equate homosexuality with promiscuity, risk-taking, AIDS, and the danger of infection. Monogamous gay relationships and dealing responsibly with sex partners are concealed. Finally, the topos of the suffering, depressed gay man was repeatedly used to represent homosexuality, but not necessarily in connection with the AIDS epidemic. For example on January 13, 1986, Newsweek devoted its front-page story to homosexuality for the first time since 1983. “Growing Up Gay: The Society’s Dilemma: One Family’s Crisis” is a human-interest piece on a white middle-class family that learned to accept their only son’s homosexuality. The cover photo is of the son, Kelly, staring seriously at the camera with a family photo in his hand. In the article too, the photos of him, his family, his childhood, and his university diploma are meant to accentuate the family’s “normalcy,” p. 160. At the end of the article is a photo of Kelly and his partner, with whom he lived a middle-class family life in which sexuality seems to play no role. Like the photos, the text described the innocence of a family dealt a blow of fate: a homosexual son. Kelly himself felt his sexual orientation to be a burden that distanced him from his parents and the general population, and he described his fear of social exclusion, made greater 197

by the threat of AIDS. While in this case someone is depressed because he lost the closeness of his family, the image of the sad young man plays a key role in the context of the AIDS epidemic. The above-mentioned issue of August 8, 1983 has a picture of a young white gay couple on the cover, holding one another with sad expressions, p. 161. Together with the mention of AIDS in the title, homosexuality is connected to sadness and loss, but also to regret and shame. This iconography calls up the topos of guilt and imparts a unified, stereotypical picture of regretful gay men who have become HIV-positive because of their sexual orientation.

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“SEXUALITY as a POSITIVE FORCE”? IMAGES of HOMOSEXUALITY in the CONTEXT of AIDS

Coverage of homosexuality in both Newsweek and the New York Times exhibited a clear development: at the onset of the AIDS epidemic, press photos made homosexual identities explicitly visible and presented homosexual lifestyles as being more than just sexual orientation. After the mid-1980s, this iconography changed: images of gay men were reduced to their status as victims of their own (involuntary) sexual orientation, or to their status as deathly ill people as we shall explore further in the following chapter. Even if there was no direct link to AIDS in the images, it was present indirectly and limited gay identity to dealing with the epidemic. It is this visual ignoring of homosexuality and gay and lesbian relationships that Goldin addressed in her catalogue text and wished to redress in her show. She invited Morrisroe, Hujar, and Wojnarowicz as artists who presented a broad spectrum of images of sexuality. Homoerotic desire, the staging of sexual availability, and explicit images of homosexual practices all had their place in the visual composition of the show. All of these photos, with the exception of Wojnarowicz’s Sex Series, reflected a personal relationship to the subject of the image or presented the body of the photographer in a self-portrait. Unlike the press photos, the relationship between photographer and subject could always be traced in the exhibition, prohibiting any reduction of anonymous individuals to symbols of a unified lifestyle. AIDS was present concretely only in Wojnarowicz’s photocollages. In all other contributions, the context of AIDS is suggested only by participation in the exhibition. It is evident that the photos by Armstrong, Hujar, and Morrisroe were all made well before the peak of the AIDS epidemic, namely in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It seems as if Goldin needed to go way back in the three artists’ work to find visual representations of sexuality suited to combating the negation of sexuality in the press photos. The artists themselves also clearly found it difficult to show homosexuality during the latter part of the 1980s. It is important to note here that Hujar had died two years earlier and Morrisroe a few months before the exhibition, so that Goldin alone chose which of their works to show. Her influence on Armstrong, whom she encouraged to take up photography again in 1988 / 1989, also seems to have been considerable. 199

The representation of love and caring, one of Goldin’s demands on her artists, does not seem to be linked to sexuality in these works. There are only two photos of gay couples among the portraits: Armstrong’s Genario and Costas, New York City 1980, which shows the young men hugging closely, and Morrisroe’s 1980 photograph Untitled (John S. and Jonathan), which expresses the two men’s physical attraction to one another through their embrace.495 The representation of gay relationships as committed and caring partnerships, as in Goldin’s portraits of Gilles and Gotscho, cannot be found in any of the exhibition’s photographs.

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Genario and Costas, New York City, 1980, in Matthew Marks Gallery, A Double Life, 71; Untitled (John S. and Jonathan), 1985, in Ruf and Corner, Mark Morrisroe, 173.

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PHOTOGRAPHS of PEOPLE WITH AIDS in WITNESSES

The first thing one notices about visual representations of people with HIV/AIDS in Goldin’s show, is that only four of the almost 100 works portrayed people who were obviously suffering from the ravages of AIDS. The fact that an exhibition about AIDS had so few images of people who were sick with AIDS-related diseases is a sign that Goldin’s artists were wary of explicit images of the epidemic’s physical effects.496 Like showing pictures of homosexuality, visibility of people with AIDS ran the risk of encouraging stigmatization or discrimination against those portrayed. Furthermore, linking an artist’s sexuality to his or her art is problematic, as discussed above in the context of the culture wars. During the AIDS epidemic in particular, many rejected the label gay artist or artist affected by AIDS. While belonging to this group was decisive for the political self-representation and visibility of people with AIDS, it also limited the interpretation of the artworks to their place within the visual discourse on AIDS. This explains Kiki Smith’s defensive reaction when interviewed by the author; at the onset she railed against being reduced to anyone’s political, social, or art historical “didactic agenda.” 497 Ross Bleckner also rejected any linkage of his art to his sexual orientation: I always hated and I still would hate anyone to say that I was a gay artist, period. […] I used to be very dismissive of that; like, that is gay art who cares. […] Art is art, but equal. […] But to this day, I find the () of being, to be a gay artist a little problematic because that is not what I am primarily. I happen to be gay and I am an artist. 498 Thus only the following photographs of ill people were exhibited in Witnesses: Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s portrait of the artist Vittorio Scarpati in the hospital, a Polaroid of Mark Morrisroe shortly before his death, David Armstrong’s second photo of Kevin, and three black-and-white photographs by David Wojnarowicz of photographer Peter Hujar on his deathbed.

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497 498

The danger of (re)presenting people with AIDS as victims is always present even for the “most committed and sophisticated artists [who] can fall prey to this dilemma, even in the ’90s” (Crump, “Quasi-documentary,” 18). Author’s interview with Kiki Smith, July 8, 2011 (p. 337). Author’s interview with Ross Bleckner, June 1, 2011 (p. 315).

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The DISSOLUTION of the BODY: PHILIP-LORCA diCORCIA and DAVID ARMSTRONG

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who had studied with Armstrong, Goldin, and Morrisroe in Boston, had four photographs in the exhibition. His portrait of Vittorio Scarpati (1989) thematized the dissolution of the body and its disappearance in pictorial space while avoiding the reduction of Scarpati to his status as a person with AIDS, p. 163. The photo has a symmetrical composition; its subject is centered and frontal, staring at the viewer from a hospital bed. It is clear that he is very ill: his body is gaunt, the gaze from his sunken, dark-circled eyes is tired, and his naked torso is covered in large white bandages and compresses, relicts of procedures inflicted upon his sick body. A look at Scarpati’s drawings on the opposite wall in the exhibition, about his lungs as an organ that no longer functions, makes it possible to understand his medical history and guess at his waning energy. In contrast to the deathly ill Scarpati, the hospital room in diCorcia’s photograph is decorated with colorful objects that counteract its barren atmosphere: ten multicolored balloons are hanging from the IV stand on the right, which is topped with a white Panama hat. In the background to the left of the bed, a teddy bear sits on a neon light, and numerous cards, bright necklaces, handmade presents, and a Mylar balloon are hung on the wall. Next to Scarpati’s bed is a telephone. It is impossible to say whether the decoration is from a past (birthday) party — some of the balloons are losing their air and look as if they have been there for a while. But whatever the reason, the objects create a bridge to the subject’s life beyond his illness. Hat, presents, and cards are signs of Scarpati’s personal life, his fashion style, and his family and friends, and show that he still participates in everyday life. In particular the telephone within arm’s reach demonstrates that he is in contact with the outside world despite his illness and is not isolated or reduced to his health status. DiCorcia’s photograph thus contradicts the fundamental separation of the space of the healthy and that of the sick; 499 illness is only part of Scarpati’s identity. He is not dying the social death that, as Susan Sontag attested, enveloped many of those ill with AIDS in stigmatization and loneliness long before their physical death.500 The photograph is backlit by the neon light on the back wall of the hospital room — its brightness floods the center of the photograph. In 1989, diCorcia worked with a 6x9 medium format Linhof camera, which requires a relatively long exposure time due to the focal length of the lens.501 The result is contre-jour lighting that creates different grades of brightness on diCorcia’s main subject, Vittorio Scarpati. Scarpati’s body lies in the shade of the large pillow and is lit only indirectly. His head, on the other hand, is partly above the pillow and is directly backlit, so that 499 500 501

Watney, Policing Desire, 3 and Gilman, “The Beautiful Body and AIDS,” 115. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 122. Lubow, “Real People, Contrived Settings.”

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his silhouette dissolves in the strong light and his forehead and hairline are only shadows.502 This lighting also creates an idiosyncratic depth effect — the photo has little depth and is divided into two levels. Scarpati in the foreground is softened and blurry, while the objects described above, which encircle the bed like a garland, are focused and detailed. DiCorcia thus gave objects such as the telephone or the grapes next to the IV stand more weight and took focus and color away from his main subject. Scarpati’s body and face look as if they were behind a grey veil and his head is already in a state of transcendental dissipation. With this precise use of light, diCorcia’s art anticipates the decay or disappearance of the body, while Scarpati looks directly at the viewer and so seems to be surrendering himself to this dissolution in full possession of his senses. This creates a defamiliarized, illusionary motif, which blurs the border between naturalness and artifice and reveals the orchestration of the photograph.503 The few elements of color, highlighted by the precise use of flash, increase the artistic manipulation of the photographer, who gave his photo a second narrative level through the symbolic impact of individual objects.504 Such a light-flooded, ethereal representation is unusual for portrayals of people with AIDS, which led, as Sontag described it, to a “hard death.” 505 DiCorcia’s photograph is more reminiscent of the metaphorical interpretation of tuberculosis, which in the nineteenth century was believed to lead to euphoric mental states and increased creativity, even to awakening artistic genius.506 Since Scarpati’s main ailment was his dysfunctional lung, this reference is not far-fetched. DiCorcia avoided the negative connotations usual in images of people with AIDS and instead expressed Scarpati’s suffering through the more positive metaphors surrounding “consumption.” Mark Morrisroe also used the motif of his sick lungs in his art and retouched an x-ray of his lungs as a reflection on his alienation from his body as a result of his illness, p. 164. Unlike diCorcia’s work, which added a metaphorical level to the content of the photo, in Morrisroe’s photo — as David Joselit aptly put it — “medical diagnostics [was] a means of self-representation.” 507 Like diCorcia, David Armstrong, in his second photo of Kevin (1983), created a comparable staging of physical dissolution through the manipulation of light and shadows, p. 165.508 He again presented his subject, 502 503

504 505 506 507 508

I would like to thank Paul Brunner, Teresa Gruber, and Christiane Ludena for their insights on the lighting. Kruska, Boston School, 23. Kruska situates this artistry in film and commercial photography, since diCorcia freelanced for commercial magazines such as Esquire, Condé Nast Traveler, and Details (see also Galassi, “Photography is a Foreign Language,” 11). Zbikowski, “Philip-Lorca diCorcia,” 172. Sonntag, Illness and Aids, 126. Ibid., 32 – 33. Joselit, “Mark Morrisroe,” 201. This photograph was in the catalogue both as the example of David Armstrong’s work as well as on the back cover, showing that Goldin considered it to be representative for the exhibition.

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now emaciated and bald, against a neutral background, which highlighted the body as photographic motif. In contrast to the 1977 photograph, Armstrong chose a longer shot that places Kevin further into the dimly lit space of the image and thus further from the viewer. Kevin is sitting backwards on a wooden chair, his legs are bent, his head is leaning on the wall behind him and he is smoking a cigarette. His left hand is in his pants pocket, his right arm, whose hand holds the burning cigarette, is stretched out and resting lightly on the wooden back of the chair in front of him. The chair protects his fragile body like a shield from the gaze of the viewer, as does his placement at the back of the visual space. Kevin’s head and eyes face slightly downwards, his gaze is evasive and turned inwards. Kevin’s sexual presence is no longer the subject of the photo, but the staging of his sick body, which strangely puts his person in the background. Light from a window outside the image’s frame falls on the wall behind his head. It shines brightly on his face, across which are the shadows of the window frame. Light and shadow overlie his gaunt face, which becomes a screen and loses its contours. The shadows are reminiscent of a cross on the head of the (barely) living. Like diCorcia, Armstrong’s staging of the photograph creates a meta-level that invokes Kevin’s impending death. Counter to Scarpati’s brightly lit face, Kevin’s form can barely be seen in the dark. The contrast of dark and light anticipates the slow disappearance of the sick body, which in the photograph is already no longer whole.509 The subject’s isolation is also mirrored in the visual opposition of the dark interior and the light exterior. Unlike Scarpati, Kevin seems to be cut off from the outside world as if in prison, an outsider who can no longer participate in the world of the healthy because of his illness. Despite this obvious hopelessness, Kevin does not seem to be bowing to his fate. His casual pose, sitting on the chair smoking with his legs spread, make him look thoughtful, but not depressed. He seems to suffer his illness with almost defiant resignation and awakens the viewer’s interest more than his or her pity. The dissolution of Kevin’s body suggests photography’s temporality — even more so in comparison with Armstrong’s 1977 photo of him before the outbreak of AIDS. The fatality of the illness becomes clear when the two portraits are contrasted. In Goldin’s show they hung next to one another, turning them into a before-and-after pair that brought Kevin’s physical deterioration to the fore — his transformation from a healthy young man to somebody who was deathly ill. In 1983, emaciated and haggard, Kevin would be unrecognizable if he were not named in the title. While he looks directly and brazenly into the camera in 1977, no more of this confrontation with the viewer can be felt in 1983. The interaction between subject and photographer has become passive. 509

Mark Morrisroe created a comparable photograph, Ramsey, Lake Oswego (1988), a photograph of the face of his friend Ramsey McPhillips underwater, creating a fragmented and distorted visage in Ruf and Corner, Mark Morrisroe, 139.

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This does not mean Kevin has lost control over the representation of his self. Despite his weakness, he and Armstrong find an iconography that expresses sadness over the inevitable death of the young man and bewilderment over the drama of AIDS while mourning Kevin’s lost youth and sexuality. The complete desexualization of the subject that for Armstrong — according to Goldin510 — was equivalent to death is first conveyed when the photos are looked at together. While Kevin’s 1977 body language and facial expression present his sexuality, sex plays no role (anymore) in 1983 and is left out of the image. Taken together, the two photos equate the deterioration of the body with the dissolution of identity. The sexualized, self-assured person who posed has become someone who is suffering from AIDS and is determined by his illness. It is not known when Kevin became infected with HIV — because of the (often) long incubation period he may already have been HIV-positive in 1977 despite having no visible sign of AIDS — but the difference between the two photographs, taken only six years apart, is enormous. The fatality of AIDS is given an element of temporality through the photographic comparison, and the speed of physical deterioration made shockingly clear. Kevin died in 1983, two years before the introduction of the HIV-antibody test, so that his diagnosis must have been simultaneous with the outbreak of symptoms. The shock that viewers must have felt in 1989 at the difference between the two photographs mirrored Kevin’s and Armstrong’s shock about the diagnosis and the illness’s swift progress.

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ’S TRIPTYCH of PETER HUJAR’S Dead BODY

While diCorcia and Armstrong thematized the dissolution of the sick body, Wojnarowicz, in three photos, responded to the death of his lover and mentor Peter Hujar, p. 166. The use of the formalized form of a triptych expanded the interpretive space. On the thematic level, the Christian iconography references the Passion of Christ. This brings Hujar’s death into conjunction with Christ’s martyrdom and, in a larger context, a recognizable iconography of mortality. Wojnarowicz captured the moment of death with a 35mm camera that Hujar gave to him before dying.511 However these three photographs are only one element of Wojnarowicz’s grappling with Hujar’s death. He also shot a Super-8 film, wrote about the death in his essay “Living Close to the Knives”, and made a collage — also shown in Goldin’s exhibition — combining the three photographs with an angry rant on the stigmatization of people with AIDS.512 510 511 512

Goldin, “Afterword,” n. p. Lippard, “Too Political? Forget it,” 9. Wojnarowicz, “Living Close to the Knives.” For a profounder discussion of the collage see Colucci, “Some Sort of Grace” and Saltz, “Notes on a Painting.” Colucci looked at the combination of the three media in connection with Sigmund Freud’s differentiation of mourning and melancholy, discussed above, and concluded that Wojnarowicz — in his repeated exploration of the moment — created a melancholy work in which “countless separate struggles are carried on over the object” (Colucci, “Some Sort of Grace,” 12).

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Wojnarowicz’s three photographs of fragments of Hujar’s body are placed vertically: on top, the head of the deceased on a white pillow, in the center, his hand with middle finger and pointer stretched out on the folded sheet, and at the bottom, his feet, pointing slightly outward and sticking out of the sheet so that both soles are visible. The composition of all three photos is the same — pillow and sheets form a diagonal from the lower left to the upper right — making them into a formal unit and creating a clear directive to read the photos from head to foot. The formal framing creates a distance to the content of the images and the close shots reduce the body parts to their symbolic character. Wojnarowicz refers solely to Hujar’s corpse and to the presence of death in the photographs, underlined, as in Goldin’s photos of Gilles and Gotscho, by the specifics of the medium. Hujar’s life before his illness plays no role (any longer); his relations with the world of the healthy and the living are completely cut off. All that can be seen are the dead man’s fingernails, already turned dark, and his emaciated sunken face with its empty eyes and open mouth, as if the jaw had fallen in the moment of death. Nevertheless, there is at first no obvious relation to the AIDS epidemic. The viewer can only surmise that Hujar has died from AIDS-related causes: the dead man is still young, his hair is not yet grey. His sunken features and long unshaven beard seem to speak of a long, draining illness. Wojnarowicz’s photographs refer back to the Christian iconography of mortality. In particular the hands and feet have a strong symbolic impact as they are the sites of the Stigmata Christi, the traces of the crucifixion. The focus on the soles of the feet also refers to a topos in images of the Madonna in the late Middle Ages in which the full view of the child’s soles was read as a reference to the Passion.513 Finally, Hujar’s extended thumb, pointer and middle finger cites Christ’s gesture of benediction, marking him as judge and ruler of the world. Through these means, Wojnarowicz created a thematic reference to the Passion and made an analogy with the dying Jesus as a figure of suffering. Here Christ’s martyrdom, which in his time marked him as a “definitive social outcast,” 514 is linked to the high AIDS-related death rate among young men. Hujar is appointed the status of a martyr and his stigmatization as a gay man with AIDS is equated to Christ’s stigmata. In this framing, his death from AIDS loses its meaninglessness.515 Wojnarowicz shared this metaphorical reference to Christian, especially Catholic, iconography with other artists of his time.516 We need only think of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of 513 514 515

516

Kirschbaum, Lexikon, 66. Ibid., 44. The martyr is a figure of suffering, in its original meaning (from the Greek, martys, witness) from witnessing the Passion of Christ. “The martyr puts himself into this original image of ‘sacrifice for,’ to which he bears witness. Even at the cost of persecution and death, he holds fast to his belief” (Weigel, “Märtyrerkulturen,” 12 – 13). Meyer, “Profane and Sacred,” 33. See also David Wojnarowicz’s black-and-white photograph Spirituality (For Paul Thek), 1988 / 89 in Harris, David Wojnarowicz, 76.

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crosses and skulls, or Robert Gober’s installations.517 On the one hand, these artworks used the cross as a symbol of suffering and martyrdom, which has a visual authority even without the religious framework; on the other hand, the irreverent use of religious icons and symbols, as in Serrano’s piece, was a provocation and a challenge to social mores and conventions.518 Thus Wojnarowicz, using a contemporary visual language, seems to have been looking for a context with which he could convey horror and death in a photo. He embedded Hujar’s individual fate in the tradition of the iconography of Christ, making his image into a symbol for the suffering of humans that viewers are able to read. Finally, Wojnarowicz made recourse to the convention of the triptych without embedding it into a Christian tradition.519 Klaus Lankheit (1959) has described use of this style without reference to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as “altars without God.” 520 Marion Ackermann took up this idea in 2009 and theorized that the reappearance of the triptych in twentieth and twenty-first century art without a direct Christian meaning is a response to extreme global crises such as global and civil wars or 9 / 11.521 Wojnarowicz’s work, as a reaction to the AIDS crisis, fits well into this reading. He gave his response to the epidemic, which cannot be reduced to a singular historical moment, a more universal form for art about death that transcends a limited interpretation as Art about AIDS. Although he dealt with the epidemic and the discourse on AIDS in his works, he countered a one-dimensional interpretation by giving it a religious context.

STAGING HIS OWN MORTALITY: MARK MORRISROE

Mark Morrisroe’s 1989 Polaroid of his weakened, emaciated body has its own place among the images of people with AIDS exhibited in Witnesses, p. 167.522 He is the only artist who turned his gaze to his own deteriorating body and who until death did not relinquish control over representation of himself.523 The Polaroid is taken from above and shows Morrisroe lying naked with closed eyes on his bed in an embryonic pose. Stripes of sunlight fall on his gaunt, emaciated body, disturbing the anatomic unity of the body as in the photos by Armstrong and diCorcia, providing a visual intimation of his disappearance. But the difference to those other photos is that Morrisroe consciously documented his own demise as a personal grappling with death in which it is no longer possible to distinguish between real passing and staged pose. Morrisroe’s Polaroid, taken by his 517 518 519 520 521 522 523

On this see Promey, who named Catholicism as a central source of creativity for the above-mentioned artists (“The ‘Return’ of Religion,” 597). Weigel, “Märtyrerkulturen,” 33 and Rubin, “Crosses in Contemporary Art,” 9. Niehr, Kunst des Mittelalters, 90. See also Valentin, “Drei: Anfang der Vielheit.” Lankheit, Triptychon als Pathosformel, 84. Ackermann, “Spielarten des Triptychons,” 40. The Polaroid printed in the Artists Space catalogue was not hung in the exhibition, as the photos of the exhibition prove (p. 167 and 168). Wagner in Ruf et al., “A Conversation,” 375.

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friend Brent Sikkema following his directions, is both a rage against death and an acceptance thereof.524 Crossing the mortal threshold becomes a part of the self and photography takes on the role of a postmortal witness.525 All the while, Morrisroe retains control in these “pictures made by dying ahead of time” by sending out preemptive representations of his death that adhered to his own ideas—as if in preventative self-reduction.526 This self-determined performance of one’s own death can be seen as a phenomenon specific to AIDS. Artists such as Morrisroe knew of their fatal illness and their imminent death and were able to consciously shape their artistic legacy and the images they wanted to be remembered by. Robert Mapplethorpe’s last self-portrait from 1989, p. 169, also falls in this category. It is a frontal shot of his face against a black background. In his right hand he is holding a walking stick topped by a skull that also stares directly at the viewer. Surrounded by darkness, only his hand and face are lit and look almost as if they were cutouts, the artist’s body is invisible in the blackness. Mapplethorpe himself created this final symbolic staging of his imminent death, which he here meets with dignity. David Wojnarowicz’s performance of his own death used the motif of the disappearing body even more concretely, p. 170. The black-andwhite photograph, taken a year before his death by his friend Marion Scemama in Chaco Canyon, California, shows only his face almost completely covered by dry, crumbly earth.527 Wojnarowicz’s image of a burial is a preemption of his own interment; although one can see that he is alive, it is his self-representation as a living dead man. Through these references, the photographers anticipate the disappearance of their bodies before death, which also marks the end of their self-representation. These portraits become anticipatory memorials.528 At the same time, the artists drew upon their vitality to themselves portray their own lives, knowing that these would soon end.529 The iconography they used to stage their own bodies in autobiographical narratives mirrors the dilemma between authentic self-documentation and artistic per-form-ance (In-Form-Setzen). This paradox between documentation and subjectivity is evident in these photographs by Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe, and Wojnarowicz, which play with demands for authenticity because they are always open to the danger of fictionalization, or a loss of authenticity.530 524

525 526 527 528

529 530

While Gundlach (in “Emotions & Relations,” 13) attributed the last photographs of Morrisroe to Ramsey McPhillips, Lia Gangitano doubts that is certain (Gangitano in Ruf et al., “A Conversation,” 364). Teresa Gruber, who managed Morrisroe’s estate for the Fotomuseum Winterthur agrees that the photos were taken by Brent Sikkema. Gundlach, “Emotions & Relations,” 13. Bryson, “Boston School,” 33. Marion Scemama in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 140. Bronfen, “Geste der Porträtfotografie,” 236. Bronfen claimed that all portrait photography also functions as a memorial. In this case, that function is accentuated by the deliberate rendering of death. Linck, “Mourning and Militancy,” 39. Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 27 – 28. In the following we shall explore more deeply the myriad meanings and measures of authenticity in the works in Witnesses.

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PEOPLE WITH AIDS in AMERICAN PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS, 1983 to 1989

Despite the small number of photos of people with AIDS, some main themes can be seen in the photos accompanying articles in the New York Times and Newsweek. First of all, there is a fundamental moral separation into “innocent victims” (women and children) and “guilty victims” (gay men and drug users).531 The two latter groups were shown as the typical AIDS patients until 1987, although by 1985 at the latest poor Latin Americans and Blacks were hit hardest by AIDS in New York City, a fact the visual discourse does not transmit.532 While the photographs of guilty victims stereotypically reduced people with AIDS to passive, helpless victims, no reference was made to the epidemic in the pictures of innocent victims. The caption “The most blameless victims” under the photographs of two HIV-positive children in Newsweek (August 12, 1985, p. 29) underscores that they contracted the virus through no fault of their own, p. 171. The children are 13-year-old Ryan White and 2-year old Matthew Kozup, pictured on his mother’s lap. As hemophiliacs, they were unknowingly infected by HIV from blood donations before the virus could be detected. Both photos seem to come from private family albums, the subjects clearly felt very at home when the pictures were taken; Ryan White and Matthew’s mother are both smiling directly at the camera. White is holding a dog, Kozup is photographed with a stuffed animal, which both become attributes of innocence and dependence in this context, characterizing the children as loving, gentle people. AIDS activist Tom Kalin has accordingly described White as “a calm, white, middle-class center to the untidy realities of a crisis which affects so many people outside the nuclear family’s closed circuit.” 533 While the article described White’s ostracization — he was expelled from school because of his infection534 — and criticized this stigmatization of people with AIDS, the epidemic is not visible in the photos, which makes it possible to empathize with the children. This absence of visible signs remained: until his death in 1990, there was never a press photo of White that showed any evidence of the physical impact of the infection. These photographs differ greatly from images of so-called guilty victims, who, since they were themselves to blame due to their immoral 531 532 533 534

On this see Crimp, “Portraits of People With AIDS,” 120. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/basics/ataglance.html (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Kalin, “Prodigal Stories,” 22. White’s parents sued the school and won the case, which brought them national attention.

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homosexuality or their drug addiction, could expect no sympathy.535 A fundamental fear of homosexuality fed a desire to portray AIDS as an illness of socially marginalized groups.536 The dichotomy of guilty and innocent peaked with the public outing of Rock Hudson in 1985. Fear of infection — which had now become “real” — led the general population more than ever to draw a clear line between themselves and so-called risk groups. Press photos of gay people with AIDS thus portrayed them predominantly as sick. As in the Newsweek photo from January 30, 1984 (p. 50), the subjects, like young Warren Johnston, were shown isolated in their hospital beds, cut off from their jobs, their family, and their friends, p. 172 — a visual confirmation of their social marginalization. This demonstrative separation between the space of the healthy and the space of the sick made clear that AIDS patients could not participate in social life. The physical symptoms of AIDS, in particular the exhibition of weak and emaciated bodies, were explicitly shown in the press photos. It is however necessary, as with the photos of lesbians and gays, to distinguish between images of AIDS patients who are named and interviewed and those who are identifiable only as sick bodies, reduced to symbols of the epidemic. The photo in Newsweek is a frontal shot of Johnston lying in his hospital bed and holding a teddy bear. He is wearing a typical whitepatterned hospital gown and his arms are covered with patterned wool legwarmers that reach almost to his shoulder. His head is also lying on a floral pillowcase. In contrast to the clinical white hospital bed, his personal effects — the teddy bear, legwarmers, and pillow — show that someone cares for him and wants to give him safety and warmth. At the same time, they make him look childish and helpless — a contrast to his dark beard, which marks him as a grown man. Infantilization as a result of illness is a common topos through which people with AIDS were desexualized, as in David Armstrong’s work. While at the onset of the AIDS epidemic the press — as seen above — reduced gay men to their sexuality and the concurrent stereotypes of risky sexual practices, promiscuity, and lack of commitment, when the epidemic was full blown in the mid-1980s, gay men were deprived of their sexuality, which vanished from the images.537 In this way homosexuality was placed into a causal relationship with HIV transmission: on the one hand people with AIDS were pathologized, on the other hand, as personally responsible “perpetrators,” they were punished for their sexual behavior.538 In this context, Sander L. Gilman said that not only do photographs of isolated male patients show their 535 536 537 538

Sontag, Illness and Aids, 112. Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis,” 105. See for example Harris, Gay Culture, who, as mentioned above, pointed out this infantilization in representation of gay men in the AIDS quilt. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 112.

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status as sufferers, but that their loneliness, melancholy, and resignation, which Johnston too exudes, also refer to their past “misbehavior,” which is the source of their illness.539 The caption “AIDS patient Warren Johnston in San Francisco: ‘Now I Know’” also suggests remorse and hindsight, and thus calls upon the usual topos of guilt which posited gay men as responsible for both their own illness and the spread of AIDS.540 In a contrasting photograph from the New York Times (December 23, 1985, p. B8), the subject is not given voice, p. 173. The photo shows doctors doing their rounds with a patient: the young man is sitting crosslegged on the bed with his back to the viewer and is being examined by one doctor while three more doctors look on from the left half of the photo. Unlike the photo discussed above, the patient is not recognizable, nor is he named in the caption, which only gives information about the place the photo was taken and allows us to decipher the initials on the back of his shirt, BHC: “A group of doctors, above, examining a patient during rounds at AIDS clinic at Bellevue Hospital Center.” These initials and the patient’s hidden face prevent empathy with the young man, who is reduced to a sick body. He is not a subject with a personal identity but only a symbol of the epidemic or a universal symbol of human suffering.541 In his book When Bodies Remember, Didier Fassin (2007) described this anonymization of the sick body in the context of AIDS in South Africa. It is not the lack of visibility of people with AIDS that prevents empathy, but the way in which images of them inscribe AIDS in sick, foreign bodies. Unknown bodies become strange in their anonymity and are held at a safe distance from the, for the most part, Western viewer.542 In the photo of the exam printed in the New York Times, the doctors’ careful distance from and clinical interest in the patient also turn him into an isolated object of study. Simon Watney found such representations of doctors as intrepid researchers approaching a dangerous and unknown pathogen to be a common convention of AIDS reporting, which also underlined the danger inherent to these patients, for which reason they were isolated in hospitals.543 In these cases, the rhetoric of the Other is central, a topos which is often discussed in the theoretical discourse on AIDS. On the one hand, the epidemic is foreign because its origin is unknown, which is decisive for this repeated trope; on the other hand, people with AIDS were seen as Others within the healthy general population of American society. Gay men, who were already outsiders due to their sexual orientation, were doubly marginalized by the AIDS epidemic and became “other Others.” 544 Finally, within the visual discourse of Newsweek there are two photographs that — like Armstrong’s photos of Kevin — show fashion 539 540 541 542 543 544

Gilman, Sexuality, 318. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 37. Lury, Prosthetic Culture, 47. Fassin, When Bodies Remember, xii. Watney, “Photography and AIDS,” 182. Bright, “Introduction,” 3. See also Gilman, Sexuality, 322.

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designer Perry Ellis before and after the outbreak of AIDS-related symptoms (August 18, 1986, p. 46; p. 174). Ellis died in 1986 and the photos were released posthumously in the same year. These before-and-after shots focus on the fatality of the epidemic and equate AIDS and death, thus drawing a clear line between the healthy and those destined to die. As Michel Foucault stressed in The Birth of the Clinic, changes to the body as a result of illness are seen not only as symptoms, but also as references to the approach of death: “Perception could grasp life and disease in a single unity only insofar as it invested death in its own gaze.” Only in illness can people grasp death as an integral part of life: “It is not because he falls ill that man dies; fundamentally, it is because man may die, that he may fall ill.” 545

545

Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, 158 and 155.

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EXCURSUS: NICHOLAS NIXON’S PEOPLE with AIDS

For this analysis of images of people with AIDS it is useful to compare the above-mentioned photographs by Nicholas Nixon (born 1947) as they, like the press images, were heavily criticized by AIDS activists and theorists. The reception of these photographs after they were exhibited in MoMA in 1988 is key to this critique since the photos themselves — I theorize — exhibit no substantial differences in terms of content and motif from some of the works in Goldin’s show. The different perception of these pieces can only be due to Nixon’s lack of connection to AIDS and the community it affected in Lower Manhattan — he was an outsider, a married heterosexual man who lived not in New York City, but in Massachusetts. Let us begin with a short outline of Nixon’s artistic concept. His project People With AIDS began in Spring 1987 with a call for volunteers in the newsletter of the Boston AIDS Action Committee. Between 1987 and 1990, he photographed 15 people with AIDS — four women and eleven men — in the last months before their deaths. 546 “Very little of it is about their everyday lives. Most of it is about their sickness, their dying, and their deaths.” Bebe and Nicholas Nixon wrote about the project in 1991, “We knew them when they were ill […] we knew them only because they were sick.” 547 Nixon had five photo series in the exhibition Pictures of People, including 15 photographs from the then unfinished series People With AIDS. This excerpt from the work in progress all had Tom Moran as their subject, in the last months before his death from AIDS-related causes. Nixon worked with an 8x10 large-format Deardorff camera. The size of this (old) camera and the long exposure time make serial shots or snapshots impossible, which was decisive for the setting of the black-and-white photographs.548 The photographs of Tom Moran, whom Nixon followed from July 1987 until February 1988, focus on the physical symptoms of AIDS. The series shows the transformation process of the body inflicted by the disease. These photos also used the topoi delineated above of infantilization and desexualization, as can be seen in Tom and his Mother, Catherine Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, August 1987, p. 176. The older woman holds Tom’s face under his chin with her right hand while he has his 546

547 548

In 1991, Nixon and his wife, sociologist Bebe Nixon, published People With AIDS, which included the photographs from the MoMA exhibition together with texts and letters by and interviews with the (by the time of publication) dead. The book was planned as a fundraiser for the Mission Hill Hospice in Boston (Nixon and Nixon, People With AIDS). Ibid., vii. Chahroudi, “Twelve Photographers,” 18.

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arms wrapped around his mother. The balance of power between them is that of mother and child. Nixon shows Moran as a man who because of his illness is not or no longer able to stand on his own two feet as an adult in a partnership and has gone back to his mother’s care. As in works by diCorcia, Armstrong, and Morrisroe, the passing of time is important to Nixon’s photographs, which use light and shadow to emphasize the isolation and dissolution of the sick body.549 In Tom Moran, Boston, October 1987, p. 177, the subject sits in a completely black interior. Bright light from a window falls on his naked torso, the window frame throws a shadow of a cross onto his breast. The light emphasizes the knobby contours of his shrunken body, focusing on its weakness and vulnerability and arousing pity, revulsion, and fear. The images produce horror and shame and distance the viewer from Moran, which is why Susan Sontag dubbed them voyeuristic.550 In Armstrong’s photo, Kevin’s clothes and posture protect him from the outside gaze. Nixon in contrast exposes his subjects while keeping his distance from the physically and socially stigmatized man — Moran is clearly Other: sick, damaged, and cut off from the world. AIDS is portrayed here as the fate of an outsider. The photo arouses horror and fear, but it does not call for political or social action against the discrimination of people with AIDS.551

549 550 551

Linck calls such stagings of the body “beautiful corpses” (Linck, “Mourning and Militancy,” 44). See also Crimp, “Painful Pictures.” Sontag, On Photography, 41 – 42. For a more thorough examination of this phenomenon see Sontag, Regarding the Pain.

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“WE WILL NOT VANISH” — The REPRESENTATION of PEOPLE WITH AIDS

While the photographic portrayals of homosexuality and homoerotic desire in the press and in Witnesses differ greatly and the latter were able to present a differentiated and positive view as Goldin wished, the difference between portrayals of the bodies of AIDS patients in the show and in the press are less pronounced. Goldin’s demand for a positive representation of people with AIDS was not or only partly fulfilled by the photographs in the show. Philip-Lorca diCorcia, David Armstrong, David Wojnarowicz, and Mark Morrisroe all thematized the visual dissolution of the weakened, desexualized body. These anticipations of inevitable and impending death underscored the epidemic’s fatality, epitomized by Armstrong’s before-and-after photos of Kevin in which the ongoing ruin of the young body seems to be visually accelerated. The press photos and Nixon’s project also made use of temporality; Nixon’s series added the date of each photograph to stress this aspect.552 Even Morrisroe, in light of his coming end, consciously staged his own death — an AIDS-specific topos grounded in the impossibility of escaping the deadly epidemic. And in all photographs, the isolation of people with AIDS is highlighted and the fundamental separation of the healthy and the sick is reproduced on the level of the visual. Only diCorcia’s photo blurred this boundary with the inclusion of the personal effects of his subject. In contrast to Nixon’s photos and the press photos, the subjects in the exhibition were not infantilized, indirectly expressing the support which Goldin’s community was able to give to artists with AIDS. Even deathly ill, they remained connected to and were cared for by their partners and their circle of friends and did not need to go crawling back to their families. As a result, the topos of guilt, linked to the infantilization expressed in the press photos and Nixon’s photos, was also absent in Witnesses. As Goldin wished, the photographs were able to give visibility to a functioning community. More than the photographs themselves, the hanging that underscored the mutual relationships of the portraits erased the borders between the sick and the healthy and expressed Goldin’s vision of community, commitment, and care.

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Kimmelman described Nixon’s photos of AIDS patients as “freaks, like sickly, helpless victims,” reminiscent of concentration camp survivors (Kimmelman, “Bitter Harvest”).

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Nevertheless, the thematic closeness of the exhibition pieces, the press photographs, and Nicholas Nixon’s series is remarkable, as it contradicts Goldin’s wish to present a clearly different picture than the negative associations oft promoted by images of people with AIDS. In particular, Armstrong’s photographs of Kevin are, in terms of content, indistinguishable from the before-and-after photos in the press — condemned as a voyeuristic “public spectacle” by AIDS theorists553 — and are quite similar to Nixon’s documentary aesthetic in their formal decision for an aestheticizing black-and-white. These photographs also made use of stereotypes in portraying sick people, which we can describe with Aby Warburg as “pathos formulas” — established perceptual structures meant to awaken a calculated emotion. Warburg coined this term to describe an “art-making sign language” (kunstgestaltende Gebärdensprache)554 in antiquity taken up by Renaissance artists looking for models to express pathos in facial expressions and body language.555 Warburg’s term can also be applied to the portrayal of people with AIDS to describe their common stereotypical cultural / historical attributes (the lowered eyes, the isolation, the vulnerability of nakedness) and their concomitant effects. The most decisive difference between the photos by Armstrong, Nixon, and the press is when they were taken. Armstrong’s photos of Kevin are from 1977 and 1983. This was before the advent of the HIV-antibody test, before the founding of ACT UP, and before any visual discourse in the media from which activists and artists could distance themselves. In 1983 there were neither visual stereotypes of AIDS patients nor a framework for a confrontational, respectful representation of people with AIDS.556 By the late 1980s, conditions had changed completely: since 1987, ACT UP had been fighting against visual and textual representations of people with AIDS that individualized the epidemic on the one hand and universalized it by taking it out of context and reducing it to its physical and mental states on the other hand. Even the term people with AIDS was chosen as a rejection of AIDS ‘victim.’ This expressed the AIDS movement’s demand to see people with AIDS-related diseases as more than their status as sick people and understand the epidemic as only part of their identity.557 553

554 555 556 557

Crimp, “Portraits of People With AIDS,” 120. As a counterexample to such desexualization, Crimp discussed Stashu Kybartas’ video Danny, in which the protagonist discusses his sexual desire and is presented as a sexually active person (ibid., 126 – 130). Warburg, “Einleitung,” 3. Warburg, “Dürer und die italienische Antike,” 455. In this essay, Warburg first used the term pathos formula. For a more thorough discussion see Port, Pathosformeln. Neither was anyone demanding, as Jan Zita Grover did in 1992, that AIDS be seen not as an identity, but as a health condition (Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 39). Watney, “Photography and AIDS,” 181. And in fact, in a 1988 interview Nicholas Nixon spoke of people with AIDS as victims who were lesser than he was because they were sick and helpless (Lyon, “The AIDS Project,” 4).

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For this reason, ACT UP members demonstrated at the opening of Nicholas Nixon’s exhibition in 1988 with a flyer entitled “No more Pictures without Context.” The flyer demanded “the visibility of People With AIDS who are vibrant, angry, loving, sexy, beautiful, acting up and fighting back. Stop looking at us, start listening to us.” 558 Like the press photographs, published some years before Nixon’s exhibition, they criticized his socalled victim photography aesthetics, which reduced people with AIDS to “walking pathologies” 559 and prevented identification with them. Images of passive suffering conveyed “timeless realities” that consciously ignored the political context of AIDS.560 As a result of this critique, from the mid-1980s such photos were no longer found in the works of artists directly or indirectly affected by AIDS. Thus the photographs shot in 1989 by diCorcia and Wojnarowicz (and the two 1989 photographs by Armstrong), are framed so as to create a distance to the concrete physical suffering of their subjects. As in Nan Goldin’s photographs of Gilles and Gotscho, they deal with the epidemic at a higher level of abstraction. Their photos become metaphors of mortality, open reflections on eros and thanatos with no direct relation to AIDS. While the press photos and Nixon’s series deliberately detract from the photographer’s subjective influence and present themselves as objective, the performativity of photography is not obscured in Goldin’s show. That which the curator achieved on the thematic level — broadening the visual representations of AIDS — diCorcia, Armstrong, and Wojnarowicz achieved on the formal, compositional level. In this way, they differentiated themselves from the representations by Nixon or the press. Morrisroe’s 1989 Polaroid is the exception to this rule. The fact that it was displayed in the exhibition and was criticized by neither press nor AIDS activists, although Morrisroe portrayed himself as a naked and vulnerable man with AIDS, can only be explained by the fact that it was a self-portrait. It is true that the format of the Polaroid, in contrast to Nixon’s photographs, encourages an intimate viewing, but I propose that Morrisroe’s status as a person with AIDS, which gave him more rights regarding the visual representation of his illness, was more important. The following section looks in more depth at the meaning of this and the way in which people with AIDS were portrayed — in both meanings of the word — in a comprehensive and broader reflection on Art about AIDS in Goldin’s show.

558 559 560

Flyer reproduced in Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 39 – 40. Grover, “Opportunistic Identification,” 111. Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 42. See also Berger, “Photography of Agony.”

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APPROPRIATE REPRESENTATION? The RECEPTION of PHOTOGRAPHS of PEOPLE WITH AIDS

On the compositional level, there are similarities in the photographs of people with AIDS in Witnesses, in the press, and in Nixon’s show. Thus Goldin’s demand for empowering representations cannot be the criteria by which artists were chosen or determine the meaning of the works in her show. Rather the artists’ personal relationship to AIDS changed the yardstick by which the works were measured, as a comparison with the reception of Nicholas Nixon’s photographs shall show. Nicholas Nixon first made contact with the subjects of his photo project People With AIDS when he began shooting them. “He came to it almost as a virgin,” Dan Cameron remarked in 2011, accusing Nixon of having only an aesthetic and no political interest in AIDS.561 Robert Atkins similarly criticized modern straight photography that hid its orchestration behind an “apparently artless transparency or aura of documentary ‘stylelessness’ of work,” thus negating the photographer’s influence over aesthetic decision.562 Peter Galassi too, who praised Nixon’s photographs in the MoMA exhibition as old-fashioned and high modernism, placed them in the manly tradition of American documentary photographers such as Walker Evans or Edward Weston, which robbed them of political urgency or contemporary meaning.563 Through the use of certain conventions — such as high-angle shots, which suggest the superiority of the photographer or the viewer, the relatively close framing of only the subject, and shots of supposedly unsuspecting moments when the subject is not looking at the camera 564 — Nixon’s photographs feign the objectivity of a neutral observer.565 In so doing, they obscure their specific meaning-generating codes that both constructed and had an enormous effect on the image of people with AIDS. On the whole, critics found that because Nixon was not connected to the people with AIDS he photographed, he furthered the division into the healthy and the sick —in a group which had already been a social minority before the epidemic. The asymmetrical relationship between Nixon and 561 562 563 564 565

Author’s interview with Dan Cameron, July 11, 2011 (p. 320). Atkins, “In Grief and Anger,” 71. Galassi, “Introduction,” 12 and 17. Grittmann, Das politische Bild, 118 – 121 and 265. Atkins, “In Grief and Anger,” 71. The same is true of press photographs, which aim to present a neutral and supposedly true visual report. I would like to refer to SolomonGodeau, who made it clear that a documentary photograph can never be neutral because it is always the product of particular historical conditions and a certain milieu (Solomon-Godeau, “Questions about Documentary Photography,” 169).

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his subjects is not restricted to AIDS. Abigail Solomon-Godeau has shown how imbalance in the situation in which photos are taken aids the danger of recreating rather than dismantling the victim status of the Other on the visual level.566 This can be seen for instance in the social-documentary photography of the 1930s, in which social outcasts were photographed for the American Farm Security Association to portray the subjugation and suffering of the lower classes.567 As in Nixon’s work, in these images the distance between the photographers (subject) and their subjects (object) created a situation through which the former — although, like Nixon, their motives were humanitarian — easily become voyeurs.568 This charge was also made against Nixon’s photographs and against press photos of people with AIDS: they succumbed to sensationalism at the expense of the suffering of others and framed social outcasts as a spectacle.569 The social status of these Others and the ethical responsibility of the photographer in representing them thus cannot be separated.570 Stuart Hall has analyzed stereotypical representations of social outsiders as visual marking and classification that aids in gaining symbolic power over the Other.571 Allan Sekula believed the danger of cementing moral hierarchies and the establishment of an Other is inherent to the medium of photography. Due to photography’s repressive function, the authority of the photographer is upheld by the victim of social inequalities she or he is photographing.572 Martha Rosler however does not see unequal representation as part of the ontology of photography, but rather as part of power structures within a larger cultural context. Taking photographs of social outsiders strengthens existing hierarchies by imparting information about those who are powerless to those who are powerful.573 In this context, the main criticism of Nicolas Nixon (and the press photographs) was that he was a heterosexual family man from Massachusetts, which put him in a very different position than the artists in Goldin’s show. As a photographer with no personal relationship to the subjects of his photos, Nixon clearly was not believed to have the same right to respond to AIDS as the artistic community directly affected by the epidemic. In opposition to Nixon’s so-called victim photography, in Goldin’s exhibition the Others spoke jointly as a functioning network — live from the frontlines of the crisis, so to speak. Their specific knowledge lent 566 567 568 569

570 571 572

573

Solomon-Godeau, “Questions about Documentary Photography,” 175 – 176. Ibid., 176 – 179. Sontag, On Photography, 27 – 51. Sontag explores this in a discussion of Diane Arbus’s photos of social misfits. Grover, “Visible Lesions,” 40. Sontag says that images of the injured are always repulsive and alluring at the same time. This is also true of images of people with AIDS (Sontag, Regarding the Pain, 95). Solomon-Godeau, “Questions about Documentary Photography,” 176. Hall, “The Spectacle of the Other,” 265. Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” 345. Sekula refers to the dual function of photography as both honorific and repressive (on this see also Tagg, “A Democracy of the Image,” 37 and Sekula, “Photographic Meaning,” 104). Rosler, “On Documentary Photography,” 306.

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authenticity to their artistic works, and their joint affliction with AIDS constituted an appropriate (homosexual) self-representation apart from press photographs — which were framed as neutral but deemed repressive because they came from outside the community. The insider status of the Witnesses artists gave them artistic freedom in their responses to AIDS. The marginalization of Goldin’s community was redefined and made positive through art: they were on the fringes of society as gays, lesbians, bisexuals and mainly HIV-positive individuals, but they were moral authorities as artists. They were given the power of definition over the AIDS epidemic, which protected them and their works from criticism and put them beyond the reach of the general population. Clearly, for Nan Goldin too, the main criterion for selection was that the artists themselves were affected by AIDS. The photos she chose and endorsed anticipated death, visualized the fatal nature of AIDS, and portrayed people with AIDS as passive sufferers. This can lead to only one conclusion: the individual works themselves were relevant neither to the show’s overall statement nor to how it was perceived by the public. The fact that the artists were or were close to people with HIV/AIDS gave them carte blanche in their visual response to AIDS. Accordingly, their personal status held more weight as regards judgments of the photos than any criteria inherent to the works themselves. There is no other way of explaining why, regarding the press photos and Nixon’s series, universality and the topos of desexualization were criticized for disempowering people with AIDS and depoliticizing the AIDS crisis while the same topoi raised no objections at all in the works of Armstrong, diCorcia, or Wojnarowicz. There are of course differences within the works themselves, as delineated above. Nevertheless it remains that Nixon’s series was criticized for not taking a political stance, while Wojnarowicz’s and Goldin’s works were praised for just such universally understandable iconography. Goldin’s exhibition was a space in which artists grappling with AIDS could safely represent themselves as they were morally and artistically unassailable. Membership in the group that made Art about AIDS guaranteed said art would be seen as an appropriate representation. Therefore it is necessary to add a caveat to Stephen C. Dubin’s praise of Witnesses and Goldin’s policy, which was not “one of intolerance and exclusion, but instead allowed for expanding the range of portrayals available.” 574 For this diversity of artistic responses was allowed only within the context of the community affected by AIDS. This transformation of outsiders to insiders and the moral interpretation of the works had consequences for the way in which they were perceived. The safe space of the exhibition protected the artworks in Witnesses from the art market or other judgments of artistic quality. 574

Dubin, Arresting Images, 225.

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AIDS itself, as a life-threatening and stigmatizing disease that physically and socially prevented people with it from participation in society, gave art exhibitions a specific representative function — they were placed in the service of the AIDS movement. Marvin Heiferman, curator of the exhibition The Indomitable Spirit, even thought it would be disrespectful to interfere in the selection of the works. The AIDS epidemic had paralyzed him and made his job as curator superfluous because he did not want to be so presumptuous as to set criteria for judging and choosing artworks about the AIDS crisis. Art about AIDS had become “immune.” 575 Accordingly, reviews of Witnesses stressed its importance in giving visibility to artists affected by AIDS. Many critics explicitly ignored the quality of the works and spoke only about their meaning in the context of the AIDS epidemic: Indeed, questions of artistic merit and quality are almost beside the point. With its potent blend of sexual provocation, social protest and personal anguish, Witnesses is more than an elegiac look back at the East Village art scene of the mid-tolate 1980’s. It’s also a chilling introduction to the artistic and ideological battle-grounds of the 1990’s. 576 But this special status prevented critique of the art itself, a fact which was repeatedly and explicitly stated in the press: John Russell for example, wrote in the New York Times that piety and respect forbid notions of taste from playing a role in the assessment of the exhibition. As people with AIDS, the artists in Goldin’s show were in the privileged position of being able to make authentic statements about the epidemic, giving them an exclusive right to be heard.577 Or, as conservative columnist Hilton Kramer said less positively of Art about AIDS: “All questions about whether the art is any good or not have been declared obsolete by these champions of advocacy expression.” 578 In light of the gravity of the epidemic, many critics did not feel able to examine the artistic value of the show. Clive Barnes said so clearly in his New York Post review: [The works] which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. But who is to judge that — the artist, the community, the National Endowment or Congress? 579

575 576 577 578 579

Hirsh, “Indomitable Spirit,” 28. Van Siclen, “Witnesses.” Russell, “Images of Grief.” Kramer, “Art Show on AIDS.” Barnes, “Art Grant Ping-Pongs.”

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The personal situation of the artists gave them, “in that respect and in no other, a privileged position.” 580 The feeling of community, not the quality of individual works, was what art critics should discuss.581 A reader of the New York Observer expressed this succinctly in a letter to Hilton Kramer: At such a moment in time, the sensitive critic shows his humanity and speaks with a soft voice out of respect for those who have died and those who try to express their loss and their anger. Shame on you, Hilton Kramer. 582 Some critics, for example New York Times’ journalist William H. Honan, railed against this “immunity” of gay artists and their artworks. He complained in the International Herald Tribune that any opinion on Art about AIDS that varied from the community’s official line was defamed as homophobia by the “gay thought police.” 583 Thus the works in Goldin’s exhibition were critiqued as something in between art, politics, and AIDS education, and as border-crossing pieces were praised as well as criticized for being only “documents of our time” that would not endure past the current crisis.584 The reviews cited demonstrate the perception of the show as political and show the extent to which the artworks were located within the discourse on AIDS. The artistic license of people with AIDS was recognized by reviewers and either praised as a necessary voice in the discourse on AIDS or criticized as moralizing. John Russell summarized in the New York Times the way in which these artworks were functionalized and morally loaded in the context of AIDS: Witnesses is not primarily an art exhibition. It is an attempt to bear witness in terms of art. […] And if, in the matter of AIDS, there are barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ it is for us to break them down, not to build them higher. 585 This attitude can explain the short-lived recognition of artistic responses to AIDS that were often quickly forgotten when the crisis abated.586 This is not true for Nan Goldin’s photographs. While her exhibition created a safe space — safe also from criticism — for the representation of her community, in her own photos from the 1980s and 1990s she did not focus exclusively on AIDS. Rather she made border-crossing images of homoeroticism that contravened all forms of marginalization and 580 581 582 583 584 585 586

Russell, “Images of Grief.” Zeaman, “Beyond Politics.” Peress, “Letter to Hilton Kramer.” Honan, “AIDS Show Opens with Grant.” Kastor, “The Content.” See also Honan, “AIDS Show Opens with Grant”; Lipson, “Controversial AIDS.” Russell, “Images of Grief.” See also Lipson, “Controversial AIDS”; Reid, “Beyond Mourning,” 51. See for example Greer Lankton and Darrell Ellis from Witnesses or Robert Farber and Frank Moore.

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even promoted the dissolution of social and sexual borders. Thus Goldin separated her own art from the context of the AIDS epidemic. This may explain why in the late 1980s her work was not seen only as Art about AIDS or the expression of a certain time and a certain community. We can safely assume that this openness is one reason why she remains in the canon of successful photographers to this day and enjoys continued visibility in international exhibitions.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE as a GUARANTEE OF AUTHENTICITY

The concept of authenticity seems a fitting place to start in a delineation of the relationship between the photos in Witnesses and Goldin’s own photos of her community, and to place the former within the critical theoretical and artistic discourse of the late 1980s. It is of course surprising that in an exhibition at this time, when postmodernity had surmounted the idea of the authentic as real, believable, and sincere, that recourse was made to authenticity at all, much less in two ways: on the one hand, the authenticity of the issues to which Goldin’s photos are an artistic response and on the other hand the authority of the works themselves due to their moral and artistic superiority.587 The preeminence of the artists was manifested in their direct or indirect experience with AIDS, which was central to responding to the epidemic and belonging to Goldin’s community. Thus both from the outside (the press) and from the inside (Goldin’s selection) — in their self-perception and in their perception by others — they were granted a privileged position.588 Dubin, for example, in his discussion of David Wojnarowicz’s controversial catalogue text, describes the latter’s writing as a “powerful harangue, mixing sorrow, indignation, fatigue and reverie. As a person with AIDS, his emotions are without doubt authentic, and raw.” 589 Wojnarowicz however did not want to be reduced to his AIDS status. He hated reviews “that seem to use the fact that I have AIDS as an excuse for the tone of my writings. I have been writing about these issues in this ‘tone’ well before my recent diagnosis with AIDS.” 590 The authenticity of the objects exhibited, which stemmed from their origin at the hands of the artists,591 led in the case of Witnesses neither to an increase in their material value, nor their ideal value as original works in accordance with modernist beliefs. Rather they gained legitimacy as ethically and morally appropriate representations, because art by people with AIDS could only be authentic. This also explains the heterogeneity of Art about AIDS: “Authenticity is not about factuality or reality. It is about authority. Objects have no authority; people do.” 592 587 588 589 590 591 592

On the genealogy of the concept see Knaller, “Genealogie,” and Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde. Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 21. Dubin, Arresting Images, 213. Document Wojnarowicz 1989. Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 9. Crew and Sims, “Locating Authority,” 163.

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The hanging of the portraits of Goldin’s community heightened this feeling of authenticity in the exhibition; subjects were named and viewers could recognize them in multiple, cross-referencing works. They thus became authentic, or real. They were memorials to members of a circle of friends, some of whom had already died, and thus proof of the (losing) battle for survival. Although, as we have seen in the analysis of Mark Morrisroe’s self-portraits, they were carefully composed and expressed a certain visual concept—artistic principles were not ignored because of the urgency of AIDS—they still acted as real proof, as witnesses of the group. In Witnesses, authenticity can also be read as the subjectivity with which the artists represented themselves and their environment. The intimacy of the group show and of the personal photographs, for example Mark Morrisroe’s small-format Polaroids, acted to provide a view into the protagonists’ private lives and thus spoke out against the pathos formulas of the press photos or Nicholas Nixon’s series, which were criticized exactly for their lack of subjectivity. In their function as chronologists of a threatened and dying community, the artists were deemed authentic because their photographs bore witness to those members who were still alive.593 Furthermore, as Ernst von Alphen has attested, the genre of the portrait itself accords authority: The portraits of historical figures to which, because they have been worthy of portrayal, we attribute authority, this intuitive acceptance of the ‘real’ authority of the sitter is actually the reverse of that other activity, namely, placing authority in them through the function of the portrait. 594 Witnesses is a paradigmatic example of bestowing authority through the creation and viewing of images.595 Finally, the choice of the medium of photography highlights the power of the images exhibited as proof, since photographs can be read—according to Philippe Dubois — as singular and substantiative. Dubois underlines not only the indexicality of photographs, but also their reproducibility, which for him is a meta-level between the first negative, the indexical and singular referent, and all prints thereof.596 The group’s self-representation was thus geared toward the future — an attempt to make sure that members of their community with HIV/AIDS were not forgotten. In the images themselves, authenticity was only a theme for Mark Morrisroe, who underscored the credibility of his work by his supposedly un-artistic sloppy processing and also by writing comments on and signing 593 594 595 596

David Armstrong refers to himself as a chronicler who wanted “to record the faces of the gay community” (Artists Space, Witnesses, 16). Van Alphen, “The Portrait’s Dispersal,” 22. Ibid., 25. Dubois, “Der fotografische Akt,” 73 – 74.

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his Polaroids. This is very similar to Goldin’s snapshot aesthetic, for his work too falls under James Crump’s definition of quasi-documentary. Ursula Frohne has said that Goldin’s photographs “touch reality” as a photographic attestation and embodiment thereof — a technique given new meaning in the 1990s as a rejection of the growing possibilities of digital manipulation.597 Frohne placed the factuality of the body as a “thing in and of itself” in the foreground, especially when it embodies poverty or subaltern survival strategies.598 This look at the body of the Other, made taboo and desocialized through disease, stigma, and violence, became the indication of a paradigmatic “return of the real” diagnosed by Hal Foster in American art in 1996.599 While Frohne was speaking mostly about a return to the indexicality and therefore validity of photography, Susanne Holschbach took a more differentiated look at this reactivation of the concept of authenticity: after a phase of postmodern, radically conceptual, and media-critical photography, “photography after photography” was no longer concerned with modernist myths of authorship, originality, and self-referentiality. The return of the real rather connects the self-referentiality of photography and of artistic subjectivity and references the use of photography as a social index, as an affirmation and glorification of the photographer’s own life.600 In Witnesses too, authenticity is not something that comes before photographic reality, but is questioned and used discursively. In overcoming the “crisis of the real,” 601 postmodern photography created a new form of subjective-documentary photography. In Goldin’s work too, authenticity is used as a (fictive) artistic category that within the image links the suggestions of directness with references to historic models (i. e. Munch), medial techniques, and discourses. Goldin employs authenticity as a “matter of style and strategy.” 602 In her “Bohemian romanticism of a photography vérité,” Hal Foster sees a slip into coded realism that ultimately weakens this turn to reality.603 However the fact that Goldin counts herself among the social outcasts lends her works credibility and an aura of authenticity — not as an artistic category, but because of her personal experience. The same is true for the photographs in Witnesses.604 597

598 599 600 601 602 603 604

Frohne, “Berührung mit der Wirklichkeit.” See also Jean-Christoph Ammann, who spoke of “reality photography” (Ammann, “Beat Streuli,” 51). See also Kravagna, “Fotografie nach ihrer Kritik,” 30 or Foster, The Return of the Real, 165. Frohne, “Berührung mit der Wirklichkeit,” 402 – 403. Ibid., 403. Holschbach, “Die Wiederkehr des Wirklichen,” 410 – 411. Grundberg, “The Crisis of the Real,” 168. Brückle, “Quests for Authenticity,” 196. Holschbach, “Die Wiederkehr des Wirklichen,” 409. Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 25. Brückle has pointed out, that Frohne sees such “encounters with reality” mostly in representations of violence, which he does not believe is a key motif in Goldin’s photography (Brückle, “Quests for Authenticity,” 192). Furthermore, Ursula Frohne does not account for the fact that the subjects of the photos have a minority status. The struggle for self-representation, fundamental to Goldin’s show as giving voice to the others, is not an issue in Frohne’s art historical study.

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Goldin’s and Morrisroe’s photos, and Witnesses itself, sound out postmodern art discourse through their equivocal concept of authenticity. On the one hand, the show is fully within the fundamental parameters of postmodern visual discourse and in many ways deconstructs identity and gender and explores the fragmentation of the body. Its thematization of socially marginalized (homo)sexuality and the concurrent rejection of socially-ascribed gender roles adhere to the main (postmodern) principles of queer theory, which aims at the deconstruction of socially-constructed heteronormativity and sees identity as formed dynamically within the social field, ever-shifting due to its dependence on factors such as sexuality, family, ethnicity, and class.605 Nevertheless, reflections on authenticity and the concomitant stress on authentic subjectivity leads to the expansion of post-modern self-stagings, as in for example Cindy Sherman’s film stills.606 Sherman explored the constructedness of her own identity — as postulated by Michel Foucault and later Judith Butler — in her images and lost herself as subject in the objectification of the representation without insisting upon an original, true, authentic core to her identity. Rosalind Krauss called upon Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum to describe Sherman’s work as “the condition of being a copy without an original.” 607 Douglas Crimp also identified the poststructuralist critique of authorship and authenticity as a decisive characteristic of “photographic activity of postmodernism” — the title of his 1980 essay — expressed in the art of Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and Gran Fury in their appropriation of existing images.608 As technically reproducible images that, according to Walter Benjamin, as a rule detract from the ‘aura’ of the original, the photographs in Goldin’s show adhered to a poststructuralist understanding of art,609 but not as regards their meaning and function within the show. In light of the AIDS epidemic, photographic deconstruction of identity no longer seemed to be a viable artistic option, as it had been in postmodern explorations of the relationship of the photograph to reality.610 The works’ promise of authenticity, or of the artists’ authority, seems to contradict a theoretical concept of modernity. Theodor W. Adorno therefore attested that the authenticity or autonomy of work was important to its status as art, as a challenge to the status quo: “Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it,” he wrote in Aesthetic Theory, first published in 1970.611 Only in being nonidentical, or in negation of society, does an artwork assert its worth against the so-called cultural industry.612 605 606 607 608 609 610 611 612

Kruska, Boston School, 156. See also Davis, “Homosexualism,” esp. 128 – 131. Jones, “The ‘Eternal Return’,” 948. Krauss, Cindy Sherman, 17 and Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations.” Crimp, “The Photographic Activity.” See also Crimp, “Appropriating Appropriation”, his exploration of Gran Fury’s activism. Grundberg, “The Crisis of the Real,” 173 and Benjamin, “The Work of Art.” Accordingly, Frank Wagner has noted that the body only again became the site of artistic experiments in the 1990s after AIDS abated (Wagner, “Einführung,” 19). Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 8. Ibid., 4 – 5.

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For Alessandro Ferrara and Rosalind Krauss too, borrowing from Clement Greenberg, the historical era of modernity is grounded in originality, innovativeness, and authenticity.613 Not until postmodernity were these categories recognized as illusory and it is “from a strange new perspective that we look back on the modernist origin and watch it splintering into endless replication” while the originality and authenticity of artworks and artists is deconstructed.614 While authenticity as a visual category cannot be interpreted as ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ — and both Nan Goldin’s and Mark Morrisroe’s documentary stagings play with the authenticity of the images — the fact that the photographs in Witnesses were made by photographers affected by AIDS played a major role.615 Thus Goldin’s exhibition combines various discursive theories and can follow neither the postmodern deconstruction of the body nor the modern dictum of the authentic author as described by Peter Bürger in a 1989 interview: Postmodernism in the visual arts comes close to believing that there is no such thing as authenticity and that everything is only a copy or a quote. I myself, however […] like to remain attached to the pathos of authenticity that’s typical of certain figures like Rimbaud or Artaud. […] To abandon the notion of authenticity also means to abandon the notion of experience. 616 Thus the show must be seen as an event specific to the context of AIDS in which the artworks functioned as authentic witnesses, as joint messages to the public and — like Goldin’s photographs — as affirmations of a community hit by AIDS. The AIDS epidemic as a real crisis of the body and of sexuality necessarily shifted attention to the subjectivity of the artist — against Roland Barthes’ poststructuralist removal of the author from the work — as illustrated by the many self-representations (Goldin, Morrisroe, Wojnarowicz) and representations of the community as a whole (Armstrong, Hujar, Wojnarowicz) meant to unite the artists against the deadly threat of AIDS. On the one hand, photographic responses to AIDS and the desire for authenticity seem to stem from the indexicality of the medium; in a photograph, people and their images are physically connected, making photography suitable for the expression of loss and sadness. On the other hand, the photographic portraits in Witnesses can be seen with Torsten Scheid as examples of the postcritical realism of the 1990s.617 Mysoon 613

614 615 616 617

Ferrara, Modernity and Authenticity, 7 – 8. Ferrara spoke of the return of authenticity, which he defined, following Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as morals, duty, and reason. He attributed this return to a reaction to the pessimistic culture of narcissism of the 1980s (see also Knaller, “Genealogie,” 24). Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde,” 66. Krauss also named Sherrie Levine’s appropriations of Edward Weston as typical postmodern artworks. Kröncke, Beyond the Family, 62 – 63. Bürger interviewed by Isabelle Graw (Graw, “Interview,” 65). Scheid, Fotografie als Metapher, 167.

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Rizk also believed David Wojnarowicz’s decision to take up photography in 1987 to be the result of a desire to visualize the urgency of AIDS and of his own illness.618 This does not mean that Art about AIDS can be characterized by linking elements of modern and postmodern theory. But we can assume that this theoretical equivocalness, which makes it so difficult to categorize the works in Witnesses, and the concomitant detachment from any explicitly postmodern theory or art discourse is one reason why they have not been the object of art historical reflection to the extent that the activist art of Gran Fury, the subject of the following chapter, has been.

618

Rizk, Nature, Death. It should also be noted, that when he died in 1987, Peter Hujar bequeathed his darkroom with all equipment to Wojnarowicz. Wojnarowicz’s move to photography thus also had practical motivations.

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GRAN FURY’S ACTIVIST ART: “If it works — we use it.”

The specific role and meaning of the artworks in Witnesses becomes clearer when compared with the activist visual discourse of ACT UP or Gran Fury. While the works in Goldin’s show took a back stage to the identity-creating experiences of the artists who made them, Gran Fury had a very different understanding of art and its meaning for AIDS activism. Alongside an analysis of their works’ content, we shall look at their meaning and function within the discourse on AIDS. In so doing, we shall also look at the artists as actors in the artistic field. The following will place Goldin’s community into relation with the larger political activist AIDS movement (Gran Fury). To understand Gran Fury’s modus operandi, let us turn our sights toward their logo, “SILENCE = DEATH”, p. 65, which became the “corporate identity” of the AIDS movement and the epitome of activist art. A small pink triangle is pictured on a black background. Near the bottom is written “SILENCE = DEATH” in large white letters. Underneath that, much smaller, it reads: Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration and the Vatican? Gays and Lesbians are not expendable … Use your power … Vote… Boycott … Defend yourselves … Turn anger, fear, grief into action. By using the pink triangle, the identifying symbol for gay men in Nazi concentration camps, the AIDS epidemic was linked directly to the Holocaust. However the triangle was turned around, with the point on the top, linking it to the historical oppression and persecution of gays.619 The equation of AIDS and the Holocaust was central to activist AIDS discourse in the United States and was present in both ACT UP’s iconography and rhetoric. The metaphor was not made to connect the epidemic directly with National Socialism, but to invoke a universal Holocaust, the mass murder of people by people.620 Marc Stein has remarked that 619

620

Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 114. Weingart also sees this inversion, or deliberate false citation as a way of linking AIDS to the historical oppression of gays, and as a reminder that it should not happen again. Ibid., 113. See also Larry Kramer’s compilation Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS-Activist and Gran Fury’s installation Let the Record Show, which combines a photo of the Nuremberg trials with photos of and quotes by conservative politicians under a pink triangle (on this more in Meyer, “This is to Enrage You” and Sember and Gere, “’Let the Record Show…’”). See also David Wojnarowicz’s photocollage Subspecies Helms Senatorius (1990), in which he portrays Jesse Helms as a spider with a swastika on his back (fig. in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 187).

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while activists used the metaphor of the Holocaust to challenge moral allegations against people with AIDS, this image of them as “innocent causalities of state genocide” did not concur with ACT UP’s political demand for self-determination for people with AIDS.621 The curators of From Media to Metaphor also compared AIDS to the Holocaust in their catalogue to explain the late artistic reaction to the epidemic. They referred directly to Theodor W. Adorno in asking whether and how AIDS can be represented in art at all.622 For a long time, no form of visual representation was found for the Holocaust. Only time eased the shock and allowed the breaking of social and artistic taboos.623 Sigrid Weigel has criticized that the Holocaust became the go-to metaphor for all catastrophes and, as a pathos formula, hindered confrontation with specific caesura, in this case as the result of AIDS.624 This critique is most certainly valid as regards the metaphorization of AIDS. But the specific combination of AIDS and the Holocaust exhibited in Gran Fury’s text-image logo speaks of a more differentiated linkage. SILENCE = DEATH was designed by six ACT UP members who came together in 1987 as an independent and democratic collective under the name Gran Fury.625 They saw themselves as responsible for the visual representation of the AIDS movement and became ACT UP’s “unofficial propaganda ministry and guerilla graphic designer.” 626 The collective’s direct, easy to recognize visual language combined the methods of political, educational art in the style of Hans Haacke, Barbara Kruger, or Jenny Holzer with advertising codes, catching viewers’ attention with seemingly familiar images, for example Benetton’s advertising language in the aforementioned graphic, Kissing Doesn’t Kill.627 That poster cited a 1987 Benetton campaign by Oliviero Toscani, p. 179, which Gran Fury reinterpreted with statements in support of the AIDS movement p. 80.628 The large-scale horizontal poster depicts three interracial couples kissing — a lesbian couple, a gay couple, and a straight couple — and was meant to counter the false information that AIDS can be transmitted by kissing. Gran Fury made homoerotic desire a central motif of AIDS activism, and framed gay and lesbian sexuality in public spaces as neither dangerous, nor deviant, nor diseased. 621 622

623 624 625

626 627

628

Stein, “Whose Memories,” 526. On the functionalization of the Holocaust by the AIDS movement see in particular 523 – 527. This refers of course to Adorno’s famous 1949 adage “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today” (Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” 34). Atkins and Sokolowski, “Art About AIDS,” 28. Weigel, “Zeugnis und Zeugenschaft,” 114. Hieber, “Politisierung der Queer Culture,” esp. 196 – 199. Founding members of Gran Fury were Avram Finkelstein, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, and Mark Simpson. Crimp and Rolston, AIDS Demographics, 16. Becker, Review of “Gegendarstellung,” 329. Crimp on this subject: “What counts in Activist Art is its propaganda effect; stealing the procedures of other artists is part of the plan — if it works, we use it” (Crimp and Rolston, AIDS Demographics, 15). Meyer, “This is to Enrage You,” 52 and Deitcher 1990.

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The collective portrayed sexual and ethnic minorities on posters in public spaces and used AIDS to promote the visibility of non-heteronormative sexuality to counter social concepts of homogeneity.629 Gran Fury’s aim was to shock in order to provoke anger and political activism, as well as to present a new picture of AIDS and people with AIDS.630 Their graphics were designed collectively and did not reflect the visual language of any one member, many of whom worked anonymously. The fundamentals of their work were unity of the aesthetic statement and a strong, symbolic language.631 Lucy Lippard and Lutz Hieber have diagnosed this as the specific nature of an activist, and (according to Hieber) postmodern, understanding of art. Activist art acts not only in the art world, but in a social and political context — a fundamental difference from a modernist understanding of art in which art often had political content, but remained bound to the individual work and to a traditional definition of art.632

629 630 631 632

Meyer, “This is to Enrage You,” 56. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 64. Lippard, “Too Political? Forget it,” 49 and Hieber, “Politisierung der Queer Culture,” 198.

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The MEANING of ART in the CONTEXT of AIDS

Both Goldin’s exhibition and Gran Fury’s political activism can be seen as part of the AIDS movement, because both fought for the visibility of people with AIDS. While Gran Fury’s artworks were created as visual political statements, Goldin’s show was not perceived as a political event until the conflict with the NEA, which led the artists and curator to make political statements. Goldin’s show had first been planned as a soft-spoken personal exhibition to give the artists a space for their responses to AIDS.633 This marks a clear difference between the artworks in Goldin’s exhibition and Gran Fury’s activist art: the latter was meant to garner public attention and generate private and public donations. The artworks explicitly left the art world and the gay community and sought out a larger public: Gran Fury posters could be seen throughout the city on buses, subways, and walls, or as flyers, buttons, or postcards, and aimed to reach as many people as possible.634 The collective did not wish to aestheticize the political, but to politicize the aesthetic.635 Despite their articulated distance from the art market, Gran Fury was recognized by the international art world, which gladly supported their activism as can be seen in the invitation to the 44 th Biennale in Venice in 1990, for which Gran Fury created large-format posters against the Catholic Church’s condemnation of condoms.636 Unlike Gran Fury — or also other group shows like The Indomitable Spirit — Goldin and the exhibiting artists did not aim to make money. For this reason, the art in Witnesses did not need to reach a large public, and the exhibition stayed in downtown Manhattan in Artists Space, that is within the local radius of the community. Goldin’s circle of artistic friends presented themselves as a closed network and their works did not leave the safe art space provided by Goldin. The artists’ personal experience with AIDS counted more than the individual artworks in Witnesses. Neither did the works shown take center stage in the public perception of the show. They were not politicized as a joint statement until the opening. In contrast, the individual members of Gran Fury played no role and remained anonymous behind their joint visual statements. In this way they erased their role as authors; furthermore their personal experience with AIDS, which motivated their activism, was irrelevant to the interpretation or perception of their works. The clear message of the text 633 634 635 636

Jo Shane on this subject: “Witnesses reflects the vision of its curator as an artistic statement in and of itself” (Document Shane 1989). The poster was created as part of a project initiated by AmFar, Art Against AIDS — On the Road (Dubin, Arresting Images, 222). Fiss, “Art and Community,” 156. Meyer, “This is to Enrage You,” 75. Before the exhibition opened there were protests and the posters, one of which pictured an erect penis, were held by Italian customs (see also McAlpin, “Trouble in Paradise”).

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and visual statements needed no protected context (the exhibition) and they were sent out into the world with no relationship to their creators. In Witnesses in contrast, it was the ability to make a connection between author and work or artist and subject that was central to the photographic responses to AIDS, in particular the (self-)portraits of the artists and their friends. One other key difference between Goldin’s exhibition and Gran Fury’s activism was the conditions of production; the former were made by individuals, the latter by a collective of visual artists, critics, graphic designers, writers, copywriters, and journalists. Activist and art critic David Deitcher has pointed out that this difference between works created individually and collectively was a main area of conflict in artistic responses to AIDS. He defined individual works in their function as traditional objects of value as “bourgeois art objects” that did not leave the space of the museum, while collective activist statements were real interventions in the service of the AIDS movement. 637 This separation was based on Douglas Crimp’s demand that Art about AIDS must save lives and mobilize AIDS activists. As mentioned above, Crimp revised this dogmatic critique of individual artworks about AIDS in his 1989 essay and instead proposed “mourning and militancy.” Both artworks that moved people to action were needed as well as works that remembered the dead. As memorials or as activist tools, both were equal in the fight against AIDS.638 Goldin’s exhibition also aided the political AIDS movement under this broad definition of appropriate Art against AIDS. Gran Fury’s activist art works, following the demands of AIDS activists and theorists, continued to blur the boundaries between traditional genres, between art spaces and public spaces, and between art and politics. As widely distributed reproducible objects about a collective political subject, they were meant to intervene in public spaces and to have their greatest impact when used in demonstrations and protests. Dirck Linck has thus posited that they could only be recognized outside the museum; Gran Fury’s participation in the Venice Biennale does however relativize this claim.639 The collective’s activist graphics consciously left the space of the gay community to gain public attention. Unlike the artworks in Goldin’s show, Gran Fury’s activist statements underwent a spatial border crossing. Only in retrospect was their artistic activism lumped together with the artworks in Witnesses under the label Art about AIDS.640 Finally, Gran Fury, unlike the artists in Witnesses, created a new, AIDS-specific visual language. Goldin called for positive representations for her show, which she indirectly formulated as a visual counterdiscourse to the incorrect and negative representations of people with HIV and AIDS in the American media. However these demands were not 637 638 639 640

Author’s interview with David Deitcher, May 23, 2011 (p. 326). Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy.” Linck, “Mourning and Militancy,” 42. Linck is correct to speak of initial recognition, as this can only take place outside of the institutions of art. Here we need to relativize Linck’s theory that AIDS brought gay and lesbian artists and their art out of their subculture. While this is true for activist artworks and some photographers, it does not apply to Witnesses as an exhibition (Ibid., 33).

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completely fulfilled. The similarities between the photographs exhibited and the press photos shows that the artists perhaps wanted to distance themselves but nevertheless made use of existing iconography. No new visual languages were created; instead, common forms were reinterpreted and filled with new content. Unlike the activist responses to AIDS that created a new visual language using graphics and the appropriation of advertising images, the demand for a new, “better” representation was not given visual expression in Goldin’s show. The artists did expand the kinds of representations, but they could not push aside the negative repertoire of the media’s regime of representation and the binary opposition of positive and negative images of people with AIDS remained. While the participants in Goldin’s show challenged this binary opposition, they were not able to undermine it with their photographs.641 A further difference between Gran Fury’s activist art and Goldin’s exhibition was in their theoretical reception. While there have been comprehensive analyses of collectives like Gran Fury, ACT UP, General Idea, and Group Material, which are generally considered examples of appropriate Art about AIDS (particularly in American art history and cultural studies discourses), there have been no similar analyses of American group shows like Witnesses or the three exhibitions with which I have compared it. Artists such as Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, and David Wojnarowicz have been the objects of theoretical analyses, not only in the context of AIDS, but Goldin’s exhibition in particular has been studied only as a cultural-political event within the American culture wars. This can on the one hand be explained by the fact that archival material on the exhibition only became publically available to researchers in mid-2011. On the other hand, the analytical head start given activist artworks is likely due more to their theoretical assessment, because Gran Fury’s AIDS activism fits in perfectly with the postmodern discourses of theory and art in the 1980s. Goldin’s show, with its proclaimed desire for authenticity and thus a clear reference to the author — as discussed in detail above — did not match all the theoretical paradigms of its times. The coming together of theory and artistic practice explains both the relatively constant research interest in activist art since the 1990s and its inclusion in exhibitions in recent years. To conclude, Gran Fury’s AIDS activism fulfills the requirements of postmodern art as regards both form and function: Gran Fury’s works were (1) created collectively and anonymously, and appropriated advertising, pop culture, and high art.642 The collective’s goal was (2) social and political change as a result of the visual fight for the rights of people with AIDS. Their radius of action was (3) outside modern museum institutions. They used protest (shock) as a key tool and put themselves 641 642

Hall, “The Question of Cultural Identity,” 264. Comparable to the Dadaist’s use of fragments of advertisements and magazines and newspapers in Cubist collages (Bürger, “Vorbemerkung,” 12).

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completely at the service of the political AIDS movement. 643 For these reasons, Douglas Crimp (and Lutz Hieber in his wake) linked AIDS activism with European avant-garde movements of the past and viewed their postmodern art as an expression of avant-garde aims.644 Keeping the many different well-researched aspects of the avantgarde in mind — its failure due to cultural-political cooptation, its exclusive relationship to modernity or its blossoming in postmodernity 645 — these activist artworks, with their direct demand for new societal responses to AIDS can certainly be described as avant-garde. They display avant-garde aspirations toward mobility and innovation as well as a continuous break with tradition.646 Charles Newman’s lament that, in postmodernity, the avant-garde suffers not from societal institutions’ repression, but from their indifference did not hold for AIDS activism, which was able to shock and provoke and therefore attain sociopolitical relevance.647 At the same time, we cannot agree with all of Crimp’s arguments, for a case can also be made against a link between AIDS activism and historical avant-garde movements. Because of their elitist structure — examined in more detail below — ACT UP and Gran Fury were solidly middle class and were also motivated by the drive for economic success (in the form of donations, etc.). As closed and elitist groups, they did not meet Wolfgang Fähnder’s criteria for the avant-garde.648 As a sexual minority affected by AIDS, they did not fit into Otto Karl Werckmeister’s theory that avant-garde artists, for example Pablo Picasso or Vladimir Tatlin, changed sides at a certain stage of their success and joined the political power elite: the very group against which the AIDS movement had been formed.649 And because the leaders of the movement were gay men, they did not fit into the hegemonical heterosexual masculinity of the historical avant-garde, whose authority, as Birgit Wagner has shown, was based on old-boys’-club structures.650 This discussion could most certainly be expanded to include any number of aspects of the avant-garde. However the aim of Crimp’s argumentation was to situate these artists in an art historical tradition and elevate their work by giving it the avant-garde label. Crimp was an art 643 644

645 646

647 648 649 650

Crimp, “Photographs at the End,” 22 – 23. Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 29. Hieber described postmodernity as an expansion of the social movements in the United States from the 1960s, which he in turn traced backed to the members of the avant-garde who had fled to the United States in the 1930s, bringing with them the foundations for a political, activist art (Hieber, “Douglas Crimp,” 209). Hieber, “Postmodernismus als Politisierung,” esp. 22 and 27 – 28. On the avant-garde in general see Fähnders, Avantgarde und Moderne, esp. 199 – 207; Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, esp. 78 – 80; and Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde.” On the concept of the avant-garde and American postmodernity see Bürger, “Das Verschwinden der Kunst” and Mann, The Theory-Death, 117. Newman, The Post-Modern Aura, 184. Fähnders, Avantgarde und Moderne, 200. Werckmeister, “Von der Avantgarde zur Elite,” 507 and 512. Wagner, “Subjektpositionen,” esp. 166. Wagner criticized Bürger’s theory because it ignored questions of gender and assumed a hegemonical, male subject in the avant-garde moment. He saw women in the avant-garde only as objects (e. g. dancers) and not as vocal subjects (Ibid., 177).

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critic, a member of ACT UP, and one of the most prolific writers within the American AIDS discourse, able to effectively gain publicity for the needs of people with AIDS. Thus he had a personal interest in the dissemination and recognition of activist artworks that visualized his demands as an AIDS activist. The artists in Witnesses in contrast wanted to reinterpret the iconography of (press) photos of people with AIDS. They did not create a new, AIDS-specific, visual language and thus did not fit into the activist visual discourse of the late 1980s. As a result, AIDS activists took almost no note of Goldin’s 1989 show. Not until the conflict with the NEA required Artists Space, the curator, and the artists to make political statements did political organizations like ACT UP express their support.651 In the case of AIDS theorists like Douglas Crimp, it was again (and is to this day) personal experience that dictated what was written about artistic explorations of AIDS.652 In the catalogue of his exhibition Gegendarstellung (1992), Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen also wrote that Art about AIDS should be educational, because “there is no time for aesthetic navel-gazing.” There was, he said (in line with Crimp’s theoretical position) no need for artistic reflections by the “lonesome genius,” but for collective works geared toward direct political action.653 Marvin Taylor, today director of the Fales Library, offered a more nuanced, poststructuralist support of this view and stressed that activist artists confronted traditional understandings of art by unmasking artworks not as freestanding valuable objects, but as cultural constructions.654 Thus seen, it is clear why Crimp declared that activist, collectively produced art was the appropriate response to AIDS, since it was used to effect real social and political change (for example, lowering the price of AZT). He linked to the avant-garde not as an attempt at historicization, but as a value judgment that legitimized Gran Fury’s activism by placing it in a larger art historical context. The textual art history discourse on AIDS remained on the whole in the hands of researchers who were affected by AIDS, such as Crimp, Hieber, and Deitcher. This can be seen in the abovementioned exhibitions on AIDS activism and in their prolific published writings. Their academic texts were motivated by the authors’ personal experiences and thus are treated in the exploration at hand as primary rather than secondary sources. The decisive difference between the community Goldin presented in Witnesses and the AIDS movement was in the role and function of their visual representation, in the way in which they dealt with and used 651 652

653 654

See Documents Creative Time 1989 and ACT UP n. d. A more recent example of this phenomenon could be seen at the German Sociological Association conference Kampf um Images in November 2012 at Giessen University. Lutz Hieber asserted that Gran Fury had been an appropriate and important reaction to the AIDS crisis, while he saw Goldin’s show as bad, meaning inappropriate. Schmidt-Wulffen and Schwander, “Untitled,” 10. Taylor, “Playing the Field,” 23.

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artworks and visual statements as either political protest or as authentic expressions by people with AIDS. Despite these differences, both the political AIDS movement and Goldin’s community were focused only on their own representation. Other groups affected by AIDS were only marginally given voice in artistic and activist responses to AIDS or in group shows like Witnesses. Compared to these marginalized groups — drug addicts, prostitutes, or the poor Black and Hispanic populations of the United States — the mostly gay AIDS movement was elitist. This thesis is supported by the fact that none of these groups came close to replicating the gay community’s mobilization for their own interests or for self-representation.655 Although the AIDS movement brought their activist demands to the street, like Goldin’s community in Witnesses they represented only a small, elitist group of people with AIDS. The borders between the AIDS movement and the artists in Goldin’s show, the general population, and the so-called risk groups beyond the white, gay community remained standing, as shall be explored below. First however, let us summarize the way in which the artworks in Goldin’s show were dealt with. While both collective and individual artworks — to use David Deitcher’s categorization — responded to the concrete threat of AIDS, Goldin’s show presented an artistic canon that stemmed from the personal experiences of her community. The criterion for selection in this exclusive group was personal experience with AIDS, which aided both social marginalization and identity formation. As a result, this canonization rested on separation from the outside; it was not determined by an authoritarian institution from above, but by a network that was defining itself.656 The fact that most of the artists who exhibited in Witnesses no longer belong to the commonly accepted canon of art history seems to show that Art about AIDS has little relevance without the epidemic. Only those artists who, like Goldin, continued to develop their art after the AIDS epidemic or whose art was not associated solely with the representation of AIDS, remained in the art history lineage. The works of other artists, such as David Wojnarowicz and Mark Morrisroe, are today being rediscovered by museums as examples of concrete responses to AIDS. This canonized reference to a certain visual language can be defined with Aleida and Jan Assmann as an act of identification — it says more about the context of the reference than the context of the canonized style.657 Now, 30 years after the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, the question — alongside the desire to historicize this specific artistic period — is whether the style of individual artists or the label Art 655 656 657

Finally, and looking forward, the scant attention paid by American artists to the enormous impact of AIDS on the African continent should be noted, underscoring their elite status. Aleida and Jan Assmann differentiate between canonization from above and from below (Assman and Assmann, “Kanon und Zensur,” 22 – 23). Ibid., 19. The question of the role of Art about AIDS not only during the 1980s crisis, but also in today’s society, must be answered in further research, building on the results of this study, about the current meaning of art.

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about AIDS is open for public definition. Today, these images are signs of a past crisis since the face of AIDS has changed — in the Western world it is a manageable chronic illness and questions about the representation and exhibition of HIV/AIDS are posed within another context. On the other hand, images of AIDS are still used nowadays to speak for social groups, former AIDS activists, and people with AIDS, so that they are perhaps less open to public definition than first assumed. The fact that Wojnarowicz’s politically motivated art or the photographs by Goldin and Morrisroe are today read and presented as images of AIDS demonstrates the importance of politically and morally correct art in today’s post-postmodern artistic and social situation. Today’s interest in Art about AIDS mirrors the desire for art with real political and social impact, art that can clear your conscience — something Gallery Gmurzynska in Zurich even sells with its art. This is perhaps seen best in the example of MoMA. Unlike the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Guggenheim, MoMA did noticeably little for AIDS and for activist art organizations such as Visual AIDS in the late 1980s. MoMA first dealt with AIDS in Nicholas Nixon’s 1988 exhibition, which did not reflect any sociopolitical interest in AIDS but only in Nixon’s straight photography. MoMA’s 1987 exhibition Committed to Print: Social and Political Themes in Recent American Print Art presented many graphic designs, including works by Group Material and Jane Dickson, who also exhibited in Witnesses in 1989. But the fact that the show did not include a single work by Gran Fury or General Idea, whose graphics and slogans were all over the streets of New York City at the time, clearly reflected MoMA’s lack of interest in activist Art about AIDS.658 In this context, MoMA’s prominent presentation of artistic responses to AIDS in the permanent collection of 2010 / 2011 is not surprising. While MoMA did not take part in the discourse about AIDS in the 1980s, 30 years later artistic responses to the epidemic have already been canonized. It seems that MoMA’s interest in the sociopolitical aspect of activist Art about AIDS is merely historical. Thus Dan Cameron has said that MoMA’s addition of an “AIDS room” was an attempt to retroactively erase their lack of interest in Art about AIDS.659

658 659

I would like to thank Christian Liclair for pointing this out. Author’s interview with Dan Cameron, July 11, 2011 (p. 322).

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NAN GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY between MARGINALIZATION and DISSOCIATION

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Group Material The Peoples‘ Choice (Arroz con Mango) Installation shot, Jan. 10 to Feb. 1, 1981, 244 East 13th Street, New York

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David Wojnarowicz Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Rimbaud Masturbating) 1978-79 Gelatine Silver Print, 25,4 × 20,3 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Rimbaud in NYC Subway) 1978-79 Gelatine Silver Print, 25,4 × 20,3 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Rimbaud at Tiffany‘s Coffee Shop) 1978-79 Gelatine Silver Print, 25,4 × 20,3 cm

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David Wojnarowicz Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Rimbaud at West Side Pier with Wojnarowicz Graffiti) 1978-79 Gelatine Silver Print, 25,4 × 20,3 cm

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n the course of this study, the initial thesis has proven to be correct: Art about AIDS was used as a label that imparted identity and rested solely on the personal experiences of the artists, not on common artistic elements within the works themselves. Following a comparative analysis of the photos in Witnesses, the study of their specific function as authentic testimonies from Goldin’s community, and of the exhibition’s position in a morally and artistically safe space, this chapter concludes the analysis of the show by situating the actors within their social environment. To do so I examine the community as an artistic field as defined by Pierre Bourdieu, situated between the political AIDS movement and the alternate art scene in New York City in the late 1980s. My main theses are that (1) this community was first created by the urgency of the AIDS epidemic, (2) its members reclaimed their marginalization by consciously distancing themselves from the mainstream — a phenomenon we have already examined as regards their visual representation — and (3) this exclusiveness was mirrored in their elitist structures. First, we shall look at the genesis of Goldin’s AIDS-ravaged community in order to situate it in the context of the New York East Village art scene. Second, we shall look at its relationship to the AIDS movement and the American gay liberation movement with which it shared — I hypothesize — a fundamentally elitist structure.660 While there were considerable differences in the ways in which the AIDS movement and Goldin’s community dealt with artworks, this chapter shall, for the conclusion of the overarching analysis, examine their structural commonalities.

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The separation between Goldin’s community and the AIDS movement is made only to aid the analysis and clearly define the various actors. In reality, there were many overlaps, because the art scene had “a long-term acceptance of the gay population” as Kiki Smith said in her interview with the author, July 8, 2011 (p. 340).

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The EAST VILLAGE ART SCENE

The artists in Goldin’s show had been part of the Downtown Manhattan alternative art scene since the late 1970s. They shared an excessive lifestyle and use of drugs, homosexuality or sexual openness, and a neighborhood, the East Village. The community presented in Witnesses revolved around Nan Goldin’s close friendships with David Armstrong, David Wojnarowicz, and Cookie Mueller. Goldin’s lover at the time, Siobhan Liddell, was also in the show, as well as her ex-lover Shellburne Thurber. Goldin had studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with photographers David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Allen Frame, Mark Morrisroe, and Shellburne Thurber, and with painter and performance artist Tabboo!, who had founded the band The Clam Twins together with Morrisroe in the mid-1970s.661 All of them moved to New York in the late 1970s or early 1980s.662 The axis around which this circle of friends turned was the friendship between Goldin and Armstrong. He had been one of her best friends since they met at the alternative Satya Community School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They went to college together and moved to New York City at almost the same time — Armstrong in 1977 and Goldin in 1978.663 In 1979, they first showed their photographs publically in a joint slide show at the New York Mudd Club, which marked the beginning of Goldin’s photo series, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. They also remained close after Witnesses: in 1993 they held a joint exhibition entitled Double Life of portraits they had taken of their friends and acquaintances in Boston and New York City.664 In 1995, Goldin and Armstrong, together with diCorcia, Frame, Morrisroe, Thurber, Tabboo!, and Jack Pierson exhibited in a show curated by their former schoolmate, gallery owner Pat Hearn, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston under the label Boston School. 665 Despite the formal heterogeneity of their photographs, curators Hearn and Lia Gangitano saw a thematic affinity in the works, which highlighted personal relationships and private, intimate experiences.666 However the Boston School label was criticized by artists and critics alike because of the diversity of their work, as we have seen in our analyses of the photographs of Goldin, Armstrong, Morrisroe, and diCorcia. 661 662

663 664 665

666

Ruf and Seelig, “Introduction,” 5. Gundlach, “Emotions & Relations,” 12. See also Gangitano, “Introduction,” 12. After Armstrong and Goldin, both diCorcia (1982) and Morrisroe (1983 / 1984) moved to New York (Kruska, Boston School, 39). Unlike Kruska, Gundlach does not place either Shellburne Thurber or Tabboo! in the Boston School (Gundlach, “Emotions & Relations,” 11). Kruska, Boston School, 11 – 13 and Gundlach, “Emotions & Relations,” 11. Armstrong, “Untitled,” 6. The exhibition was shown in the Matthew Marks Gallery 1993 in New York. Gangitano, “Introduction” and Heinrich and Zbikowski, “Fünf aus Boston,” 23. The photographer Jack Pierson, who did not show in Witnesses, is also generally considered to be a member of the Boston School. Gangitano, “Introduction,” 11.

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Goldin pled instead for the term Boston Group since they did not share a visual language, but rather a lifestyle that was integral to their perception as artists.667 The stability of this network is reflected in the fact that, excepting Jack Pierson, the members of this group — named such six years after Witnesses — had all presented in Goldin’s show in 1989. Alongside Goldin, David Wojnarowicz was the other key figure in Witnesses. He also acted as the focal point for a network of individuals and groups of artists. Wojnarowicz was close friends with Peter Hujar, Kiki Smith, and Greer Lankton, as can be seen in the many photos they took of one another. 668 As one of the most successful East Village artists, Wojnarowicz, more than any other artist in the show ensured the Artists Space exhibition would receive media interest and publicity. After rejecting the label East Village artist and withdrawing from the commercial art scene in the mid-1980s, he returned to the art world in 1987.669 In March 1989 he had an individual show at the P. P. O.W gallery, returning in time for Goldin’s show. Finally, like Goldin, who had been working together with Visual AIDS, he connected Witnesses to the political AIDS movement.670 He went to ACT UP meetings and, as an artistic activist or activist artist, he had been dealing with AIDS in his art on both a social and an individual level since he had found out about his HIV infection in 1987. 671 David Deitcher, himself a member of ACT UP, described him as in inspiration to the political AIDS movement.672 In this context it is clear why his catalogue text for Goldin’s show and the conflict it sparked with the NEA received so much media attention. The community of Witnesses lived and worked in what was until the mid-1980s one of the poorest New York City neighborhoods, the East Village to the east of the Bowery. It attracted many young artists with its low rents for apartments and studios.673 Drawn by the punk scene that had developed there in the 1970s — bands like the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads played in clubs such as CBGBs, the Mudd Club, the Pyramid, or Club 57 — an art and gallery scene developed in the early 1980s that quickly took off and by 1985 had resulted in artistic and commercial success for artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and also David Wojnarowicz.674 667 668

669 670 671

672

673 674

Goldin cited in Kruska, Boston School, 27. Author’s interview with Kiki Smith, July 8, 2011 (p. 338). Smith also made an AIDS quilt panel for David Wojnarowicz. See also Nan Goldin’s photos Kiki Smith and Christof Kohleffer with David Wojnarowicz at Tin Alley, NYC (1982) and Fran Leibowitz and David Wojnarowicz at Peter Hujar’s grave, NYC (1991); Peter Hujar’s photo David Wojnarowicz Reclining (1981); and Marion Scemama’s photo David Wojnarowicz and Greer Lankton at Marion Scemama’s apartment (1984) (fig. in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 207, 208, 176, and 126). Rizk, Nature, Death. Other artists too, such as Kiki Smith, who had donated many artworks to ACT UP exhibitions and auctions, were connected to the AIDS movement. In 1991, for example, Wojnarowicz participated in an ACT UP auction (see letter from Jeffrey Aronhoff, member of the ACT UP fundraising committee, to David Wojnarowicz in David Wojnarowicz Papers, Fales Library, Series 2, Box 3, Folder 28). Author’s interview with David Deitcher, May 23, 2011 (p. 326). Wojnarowicz’s impact on the AIDS movement is illustrated by the ACT UP demonstration one week after his death in downtown New York on July 29, 1992, held as a “political funeral” for Wojnarowicz. The demonstration was headed by a banner reading “David Wojnarowicz, 1954 – 1992. Died of AIDS due to Government Neglect” (Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 153). Taylor, “Playing the Field,” 19. For more in-depth literature on the East Village see Abu-Lughod, East Village. Bolton “Enlightened Self-Interest,” 26.

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This new generation of artists, who caused a veritable East Village art boom, distanced themselves geographically and artistically from the traditional art institutions around 57th Street in Uptown Manhattan and from the art scene that had been established in SoHo since the 1960s. Klaus Honnef aptly called it an “expatriation from middle-class living,” 675 an observation that fits the members of Goldin’s community who had moved from Boston to Downtown Manhattan in the late 1970s. Between 1981 and 1987, around 100 galleries opened in this rather small neighborhood, many of them new such as Patti Astor and Bill Sterling’s FUN Gallery on East 11th Street, the first commercial gallery to open in the East Village in 1981.676 Dan Cameron has remarked in this context that the FUN Gallery was one of the first art spaces to show openly gay artists: “At FUN Gallery one saw a very out, upfront expression about being gay in the work of artists like Arch Connelly and Nicholas Moufarrege.” 677 This statement makes it clear that the East Village and the gay community were not two separate circles, but a space with many geographical and social overlaps. FUN Gallery was followed in 1982 by, among others, the galleries Gracie Mansion, Civilian Walfare, and Nature Morte, and in 1983 by Mark Morrisroe’s first gallery, Pat Hearn, as well as the P. P. O.W Gallery, which today manages David Wojnarowicz’s estate.678 Alongside these commercial developments, many alternative non-profit art spaces arose in New York City and in the East Village in particular, including Artists Space and artist collectives like COLAB and Group Material. These groups fought against the commoditization of their art; they viewed art above all as a tool for political and social change. Through art, they communicated about topics such as sexuality, ethnicity, and education, and promoted neighborhood and social engagement outside of the art world.679 For instance, Group Material invited neighbors to come to the gallery and donate a personal object to the installation The People’s Choice, p. 243; everyday objects, memorabilia, photographs, and crafts were presented in one exhibition. The objects themselves were not art, but their gathering in a common space was.680 These forms of collective, politically motivated art that expanded the definition of art and art spaces were the breeding ground of AIDS activism as practiced by ACT UP and Gran Fury. While the East Village art scene began as an independent, closed microcosm, the financial success of many of the scene’s artists awakened the attention of both established galleries and the media, leading 675 676 677 678 679

680

Honnef, “Zwischen Ironie und Verzweiflung,” n. p. FUN represented, among others, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf (Hager, Art After Midnight, 110 and 115). Author’s interview with Dan Cameron, July 11, 2011 (p. 319). Cameron, “It Takes a Village,” 51. Kiki Smith and Jane Dickson from Witnesses also worked in COLAB. The collective organized exhibitions with East Village artists, such as The Times Square Show (1980) ibid., 45 – 47. See also Ashford, “Social Collaboration”. Avgikos, “Group Material,” 89. The installation took place from Jan. 9 to Feb. 2, 1981 and was later renamed Arroz con Mango.

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to the commercialization of East Village artists and the commoditization of their art.681 By 1985 at the latest, it had become the new ‘in’ neighborhood. SoHo galleries opened second spaces, the price of housing soared, and the 1984 police crackdown against the drug trade, Operation Pressure Point, led to the final gentrification of the area.682 Many East Village artists also participated in the 1985 Biennale of the Whitney Museum of American Art, so that they became known beyond the borders of the Village and their position in the New York art world was strengthened.683 Successful artists such as Haring and Koons left the neighborhood and showed in established galleries in Uptown Manhattan and, after 1985, even big-name galleries like Gracie Mansion and Mary Boone opened in SoHo. As a result, media interest in the East Village dwindled. The fiscal crisis and the October 1987 stock market crash also slowed the art-buying spree of the early 1980s.684 Finally, AIDS not only killed many East Village artists, it also redirected interest away from them, many of whom — stigmatized by the epidemic — by 1989 had to fight for visibility in exhibitions like Witnesses.685 As was true of the many works brought together in Goldin’s exhibition, neither East Village nor Boston School referred to a specific, identifying artistic style as can be seen in the differences between Keith Haring’s graffiti, Peter Hujar’s black-and-white photography, and David Wojnarowicz’s collages, which were all lumped together under these labels.686 What did connect them besides geographical closeness, social relationships, and the artists’ close ages was at most a common interdisciplinary understanding of art in which specific styles or genres played no role. So, for example, punk clubs such as the Mudd Club became the space in which Nan Goldin’s photographs were presented, many of which had been taken at that very club.687 The East Village was also interdisciplinary as regards workflows; often the roles of artist, curator, critic, gallery owner, and collector were amalgamated within this hybrid microcosm.688 In this way it was a non-hierarchical space in which simultaneity and networking were at the fore. For this reason, art critic Carlo McCormick has named this time a “true postmodern moment” that stood up against all of the expectations and conventions of the mainstream art world.689 This blending of the traditionally separate roles of artist, curator, and critic on the one hand, and the microcosm of the East Village art scene on the other hand, were key preconditions for Goldin’s exhibition, in which 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689

Sandler, “Avant-Garde Artists,” 332. See for example the Hal Bromm Gallery and the Semaphore Gallery (Tully, “The East Village,” 20 – 22). Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring, Sherrie Levine, David Wojnarowicz, and Group Material all participated in the Biennale (Hager, Art After Midnight, 126). Bolton, “Enlightened Self-Interest,” 25. Cameron, “It Takes a Village,” 64. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 43 – 44. Kiwin, “Hybrid Spaces,” 82. McCormick, “A Crack in Time,” 71.

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she, a photographer, curated the show, and David Wojnarowicz, an artist, wrote for the catalogue. By showing in Artists Space, they were not dependent on those outside the East Village, and might not have left their sphere of action if Witnesses had not ended up on the frontlines of the culture war. One of the leading figures of the East Village was, as mentioned above, David Wojnarowicz; a “multimedia crossover,” 690 he embodied genre-crossing art. He debuted in 1982 with a solo show at the Alexander Milliken Gallery. Only two years later, he had shown in 33 solo and group shows, which proves how well recognized he was in the alternative New York art scene.691 Unlike Keith Haring and Jeff Koons, Wojnarowicz retreated from the publicity the East Village art scene was receiving in the mid-1980s and stated wearily: “The whole dialogue of painting seems to be lost.” 692 He stopped painting and spent the next years working on film projects and autobiographical texts.693 Because his multi-medial works were difficult to place within traditional art categories, both in terms of form and content, his work did not lend itself well to commercialization. Wojnarowicz melded materials, media, and genres in his graffiti and murals in the empty warehouses on the Hudson River piers, his music in the punk band 3 Teens Kill 4, his films, collages, painting, performances, texts, and, from 1987, photographs.694

GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY as an ARTISTIC BOHÈME?

David Wojnarowicz’s success was aided greatly by the way in which he performed his own life or, as Bettina Gockel (2010) put it, “helped write the script of his own life.” 695 As a gay artist, he embodied the role of the social outcast, a label he cultivated in numerous interviews, texts, and artworks. He made himself legendary in, for example, his autobiographical essays “Close to the Knives,” in which he names neither dates nor places, lending his life a mysterious air.696 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson have defined authorship as a conglomerate of someone’s artistic products, their life, their person, and the historical conditions of their surroundings, all of which come together to form a “correct narration.” Authorship, like the work itself, is in their eyes not ontological, but is produced — the author is not an entity from which a work of art emerges.697 This interplay of ideologically motivated interpretation by others 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697

Kiwin, “Hybrid Spaces,” 87. Rimanelli, “Time Capsule 1980-1985,” 123 and Carr, “David Wojnarowicz.” Hager, Art After Midnight, 118. Carlo McCormick, Miko Bido, and Steve Dougton in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 16, 32, and 53. Taylor, “Playing the Field,” 24. On 3 Teens Kill 4 see Julie Hair in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 18 – 35. Gockel, Die Pathologisierung des Künstlers, 10. Maguire, “The Relics,” 255. Bal and Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” 254 – 255.

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and the conscious performance of one’s own life is illustrated well by David Wojnarowicz. His biography as an artist who was never trained as such, his childhood in a poor family with a violent father, and his youth as a homeless hustler on the streets of New York all underscored his social ascent from a terrible childhood to a recognized and successful member of the New York art world.698 By continuously telling his “amazing biography,” as a clearly impressed Lucy Lippard wrote, Wojnarowicz staged himself as the “perfect ‘victim’ of abuse” and deliberately linked his biography to his artistic expression.699 Richard Maguire has described him as a mythmaker, who played to a T his role as the outsider who refuses to be taken in, incorporating this aura into his image as an artist.700 Wojnarowicz furthered this outsider status in his 1978 – 1979 photo series Arthur Rimbaud in New York, p. 244 –247. This series of around 30 photos depicts friends of Wojnarowicz wearing a mask with the face of the French Bohemian poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 1891) in various places in New York City. The sites are all specific to Wojnarowicz’s life, his Rimbaud travels through nighttime New York City: on the abandoned Hudson River piers and in Times Square, where the artist hustled as a youth; on the subway; or masturbating. In these photographs, Rimbaud und Wojnarowicz merge to a single embodiment of the urban Bohemian, a timeless figure of the outsider on the margins of society.701 The performance of the self also aided the success of the East Village artists, whose unconventional lifestyle bound them together and allowed them to be seen from the outside as marginalized Others. Carlo McCormick described this phenomenon as regards Boston School portrait photography aptly as follows: According to the academic needs of criticism and the fetishist desires of the market, idiosyncratic portraiture was politicized according to the social and sexual marginality of its subjects, and the personal / autobiographical was given dominant precedence over whatever other formal considerations were evident. 702 The performance of this chosen outré identity and the external perception of this role creates a link back to the cultural / sociological concept of the Bohemian, whose members utilized eccentric behavior both as a means of spurning bourgeois conventions and as a strategy of individual 698

699 700

701 702

David Wojnarowicz interviewed by Sylvère Lothringer and Nan Goldin in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 158 – 162 and 201 – 203. See also Carr, “David Wojnarowicz”; Hirsh, “Speed at all Costs”; and Dubin, Arresting Images, 213. More on the creation of an artist’s legend in Kris and Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic. Lippard, “Too Political? Forget it,” 11. Maguire, “The Relics,” 250 – 251. On this see also Cynthia Carr’s biography of Wojnarowicz, which already supports his legend in the blurb which describes him as “abused child,” “teen runaway,” and “Times Square Hustler” (Carr, Fire in the Belly). Maguire, “The Relics,” 247. McCormick, “Jack Pierson,” n. p. McCormick is speaking here of Jack Pierson’s photography, but his observations also fit the artists exhibited in Witnesses.

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self-stylization. Their lives themselves were meant as a provocation, independent of the innovative character of their art — a key semantic link to the artists in Witnesses.703 Pierre Bourdieu’s description of the Bohemians, who have no economic capital as they stem from the poorer lower classes, but cultural capital as tastemakers, is well-suited to Wojnarowicz.704 His authority is clear from the media attention he received as artist and catalogue author, and also from his position in the sociocultural network of the East Village, which in turn is defined by its rejection of normal culture through deviant mores, codes, and behavior.705 Bourdieu’s characterization of a Bohemian lifestyle can easily be applied to the East Village artists: Bohemia is “ostentatiously opposed to the conventions and proprieties of the bourgeoisie,” including heteronormative sexuality: “notably in the matter of relations between the sexes, where it experiments on a large scale with all the forms of transgression.” 706 Bourdieu describes this lifestyle as a specific artistic habitus, which he defined as a “system of organic and mental dispositions and of unconscious schemes of thought, perception, and action.” 707 The incorporation of cultural capital is thus manifested in an artist’s demeanor and their ability to move in the world of legitimated culture or, as Bourdieu diagnosed, affinities of habitus based on taste.708 Habitus here includes occupation, cultural tools, means of artistic expression, mental outlook, and concepts connected to the idea of the artist as an actor.709 Before the outbreak of AIDS, members of Goldin’s community could be aptly described as an urban and sexually unconventional Bohemia. But this definition must be looked at anew and further delineated as regards the impact of AIDS on the community. On the one hand, these gay, lesbian, and bisexual artists became doubly oppressed because the general population saw their disease alone as a public provocation and discriminated against them on this basis. At the same time, they reclaimed and reinforced this provocation through their joint presentation in Witnesses in order to gain attention and defend themselves against stigmatization. During the AIDS crisis, their excessive lifestyle was no longer constitutive for their status as outsiders; their personal connection to the 703 704

705 706 707 708 709

Joachimides (“Boheme,” 728 – 729) believes this to be the difference between Bohemia and avant-garde — the latter attempts to provoke through art. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 56 – 57. Bourdieu’s class-oriented approach, which plays no role in the study at hand, is very dominant here. Wolfgang Ruppert, using Wassily Kandinsky as an example, has also critiqued the cliché of the Bohemian at the existential margins, which often does not reflect artists’ true lifestyles (Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler, 191). After his financial success in the early 1980s, Wojnarowicz no longer belonged to the underclass, but he did not express his economic capital in his clothing or his lifestyle. Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler, 189. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 56 – 57. Bourdieu, “Structuralism and Theory,” 705 – 706. See also Bourdieu, Distinction, 169 – 170. Bourdieu, Distinction, 151. Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler, 27. One example is the figure of the dandy, popular in the 19 th century, with his extreme stylishness (Joachimides, “Boheme,” 735).

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epidemic alone became the common denominator of this Bohemia.710 As people with AIDS, they were met with aversion, pity, or disinterest; however as artists with AIDS they held onto the moral authority of Bohemia by becoming authentic reporters from the frontlines of the crisis. To do so, their self-presentation remained constitutive for their representation. For example Wojnarowicz’s photo of his buried body, an image of his own dying, was, like his texts, part of a strategy of building a legend with which he could resist his disappearance and his immanent death. During the AIDS crisis, this performance became both a survival strategy and a “self-written epitaph.” 711 Thus it is no surprise that Kiki Smith described Wojnarowicz after his death as a larger-than-life-character whose life as a gay artist and activist should be an inspiration.712 Mark Morrisroe too kept the power of portrayal of his living and dying in his own hand until the end. In Witnesses, Goldin placed Morrisroe’s self-portraits together with an installation by his partner Ramsey McPhillips, who presented his dead lover’s personal effects in a Plexiglas box, room 2, no. 14. Like a shrine, McPhillips’ installation included a blood-smeared sheet and glass shards, and above them on the wall an explanatory excerpt of Morrisroe’s autobiographical text “Am I Dead Yet?”: They have stopped listening to me, so I wrote everything down in a note; who was trying to murder me and how, and then smashed the vase of flowers Pat Hearn sent me so I would have something to mutilate myself with by carving in my leg, ‘evening nurses murdered me’; and I took the phone receiver and pummeled my face over and over and sprayed blood all over the walls and on this book; and then I took the butter pat from my dinner tray and greased up the note and stuffed it up my asshole so they would find it during my autopsy.713 Together with Morrisroe’s self-portrait, this raging indictment within the installation underlines the extent of his suffering. Like his excessive lifestyle, Morrisroe’s disease and the torment of death, described in detail in this text fragment, are deliberately orchestrated in the installation. Morrisroe’s physical suffering is also linked to the suffering of Christ in McPhillips’ installation, as the blood-smeared sheet is placed in a shrine like a reliquary, citing the well-known topos of the martyr. 710

711 712 713

Ursula Frohne, in her essay on the cultural construction of the American artist in the 19 th century, has remarked that in contrast to Europe, the figure of the Bohemian was found only in exclusive clubs. Artists used the closed social space of the club to take on an image of a (recreational) Bohemian that had little to do with their financially stable occupations. But the outsider status and sexual marginalization of Goldin’s community was not in any way play-acting, so that Frohne’s theories on 19 th century American artists cannot be applied to them (Frohne, “’Success is a Job…’,” esp. 35 – 37). Maguire, “The Relics,” 256 and 259. Smith was speaking here explicitly about his life, and not about his art (Kiki Smith and David West in Ambrosino and Lothringer, David Wojnarowicz, 88 and 95). Excerpt in Artists Space, Witnesses, 23.

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Finally, the mythologization of Morrisroe’s life continued after his death. Teresa Philo Gruber (2013) interviewed 15 people for her book “There was a sense of family…”: The Friends of Mark Morrisroe, proving once again that Morrisroe’s life and the circle of artist friends are still today decisive for his reception. While before the outbreak of AIDS that community was best characterized by its members’ lifestyle, afterwards their status as people with AIDS became central to the self-presentation of the Witnesses artists. Wojnarowicz’s and Morrisroe’s artistic responses to having contracted HIV/AIDS expressed their wish to not be forgotten after their death and at the same time legitimated their works’ claim to authenticity. They also brought to the fore the figure of the artist as an antithesis to an ordered life according to bourgeois conventions. Wolfgang Ruppert sees this self-definition as an outsider as integral to the cultural construction of the independent, authentic, and modern artist since the nineteenth century.714 The marginalization of artists — Irit Rogoff added — helps us to read them as heroic, culturally-privileged beings, whereby one caveat must be added: only male artists are empowered to achieve cultural authority in this way; the marginalization of women shuts them out of the system of culture.715 Rogoff’s poststructuralist critique of male artists as ideal Western subjects cannot simply be transferred to the artists in Witnesses because of their sexual identity. In the following, we shall therefore examine more closely the basis of the nevertheless elitist structure of Goldin’s community. In Witnesses, the artists’ status as people with AIDS lent their works authority (both internally and externally). Thus the outsider status of the artists was integral to the judgment of their works, which connects Witnesses to yet another art discourse of modernity.716 The reinterpretation of illness as a positive and creative power is a familiar topos. Susan Sontag described tuberculosis, for instance, as the paradigmatic vehicle of suffering and spiritualization, stylized in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a disease that led to the sublimation of feeling and the stimulation of creativity — a development illustrated exemplarily by Thomas Mann’s protagonist Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain (first published in German in 1924). Tuberculosis gave the sick artist the opportunity to remove himself from the world and thus became a symbol for the artistic life of Bohemia outside the rules of society.717 Bettina Gockel described an opposing image and has 714

715 716

717

Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler, 14. Susanne Knaller describes the genesis of the modern concept of the artist in the 19 th century as a shift of interest from the artwork to the artist (Knaller, Wort aus der Fremde, 119). Rogoff, “Er selbst,” 23 and 36. Donald Kuspit also noted that the moral authority of modern artists stems from their position outside of society (Kuspit, “Moral Imperative”). See also Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler, 14 – 25 and Gockel, Die Pathologisierung des Künstlers, 25 – 30 on analyses of the concomitant debate on genius with the study of science and ideas. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 17, 23 – 24, and 32 – 35.

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concentrated on the centrality of psychopathy and the artist’s tendency toward neurosis, which became the “central motif of cultural pathology and pathological art criticism around 1900.”718 In both cases however, illness drives artistic production and leads to sublimation. The sick artist becomes a projection screen for creative production despite, or even because of, individual catastrophe.719 In Witnesses in contrast, AIDS was not reinterpreted as a creative driver of artistic productivity. Rather it was the artists’ status as outsiders that, through AIDS, gave them increased moral authority. The historical topos of the sick artist did not apply to Goldin’s community, but rather the image of the ill-fated artist as martyr and / or rebel against the bourgeoisie or the general population.720 Thus AIDS intensified the community’s self-identification, but the decisive factor holding them together and contributing to their perception as an artistic Bohemia was their sexual difference. AIDS brought their sexual identity to the surface of social perception, but it had been constitutive for their status as an eccentric community of artists — and was the reason for their individual ostracization from society — already before the epidemic.721 For this reason, Goldin’s eulogy for David Wojnarowicz described his art as driven by the suffering in his life — including, but not limited to, his having AIDS: “His childhood and teenage history were some kind of nightmarish perversion of the American Dream; but out of great pain he created brilliant art and literature.” 722 In the following chapter, we shall look at the ways in which the artists in Witnesses deliberately used their illness to distance themselves from the outside world, thus creating an exclusive and elitist group.

718 719 720

721

722

Gockel, “Motive der Künstlerpathografie,” 133. Gockel, Die Pathologisierung des Künstlers, 13. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 134. This motif of suffering was central to the self-representation and perception of many 19 th century artists such as Vincent van Gogh or Paul Gauguin, who presented himself as a martyr in his paintings of the crucifixion (on this see Feldhaus, Der Ort von Künstlerinnen, esp. 21 – 27). Here parallels can be drawn to early 20 th century men’s groups, social alternatives to the traditional family in which homoeroticism within the protected space of the group was one element of their hegemonic masculinity. While it is beyond the scope of this project, a comparison of Goldin’s community with the Wandervogelbewegung as well as the George Circle, the group centered around poet Stefan George from 1892 to 1933, could be quite fruitful (on these movements see Brunotte, Zwischen Eros und Krieg and Bruns, “Wissen – Macht – Subjekte”). Goldin, “For David Wojnarowicz,” 61.

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The ART COMMUNITY as PEOPLE with AIDS

As we have seen, the foundation for Goldin’s functioning community, able to react in unison to the AIDS epidemic through their art in the exhibition, was their habitus as artists and their joint lifestyle and living space in Downtown Manhattan. Looking at this overlapping circle of artists and friends — a section of which was presented in Witnesses — in the time before the AIDS crisis (which also solidified this community), Tom Holert proposed the term tribe to describe the creation of artistic, non-familial, temporary communities as alternatives to the heterosexual blood family.723 Holert saw the emergences of these tribes as a countermovement to the “ruthless individualism” and “single-minded careerism” of the 1980s and 1990s. These groups in Western industrialized societies had severed their ties to their classes and — comparable to social movements — were founded on the basis of a common social and cultural identity.724 This form of community-building as a family ersatz was also furthered by the minority status of the members of Goldin’s circle of friends. This community, visible in the exhibition, was able to first show their solidarity through the common threat of AIDS. Their perception as a unified social minority led to the joint representation of what had previously been a loosely connected group of artists. This dissociation was however only possible because the AIDS epidemic was not perceived as a problem for the whole of American society — and in fact did not affect people in all streams of society, but until the mid-1980s had been mostly restricted to gay men and drug addicts in urban centers such as New York City and San Francisco. Even in the late 1980s, it was possible that a white, middle-class American from a rural area had had no personal contact with HIV or AIDS. AIDS activist Vito Russo aptly described these “enclaves of difference” 725 in his speech “Why We Fight,” given at a 1988 ACT UP demonstration in Albany: Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happened to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you’ve lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn’t happening to them. They’re walking the streets 723

724 725

Holert, “Blood of the Poets,” 237 – 239 and Goldin in Nan Goldin: In My Life, video, directed by Paul Tschinkel. Holert uses the term tribe in connection with Michael Walzer’s concept of new tribalism, with which he described minorities in national and totalitarian states (Walzer, “New Tribalism”). Holert, “Blood of the Poets,” 237. Linck, “Mourning and Militancy,” 34.

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as though we weren’t living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing. 726 Out of this emergency situation and society’s lack of interest a network arose, presented in Witnesses, that consciously set itself apart. “Identity categories are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary,” as Judith Butler has aptly described.727 Jan Assmann, in his theory of cultural identity, has asserted that this mechanism of distinction is key to the formation of a collective identity. Consciousness of a shared situation — in this case, ostracization of people with AIDS — creates a sense of belonging and allows a group’s members to take on a collective identity and act in solidarity.728 This collective identity is based on shared symbolic meanings, commonalities expressed through symbols, such as Goldin’s exhibition, that code a we-identity.729 Finally, “enhanced distinction from the outside inevitably leads to increased unity on the inside.” 730 The we-identity of Goldin’s community was intensified by its formation as a counter-identity to the hegemonic, heteronormative American society and the conservative value systems of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Bernhard Giesen has also defined collective identity as the construction of a border between the inner space of the community and the outside world of the Other.731 Identity is created in particular when there is a threat from a common enemy and common danger, such as the AIDS epidemic: The external forces that intensify the need to act, the clear knowledge of danger and unsureness about the impact of one’s own action as well as the undeniable confrontation with the enemy lead not only to enhancement of the experience of agency, but also to measuring that agency against the agency of the other. 732 Giesen defined three kinds of social codes that cement this internal /external distinction and are responsible for the delineation of collective identity: 1. 2

primordial codes — from structures that are taken for granted such as gender, generation, race, or ethnicity; traditional codes — that create distinctions through the knowledge of certain norms, traditions, habits, or memories that create the core of collective identity;

726 727 728 729 730 731 732

Vito Russo cited in ibid. Butler, “Contingent Foundations,” 15 – 16. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 115. Ibid., 116. Ibid., 133. Giesen, Kollektive Identität, 24. Ibid., 119 – 120.

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3

universalistic codes — common religious beliefs or (in secularized societies) shared political leanings that can lead to the creation of a collective identity, but hold the possibility of universal inclusion.733

By this definition, Goldin’s community had a collective identity based on traditional and primordial codes. On the one hand, the artists’ shared East Village lifestyle and their homosexuality or bisexuality, validated in repeated ceremonies such as gay-pride parades, consolidated them into a traditional community. On the other hand, the impact of AIDS caused unity among the members of the group and a clear line separating them from the outside.734 Thus the existence of primordial codes for the creation of a collective identity and the fact that the members of this group were affected by AIDS led to the creation of a primordial identity. Assmann too stressed the clear delineations of these borders, endemic to neither traditional nor universalistic codes, that lead to the vertical, exclusive demarcation of groups.735 This exclusivity is key to the artists in Goldin’s community; in this way they redefined their minority status as an exclusive ingroup.736 Following Assmann and Giesen, we have seen why such exclusionary mechanisms are necessary to the creation of a collective identity. Important in this case however, is that this form of drawing lines of distinction was in direct contradiction to the demands of AIDS activists and theorists such as Simon Watney and Douglas Crimp. In particular, constructing an us against them binary created, Watney believed, a dangerous linkage of homosexuality and AIDS and imagined the general population as a monolithic group with only one kind of heterosexual social and sexual behavior.737 This separation not only led to the further discrimination of gays, but also put the general population in danger, who falsely assumed that by shutting out a particular group they were safe from the epidemic.738 To counter this, AIDS activists and theorists tried to break down borders through education and information, so that AIDS would be recognized as a problem of society as a whole. Nevertheless, the binaries homosexuality / heterosexuality, sick / healthy, and person with AIDS / general population informed public debates on AIDS. Drawing borders was the primary reaction to the epidemic. Us against them remained the guiding principle of (conservative) society, unavoidably leading to the demonization of these Others.739 The 733

734 735 736

737 738 739

Ibid., 32, 42, and 57. Since Judith Butler, it is no longer possible to see gender as a fixed category (Butler, Gender Trouble). For the artists in Witnesses however, it was above all sexual difference that was decisive for their identity. Giesen, Kollektive Identität, 33 – 36. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 136 – 137. The term, coined by social psychologist Henri Tajfel, describes a group that feels connected to and identifies with one another (Tajfel, Social Identity and, building on this, Robinson, Social Groups). Watney, “Introduction,” 23. Crimp, “Cultural Analysis,” 4. Giesen, Kollektive Identität, 37. Giesen named infections, epidemics, viruses,

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fundamental fear of crossing borders was mirrored in the fear of infection — crossing the borders of the body.740 Witnesses did not meet this demand to cross these societal borders. Instead, the show reproduced the divisions set up by the general population and the binaries named above were not broken down because of the representations of belonging. While Goldin wanted visibility for images of AIDS and people with AIDS outside of the community, the cross-referentiality of the portraits and the way in which they were hung instead reiterated the closed nature of the group and marked the show as being by and for the community. The joint artistic representation can finally also be read as meaning the artists presented no danger (of infection). Goldin presented the AIDS epidemic and the “infected” artworks as so firmly anchored with her community that they could not — in an analogy to HIV — spread unintentionally. The exhibition offered a safe space, but this exclusion can be read not only as exclusivity, but also as limitation. Unlike Gran Fury’s graphic art, the works by and about people with AIDS in Witnesses were shown only in an enclosed space. The collective identity of Goldin’s artists was formed in negation to the general population, because the urgency of the AIDS epidemic — its sudden outbreak and high death rate — did not allow people with AIDS to redefine their identity and representation. The gay community and the East Village alternative art scene both of course existed before the outbreak of AIDS, but at that time there was no comparable unified group of artists. The epidemic first made necessary the creation of a new collective identity, which in 1989 — almost ten years after the first cases of AIDS — still could only form itself through a process of distinction and exclusion. In the previous chapter we have seen that the same is true for appropriate visual representations of the community, which also were defined in opposition to media images.

The EXCLUSIVITY of GOLDIN’S COMMUNITY

The community presented in Witnesses was exclusive because it consciously shut itself in and reinterpreted its inferior social position. In the following, we shall look at the ways in which it also exhibited elitist structures. The 23 artists in the catalogue were between the ages of 24 and 44 and all were white with the exception of Darrell Ellis, who was AfricanAmerican. Five of the artists came from Europe — Scarpati from Italy, Pastor from Spain, Liddell and Nares from Great Britain, and Smith from Germany — but none were from Latin America. Thus the demographic of the group in no way mirrored the demographic of American HIV infections, which in the mid-1980s were most prevalent among Black and Latino communities. Almost all of the artists also came from well-educated, 740

and drugs as invisible dangers that are driven by the demonization of the Other. Weingart, Ansteckende Wörter, 40. In this context, Weingart sees the use of condoms as securing the border from the trespasses of the sexual act.

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American middle-class backgrounds. With the exception of David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar, 18 of the artists had gone to college; 11 had completed their Bachelor’s in the late 1970s and three held a Master’s degree.741 The artists in Witnesses were minorities in terms of their sexual orientation, but, similar to the political AIDS movement, their skin color and education clearly situated them firmly in the American middle-class. Thus not only were they a specific ingroup, they were also an urban elite of young, white, well-educated, and well-connected homosexual and bisexual artists. I use the term elite as Bourdieu used the term aristocracy, as a critical sociological term to delineate social position as determined by social, economic, and cultural capital.742 For Bourdieu, art is socially relevant because social distinction takes place in the act of symbolic appropriation of cultural products: “Thus of all the objects offered for consumer’s choice, there are none more classifying than legitimate works of art.” 743 Cultural competence plays a major role in this process, as it is so important to legitimation of the status quo. Bourdieu described this skill as a class characteristic: Social class is not defined solely by a position in the relations of production, but by the class habitus which is ‘normally’ (i. e. , with a high statistical probability) associated with that position.744 The elitist structure of Goldin’s community rested not only from their being affected by AIDS, but also on social capital they drew from a “durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition,” 745 which in the end gave these artists access to Goldin’s exhibition. Goldin’s elite community gained its symbolic capital from its moral superiority; having AIDS and living on the fringes became criteria of social distinction. Bourdieu’s concept is useful for the delineation of elitist art discourse; unlike Bourdieu, whose terminology leans heavily on Marxist class theory, I view this elite circle of artists with AIDS as belonging not to a certain class, but to the political AIDS movement, which can best be described as a social movement. This movement challenged sexual and social identities and was thus identity-oriented rather than class-oriented activism.746 For the definitions used here, neither class nor membership in a so-called functional elite is important. Rather it is social factors (homosexuality) and the personal impact of AIDS that acted as the constitutive and binding elements of this cultural elite. 741 742 743 744 745 746

Information on education is missing for Perico Pastor and Janet Stein. Bourdieu, Distinction, 114 – 116. Ibid., 16, 176. Ibid., 372. Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 249. Gamson, “Invisible Enemy,” 353 – 354. See also Bernstein, “United States,” 199 and Adam, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 76.

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The SOCIAL STRUCTURE of the AIDS MOVEMENT

The political AIDS movement and its main organization, ACT UP, exhibited a similar elitist structure, which was already inherent to the gay liberation movement (GLM) in the 1970s. A representative survey of people at an AIDS demonstration in Washington D. C. in 1992 gave a clear picture of the elite make-up of the political AIDS movement: 90 percent were white, 48 percent were gay men, almost two-thirds had at least a college degree and worked in academic, creative, or medical occupations. Nine out of ten surveyed said that they were liberals or Democrats and would be voting for Bill Clinton in the upcoming presidential election in November.747 Thus AIDS movement activists were also an urban elite of mostly white, well-educated, middle-class gay men between the age of 20 and 35. These people had been personally affected by AIDS and put their money, their contacts, and their creative and artistic knowledge into the representation of their cause. Like the artists in Witnesses, who first became a closed community because of the AIDS crisis, the GLM was (forced to become) reinvigorated through AIDS activism. The genesis of this movement is outlined below to understand the specificity of the AIDS movement as the sociopolitical framework of Goldin’s community of artists. In the 1970s, the GLM was born as a political movement and a social network in America’s urban centers such as New York City. Its militant rhetoric differentiated it from the homophile movements of the 1950s and 1960s.748 The Stonewall Riots, in which the patrons of the gay and lesbian bar Stonewall Inn violently resisted a police raid in June 1969, are commonly said to be the catalyst of the GLM.749 But this protest was only one event in a series of uprisings against discrimination of gays and lesbians and was not the only reason the GLM arose, as Elizabeth Armstrong and Suzanna Crage have shown in their analysis of the “Stonewall Myth.” Nevertheless, this act of collective resistance to police violence became a symbolic founding myth to which the movement still refers and which to this day is celebrated in annual gay pride parades.750 The spontaneous act of solidarity during the Stonewall riots acted as a collective and public coming out and created a common image of group belonging which became a decisive factor for the creation of a we-identity in the movement’s collective memory.751 The memorable events in New York City led to the foundation of a new militant movement, explaining why theorists like John D’Emilio speak of before and 747 748 749 750 751

Jennings and Andersen, “AIDS Activism,” 180 – 182. See also Perrow and Guillén, AIDS Disaster, 66. Patton, Sex and Germs, 120. Armstrong and Crage, “Movements and Memory,” 736 – 739. Ibid., 725 and 739 – 743. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 112.

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after Stonewall.752 Shortly after the Greenwich Village protests, activists founded the Gay Liberation Front, a group that drew from social movements such as the student, civil rights, and women’s movements which had gained strength in the 1960s fighting for the rights of minorities.753 Like these movements, the GLM was interested less in the integration of gays and lesbians and more in social and political justice, visibility, and empowerment. They wanted to raise consciousness for a new and proud gay identity in opposition to the hegemony of white, male heterosexism: The artificial categories ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ have been laid on us by a sexist society. […] As gays, we demand an end to the gender programming which starts when we are born. […] The family is the primary means by which this restricted sexuality is created and enforced. […] Our understanding of sexism is premised on the idea that in a free society everyone will be gay. 754 As more gays and lesbians became politicized in the 1970s, many, mostly decentralized, political organizations were formed such as the National Gay Task Force.755 For the first time, groups publicly demanded equality for and official recognition of gays and lesbians.756 Milestones of this political work were (1) the demand to add sexual orientation to anti-discrimination legislation on the local and national levels. Within the decade, more than 30 cities and counties made discrimination on the basis of sexuality illegal. The movement also succeeded (2) in ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in all federal civil service jobs, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 in the Civil Service Reform Act.757 Finally, (3) homosexuality was removed from the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.758 This demedicalization of homosexuality is mirrored by the demand for replacement of the term homosexual with the term gay: “Homosexuality transformed from stigma to be hidden to source of pride to be celebrated. Indeed, by coming out, the homosexual became gay.” 759 752 753

754 755 756 757 758 759

D’Emilio, “After Stonewall.” For an overview of the gay movement before Stonewall see Patton, Sex and Germs and Stein, Gay and Lesbian Movement. D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 319 – 321. ACT UP also used protest forms of these social movements, for example die-ins, which had also been practiced by the anti-Vietnam War movement. Allen Young, member of the Gay Liberation Front cited in D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 322. The National Gay Task Force was founded in 1973 and renamed the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1986. Bernstein, “United States,” 200. D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 324 and Bernstein, “United States,” 201. Adam, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 81. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 43 – 44. See also Watney, “Kunst, die kämpft,” 32: “Gay stands for […] all forms of consensual erotic and sexual behavior. In place of a simple ‘majority / minorities’ model of sexuality, it offers a dynamic picture of affective and sexual relations that is highly skeptical concerning the monolithic categories of ‘homosexuality’ and ‘heterosexuality’ alike.”

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Alongside this political work, many recreational groups were established within the GLM (theater, sports, music, church, etc.), and bars, bookstores, medical practices, travel agencies, newspapers and magazines were founded. A gay network was formed that crossed the borders of individual occupations and made possible an “exuberant lifestyle in safe enclaves” like New York City’s Greenwich Village or San Francisco’s Castro District.760 In these independent, functioning communities, gays and lesbians were for the first time free to live and express their sexuality. While in the early 1970s the GLM was motivated mostly by political and social ideals, Stephen M. Engel had made out a retreat into the gay lifestyle in the decades that followed as a result of this new-won freedom.761 This went hand in hand with a drop in political interest and led, as Barry Adams criticized, to the reduction of gay male identity to the practice of impersonal and non-committal sex.762 Already in 1971, Dennis Altman described the gay man of the 1970s as “non-apologetic about his sexuality, self-assertive, highly consumerist and not at all revolutionary though prepared to demonstrate for gay rights.” 763 Parallel to this depoliticization of the movement from the mid1970s on — comparable to the decline of other social movements of the time — conservative Republicans across the United States became more radical and fought vehemently against the new visibility of homosexuals in American society. Singer and citrus industry spokesperson Anita Bryant launched an aggressive anti-gay rights campaign in 1977 and ultraconservative California State Senator John Briggs fought in Los Angeles in 1978 to have all gay teachers dismissed immediately. Finally, in the same year, Harvey Milk was assassinated; Milk had been an outspoken critic of Briggs’s campaign and was the first openly gay politician in the United States. His death robbed the GLM one of its most important role models and key public spokespeople.764 Conservative radicalization continued in the 1980s, when Reagan made sexual self-determination (abortion) a key electoral issue and openly sympathized with the views of the religious right.765 This political turn toward conservatism made clear how insecure the gains of the GLM were despite a decade of sexual liberation, inroads into heteronormative society, economic and institutional growth, and political mobilization.766 Tina Fetner, in How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism (2008), has looked at how these two movements spurred each other on after Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. Through aggressive campaigns, the religious right defined gay men (and the GLM) as deviant, marginalizing them as outsiders in the public eye and using the morally heated issue 760 761 762 763 764 765 766

Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 40. Ibid., 42. Adam, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 99. Altman, Homosexual Oppression, 52. D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 346 – 347. Ibid., 349. Stein, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 144.

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of sexual orientation to further their conservative value system.767 For them, AIDS was a welcome opportunity to fight against homosexuality. In the course of the hysteria surrounding sexuality and HIV transmission, homosexuality was re-medicalized; there was discussion of quarantining so-called risk groups, of mandatory testing for members of the military, or of tattooing those who were HIV-positive.768 To retain their social gains, the AIDS movement began both to “de-gay AIDS” by emphasizing that the epidemic put the entire society at risk and to “desexualize homosexuality,” breaking the links between homosexuality, AIDS, and death.769 Although the Centers for Disease Control expanded their “4-H list” of high-risk groups — homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs, and heroin addicts — to include sexual partners, AIDS continued to be associated first and foremost with gay men. This can be attributed both to conservative stereotypes about sexually infected homosexuals, as well as to self-representations in political activism and art.770 But enough has been said elsewhere about the ambivalence of visibility for marginalized social groups.

ACT UP as ELITIST MOUTHPIECE of the AIDS MOVEMENT

The linking of homosexuality and AIDS was also mirrored in the conservative backlash that began in the mid-1980s and led to the radicalization of the AIDS movement. The high rate of infection and the high death rate among young members of the gay community, along with social and political disinterest and the stigmatization of people with AIDS — easily recognizable because of the disease’s symptoms — demanded a rekindling of political activism.771 It was the visibility of people with AIDS that suddenly made their homosexuality public, previously not the case outside of the gay community. This state of affairs was aptly summarized by the first director of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Robert McFarlane: For a white man with a graduate degree and a good job who can pass, [discrimination was] not an issue. Never was. Until [AIDS] really got down to it. And you realized they want you to die. […] You are literally left to die. 772 Until 1987, the Reagan government had said absolutely nothing about the AIDS epidemic; an intolerable situation for people with AIDS and activists in light of the growing numbers of deaths. In that year, Reagan’s first mention was to demand cuts in the federal budget for AIDS research.773 Finally, in 1987 the U. S. Food and Drug Administration approved AZT, but it was sold at such exorbitant prices that people with AIDS with no 767 768 769 770 771 772 773

Fetner, Religious Right, esp. 44 – 63. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 50 – 51 and Adam, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 157. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 51. Stein, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 144. Fetner, Religious Right, 45. McFarlane cited in Vaid, Virtual Equality, 90 and Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 48. Stein, Gay and Lesbian Movement, 157.

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or insufficient insurance could not afford it.774 These events in 1986 and 1987 led to the remobilization of the GLM and to the founding of ACT UP. Back in 1983, at the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference in Denver, the first AIDS activist groups were united in the National Association of People with AIDS. In their mission statement they introduced themselves as follows: “We condemn attempts to label us as ‘victims,’ which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally ‘patients,’ which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence on the care of others. We are ‘People with AIDS.’” 775 In March 1987, writer and activist Larry Kramer founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in New York. ACT UP was a democratic and collective resistance group that demanded coordination of state and federal AIDS policies, public health programs, approval of medication, and measures against discrimination of people with AIDS.776 In 1989, they succeeded in lowering the price of AZT by 20 percent.777 As a direct action group, ACT UP used all means to fight for the visibility of people with AIDS and also considered artistic interventions as an essential element of their activism. Under the umbrella of ACT UP, as of 1987 an AIDS movement with a surprisingly large membership, lent political visibility to the issue by, for example, drawing 650,000 people to a 1987 protest march for the rights of gays, lesbians, and people with AIDS.778 The leading figures in this newly formed AIDS movement were white, gay men who worked in the art and advertising industries and used their skills to represent the AIDS movement and in ACT UP’s visual protests. Many of them were academics and business people and had financial resources they could use to help people with AIDS by funding the political work of the AIDS movement or investing in medical care and HIV research.779 Artist Ross Bleckner described the elitist structure of the AIDS movement well: Well, they are privileged! They are overwhelmingly white, urban, they know how to politicize their causes and they know how to create community. A bunch of drug addicts don’t know how to do that! […] And all these people, you know, had friends in powerful places, they had […] the network of [art] dealers; the art world is also an economic force. A lot of fashion designers had AIDS. It wasn’t just art. So it was art and fashion and culture and dance.780 774 775 776 777 778 779 780

Ibid. Cited in Grover, “AIDS Keywords,” 26. Hieber, “Politisierung der Queer Culture,” 196 – 198. See also http://www.actupny.org/ documents/capsule-home.html (last accessed Feb. 06, 2016). Hieber, “Appropriation und politischer Aktivismus,” 222. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 49. Ibid., 50. Author’s interview with Ross Bleckner, June 1, 2011 (p. 315 – 316). David Deitcher, in his interview with the author specified that not ACT UP as a whole, but only the leadership of the organization could be called elite (author’s interview with David Deitcher, May 23, 2011, p. 329).

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A movement was formed, characterized by a high degree of professionalization. As regards its funding, contacts, and relations with local institutions, the GLM was more like a corporation than a protest group.781 In contrast to the “unhurried civil rights agenda” of the GLM in the 1970s, the concrete threat of AIDS made it necessary to fight for the survival of the gay community and for federal and societal support for the rights and needs of people with AIDS. Looking at the development of the GLM after the height of the AIDS epidemic, it is clear that the elitist structure of the gay community was retained in the 1990s. In the spring of 1990, many members of ACT UP founded a new activist organization, Queer Nation, to fight against institutionalized homophobia and for equality for gays and lesbians, issues that were not taken up in the main thrust of the AIDS movement.782 The main difference between ACT UP and Queer Nation was in their understanding of marginalized, non-heteronormative sexuality beyond the categories of homosexual and heterosexual, combined in the term queer: Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege, and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-fuck and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep in the heart. 783 Queer Nation wanted to break down the hegemonic line separating heterosexual norm and homosexual deviance while also working within the organization to end the overrepresentation of gay men in the AIDS movement. In their “post-identity-based agenda,” gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals could work together.784 By destabilizing the twogender system, they hoped to break down the hierarchical construction of gender difference: “Queer, unlike GAY, doesn’t mean MALE.” 785 But like ACT UP, which lost momentum in the mid-1990s, Queer Nation also became less effective after Democrat Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election. His efforts to get the gay vote gave visibility to lesbians and gays and (seemingly) led to a more liberal acceptance of homosexuality. Nevertheless, Queer Nation changed the understanding of identity and so also laid the foundations for queer studies which, following gender studies, deconstructed the equivalence of anatomical gender, social gender, and sexuality to reveal gender as a social and political category. In this way, the demands of Queer Nation were (retroactively) framed within an academic discourse.786 781 782 783 784 785

Fetner, Religious Right, 47. Fraser, “Social Movement Theory,” 32. Anonymous Queer, Queers Read This (1990) cited in Ibid., 33. Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 55. Anonymous Queer, “Queers Read This,” 594; emphasis in the original.

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In this context, one decisive characteristic of the AIDS movement becomes clear: From its inception until the 1990s, the GLM consisted mostly of white gay men, leading to power and identity conflicts within the movement over its hegemonic make-up.787 Only the direct, deadly threat of AIDS forced people to put these power struggles aside, greatly increasing the professionalism and effectiveness of this action-oriented coalition in the second half of the 1980s. Internal conflicts about the community’s identity paled in the face of the AIDS epidemic.788 Thus AIDS acted as a catalyst and again mobilized the gay community. Because many people first became politically active due to the life-threatening epidemic, many gay men joined the movement, including conservative middle-class and upper-class gays who did not identify with the leftist ideals of the GLM. But 1970s identity politics took a back seat to the fight against AIDS.789 Nevertheless, the AIDS movement derived its political clout and its cohesiveness from the pre-extant infrastructure of the gay community. Like the artists in Witnesses, the AIDS movement too drew from existing networks from which members were recruited. Finally, the artists in Goldin’s exhibition, most of whom were lesbian or gay, were at home in both the gay community as well as the alternative art scene. Both networks were located in Downtown Manhattan and thus were also connected geographically. Both exhibited elitist structures, as they had the artistic and financial means and the contacts to make their voices heard. They were able to make themselves visible and are visible, retroactively, to this day. Particularly as regards their representation as people with AIDS, those in these groups differed from their cohort because their (artistic) education and their networks allowed them to take their representation into their own hands. This is one of the reasons that Goldin’s artists were still considered as to have been hit hardest by the epidemic even after 1989.

786

787

788 789

Engel, The Unfinished Revolution, 56 – 57. The fact that David Armstrong and Nan Goldin began to receive recognition in the mid-1990s and that the label Boston School emerged in 1995 is a sign that queer theory and gender studies had made inroads into the academic discourses on art, culture, and film, and also increased appreciation for their art (Kruska, Boston School, 42). There was however an emerging consciousness of these structural social problems within the organization, as the internal group “united colors” shows, which worked to fight racism within the organization (Fraser, “Social Movement Theory,” 41). Villa, “Kritik der Identität,” 171 – 173. Hieber, “Politisierung der Queer Culture,” 209.

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SUMMARY and FUTURE PROSPECTS

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Albrecht Dürer Der Syphilitiker, 1496 Colored Woodcut

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his study of Nan Goldin’s group show, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing has provided key results about artistic explorations of AIDS, the function of art during social crises, and Goldin’s specific community of people with AIDS. (1) Witnesses was the first New York group show about AIDS, but nevertheless it was not unique. It was also drawn into the so-called art battles of the American culture wars shortly before it opened. Like the Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe exhibitions, Goldin’s show was accused of exhibiting obscene artworks and texts that should not receive federal funding. But, as explicated above, the sexual orientation of the exhibiting artists and the fact that they had AIDS was already considered obscene. This “obscenity” was projected onto the artworks, for which reason the conflict between the NEA and Artists Space came to a head before the exhibition even opened. The AIDS epidemic acted as a catalyst and brought to the surface pre-existing societal conflicts about minority politics and sexual self-determination. (2) The Art about AIDS presented in group shows between 1989 and 1994 was proven to be a label that arose not from commonalities in the artworks themselves but from the fact that the artists or their closest friends had HIV/AIDS. That was the sole defining characteristic of these artistic responses to the epidemic. The artworks in Goldin’s show were also not chosen, or only secondarily, because of any intrinsic characteristics but rather because of the personal relationships between the artists. The fact that the exhibiting artists had HIV/AIDS guaranteed that their works would be seen as authentic responses to the epidemic and gave them the power of definition over AIDS. (3) Goldin’s demand for positive representation of homosexuality and of people with AIDS was implemented by the artists in her show only to a certain extent. While “deviant” sexuality and homosexual desire was made visible in the exhibition in myriad ways, the images of people with HIV/AIDS in Witnesses were not significantly different from their representation in the negatively connoted press images of the time. While the iconography of people with AIDS found in the New York Times and Newsweek were given new, positive interpretations, the artists in Witnesses, unlike Gran Fury in their activist art, did not create a new, AIDS-specific visual language. The visual strategies of the media (before-and-after photos) were reproduced in the exhibition by Goldin and other AIDS activists but were not criticized — in contrast to the press photos and Nicholas Nixon’s photo series of people with AIDS — for the sole reason that as people with AIDS themselves, the artists in Witnesses were given leeway to represent themselves however they wished. (4) As a result, artworks by people with AIDS were functionalized during the epidemic: while Gran Fury’s activist art was meant as a tool for the political AIDS movement, Goldin used the works in Witnesses as a joint message and as a way to give her community visibility (“We will not vanish”). As a result of the conflict around NEA funding, the exhibition became politicized from the perspective of both the public and the artists 279

and was (re)interpreted as resistance against the cultural conservatism of Reagan-era Republican politicians. In these debates too, it was the artists’ personal experiences with homosexuality, HIV, and AIDS that were always at the fore. The content of their artistic responses to AIDS were considered only peripherally by both the NEA and the press. (5) The impact of AIDS on the artists allowed them to reclaim their social exclusion and reinterpret themselves as an exclusive, artistic group. Witnesses gave them and their artworks a safe space from which they gained artistic and moral authority and were not measured by the same criteria applied to outsiders such as Nixon. This exclusive community — like the political AIDS movement — exhibited elitist structures. Its members were almost all white and college educated, and were able as artists to present their own image of themselves. Their social and cultural capital made them an exclusive ingroup. The political AIDS movement was also an elite group of members of the gay community with financial resources, which explained the impact and visibility of this very professional movement. While Gran Fury’s activist messages left both the space of traditional art as well as the geographical radius of the gay community in order to frame AIDS as a threat to the entire society and not a minority problem, Goldin’s artists and their works remained in the protected space of the exhibition. This exclusion contrasted with the agenda of AIDS activists and presented the artists as a closed community and AIDS as a specific experience of their social environment. Rather than blurring the borders between themselves and the general population, they reinforced the social lines between so-called risk groups and white heterosexuals. This analysis of the exhibition sites artistic explorations of AIDS in the political and sociocultural context of the late 1980s and has told us much about linguistic and artistic attributions made about the epidemic. Although or perhaps because cultural interpretations of epidemics are not new, this study did not concentrate on historical comparisons with other epidemics. Nevertheless, the AIDS epidemic, as an “epidemic of significance” (Paula A. Treichler, 1988) holds many similarities to social metaphors and cultural constructions of (historic) epidemics such as leprosy, the plague, and syphilis — in all, death is inevitable and those who contract the disease become social lepers.790 Susan Sontag has stressed the metaphorical overlap between AIDS and the plague. Traditionally, the pest is the apex of collective calamity and at the same time a horrible and torturous disease.791 As in AIDS, the motif of crossing and securing borders is integral to the pest, as Michel Foucault explained:

790

791

Pulver, Tribut der Seuche, 93 and 144. The way in which tuberculosis was said to have been a spiritualizing illness was discussed above in the chapter on Goldin’s community as Bohemians. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 130 – 132.

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Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power, which is one of analysis. […] The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subject, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and exile of the leper … 792 Marco Pulver has thus proposed the thesis of a general historical dispositif of plague with mystifying strategies that also apply to the AIDS epidemic and link it to common attributes of the plague, leprosy, and syphilis: Although AIDS is assumed to originate from Africa, that has not been conclusively proven to this day. AIDS was constructed as a foreign epidemic and people with AIDS are also foreigners, abnormal outcasts, who are framed as such both in work and image. Marco Pulver has found such xenophobic stereotypes in descriptions of syphilis from the late fifteenth century when the disease broke out in Europe. The metaphorization as an invader in a familiar environment, which localizes the threat in its otherness, is reflected in its names: in Italy, it was the Spanish disease, in France, Neapolitan, in Great Britain it was French, and in Russia, syphilis was the Polish disease.793 The moralizing perception of AIDS as a punishment for social disorder, such as the sexual revolution of the 1970s, can also be seen in Middle Age ideas of sin as the cause of epidemics such as the plague or leprosy, an idea taken up seamlessly by the religious right.794 Connecting the dispositifs of illness and sexuality, a phenomenon Foucault locates in the late seventeenth century,795 puts the focus of societal metaphors on the transmission of AIDS and syphilis, and led to moral judgment of an immoral society that ignored the God-given divisions of human (sexual) behavior.796 Sander L. Gilman, in his analysis of the iconography of syphilis and AIDS, has noted the emphasis on recognizable symptoms as stigmatization and the social isolation of the sick (as in the press photographs) as early as 1469, in an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, p. 277.797 Anja Schonlau too, in her comprehensive study on the representation of syphilis in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, views AIDS as following in this tradition, modernizing images common to discourse on syphilis, such as promiscuity and recklessness, epitomized by Yves Navarre’s 1973 novel Les Loukoumes, which describes the excessive lifestyle of decadent New York City.798 792 793 794 795

796 797

798

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 197 and 199. Taylor, “Pathogenesis of Metaphor,” 58. On the origin of AIDS see Gilman, Sexuality, 322 – 324. Pulver, Tribut der Seuche, 81; Gamson, “Silence, Death,” 351 and Sontag, Illness and Aids, 133. Foucault, History of Sexuality. Foucault shows how sexually transmitted diseases were seen in the 18th and 19 th centuries as expression and cause of biological, cultural, and societal decline. Sontag, Illness and Aids, 140 – 142; see also Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis,” 100. Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis,” 92 – 93. On historical representations of syphilis see Gilman, “Plague in Germany,” 52 and 79 – 85. In the 18 th century, Gilman found a shift to the seductress as the source of illness, while men became mere passive victims. In metaphors of AIDS in contrast, women do not play a role, the (gay) man is both (male) victim and (female) perpetrator (Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis,” 96 – 98). Schonlau, Syphilis in der Literatur, 492 – 493.

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Finally, all epidemics — leprosy, the plague, syphilis, and AIDS — share the stigmatization of those who contract the disease. Thus demands for quarantine and exclusion of the sick are historical tropes that were picked up again during the AIDS epidemic. Carter Ratcliff saw the demand to quarantine people with AIDS from the “Bohemian region” of urban America as an embodiment of the desire to discredit the “bohemia of hot designers, actors, artists” — to brand them as social outcasts and to ghettoize them.799 But in contrast to the metaphors of historic epidemics like the plague, leprosy, and syphilis, one element is specific to the cultural response to AIDS that deeply impacted the social perception of people with AIDS. The AIDS epidemic hit social outcasts hardest; at first the American gay community, which had organized a functioning social network in the 1970s. The AIDS movement could draw on this network and, because of its infrastructure, fight for their visibility and against their marginalization. While Simon Watney has called the epidemic a unique catastrophe that was denied the status of tragedy because it affected mostly social minorities, ignorance on the part of the general population also helped people with AIDS to mobilize.800 The specific social and societal situation of the gay community, its networks, its financial resources, and its tools of representation, made the AIDS epidemic into a political issue that was sure to land on the policy agenda. Finally, the press played a large role in the representation of people with AIDS. In no historical epidemic was an image of the disease spread so quickly and so far as images of people with HI V/ AIDS in the 1980s. The diversity of the visual discourse on and by people with AIDS can be seen in the way in which press coverage forced the artists in Witnesses to react to what they felt were inappropriate representations that encouraged mechanisms of exclusion. From an art history perspective, the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United States was a singular phenomenon; no other historical epidemic inspired a comparable body of art of that size. That no analogous visual discourse on AIDS arose in other countries in this period was noted in the introduction.801 Despite or because of this singularity, the historicization of Art about AIDS is a relevant research aim. While the study at hand offers a comprehensive analysis of the conditions surrounding Nan Goldin’s exhibition and has delivered clear results on the meaning of Art about AIDS in the cultural / political context of the late 1980s, broader studies of AIDS as a social crisis and its reflection in art could be fruitful. A comparison of Goldin’s Bohemian artists community and the AIDS Apocalypse of the late 1980s — as 799 800 801

Ratcliff, “Modern Life,” 8. Gamson, “Silence, Death,” 352 and Watney, Policing Desire, 8. Certainly there is more to be discovered in further research on other European industrialized nations as well as for responses to HIV/AIDS in South Africa or India for example, where the epidemic continues to this day and has caused incomparable destruction.

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Thomas Long named it in his 2005 study AIDS and American Apocalypticism — with the apocalyptic mood of the late nineteenth century in Decadent literature could be quite interesting.802 Finally, the results of this study should be used to study other groups of artists who are seen as a community not because of the commonalities in their artworks, but because of their biographies and their belonging to other marginalized minorities. Thus the analysis of Goldin’s exhibition, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, can be seen as a study representative of more than just one AIDS-ravaged community in the late 1980s.

802

See Long, Apocalypticism.

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APPENDIX

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REFERENCES

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PRIMARY SOURCES The archival material of the exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing is housed at NYU Fales Library since 2011 and was archived in 2012. All documents are cited with the Fales Library file numbers. The archival material of the exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS is part of the archive of Independent Curators International in New York City, which is neither systematically archived nor publically accessible. The documents are cited here as follows: International Curators International, followed by the acronym of From Media to Metaphor combined with a number. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, archival material in New York University, Fales Library & Special Collections, Downtown Collection, Artists Space Archive 1973 – 2009: Document ACT UP n. d. ACT UP. Expression of Solidarity with Artists Space, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Artists Space 1989 Artists Space. Press Release: Witnesses’ Opening, Nov. 16, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 4. Document Artists Space 1989a Artists Space. Announcement: Day Without Art Reading, Nov. 28, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 4. Document Artists Space 1989b Artists Space. Press Release: Extended Opening Times of Witnesses, Dec. 26 – 30, 1989, Dec. 20, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Artists Space n. d. Artists Space. Artists Checklist, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 31, Folder 4. Document Artists Space / Day Without Art n. d. Artists Space. Press Release: Day Without Art’s Opening, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Creative Time 1989 Creative Time. Expression of Solidarity with Artists Space, Nov. 9, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 31, Folder 8. Document Frohnmayer 1989 Frohnmayer, John. Letter to Susan Wyatt, Nov. 3, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Frohnmayer 1989a Frohnmayer, John. Statement, Nov. 8, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 32, Folder 6.

Document Goldin et al. n. d. Goldin, Nan. Statement by Nan Goldin and all Witnesses’ Artists. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document NEA n. d. Artists Space. Organization Grant Application Form NEA, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 32, Folder 6. Document Shane 1989 Shane, Jo. Statement of Jo Shane, Nov. 16, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 4. Document Wojnarowicz 1989 Wojnarowicz, David. Minutes of the Meeting between Artists Space and John Frohnmayer, Nov. 15, 1989, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Wojnarowicz 1989a Wojnarowicz, David. Statement to the Directory Board of Artists Space, Nov. 17, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Wyatt 1989 Wyatt, Susan. Fax to John Frohnmayer, Nov. 8, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. Document Wyatt / Art in America n. d. Wyatt, Susan. Unpublished Letter to the Editor of Art in America, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 32, Folder 2. Document Wyatt / Fear or Freedom n. d. Wyatt, Susan. Essay Fear or Freedom: A Reflection on Arts Funding, n. d. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 32, Folder 2. Document Yablonski 1989 Yablonski, Linda. Letter to Robert Barziley, Editor of the New York Times, Nov. 12, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5. From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, archival material from Independent Curators International, New York: Document ICI.MM.I Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. Artists Checklist, n. d. Document ICI.MM.2 Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. Project Description, n. d. Document ICI.MM.3 Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. Checklist of Artists and Artworks in From Media to Metaphor, n. d. Document ICI.MM.4 Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. List of Selected Group Shows in Non-commercial Exhibition Spaces, n. d.

Document Goldin 1989 Goldin, Nan. Statement, Nov. 16, 1989. Artists Space Archive, Series I, Box 33, Folder 5.

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Document ICI.MM.5 Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. List of Publications, Accompanying the Exhibition, n. d. Document ICI.MM.6 Atkins, Robert, and Thomas Sokolowski. Letter to Alice Bouknight, Curator of McKissing Gallery, University of South Carolina, June 25, 1992.

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LITERATURE

Armstrong, David. “Untitled.” In Nan Goldin and David Armstrong: A Double Life [exhibition catalogue], edited by Matthew Marks Gallery, 6 – 8. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 1993.

Abu-Lughod, Janet. From Urban Village to East Village: The Battle for New York’s Lower East Side. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

Artists Space, ed. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing [exhibition catalogue]. New York: Artists Space, 1989.

Ackermann, Marion. “Sehnsucht nach Vollkommenheit: Spielarten des Triptychons im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert.” In Drei: Das Triptychon in der Moderne, edited by Marion Ackermann, 37 – 47. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2009. Adam, Barry D. The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987. Adler, Amy A. “Post-Modern Art and the Death of the Obscenity Law.” The Yale Law Journal 99.6 (April 1990): 1359 – 1378. Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory, translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Athlone, 1997. ___. “Cultural Criticism and Society.” In Prisms, edited by Theodor W. Adorno, translated by Shierry Weber Nicolson and Samuel Weber, 17 – 35. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. Alexander, Darsie. “Nan Goldin.” In Slide Show: Projected Images in Contemporary Art, edited by Darsie Alexander, 106 – 109. London: Tate Publishing, 2005. Alphen, Ernst van. “The Portrait’s Dispersal.” In Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought, edited by Ernst van Alphen, 21 – 47. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Ashford, Doug. “A Conversation on Social Collaboration.” Art Journal 65.2 (2006): 58 – 82. Assmann, Aleida, and Jan Assmann. “Kanon und Zensur als kultursoziologische Kategorien.” In Kanon und Zensur: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II, edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, 7 – 27. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1987. Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilizations: Writings, Remembrances, and Political Imagination, translated by David Henry Wilson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Atkins, Robert. “Visual AIDS: Or How to Have Art (Events).” In Disrupted Borders, edited by Sunil Gupta, 214 – 222. London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993. ___. “A Day without Art.” Arts Magazine (May 1990): 62 – 64. ___. “In Grief and Anger: Photographing People With AIDS.” Aperture: Self and Shadow 144 (Spring 1989): 70 – 72. Atkins, Robert, and Thomas W. Sokolowski, eds. From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS [exhibition catalogue]. Clinton, NY: Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College et al., 1992.

___. Homosexual Oppression and Liberation. New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1971.

___. “Art About AIDS: Two Voices – Multiple Contexts.” In From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS [exhibition catalogue], edited by Robert Atkins and Thomas W. Sokolowski, 18 – 29. Clinton, NY: Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College et al., 1992.

Ambrosino, Giancarlo, and Sylvène Lothringer, eds. David Wojnarowicz: A Definite History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side. New York: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Avgikos, Jan. “Group Material Timeline: Activism as a Work of Art.” In But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism, edited by Nina Felshin, 85 – 116. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995.

Ammann, Jean-Christoph. “Beat Streuli.” European Photography 75 (1994 / 1995): 51 – 52.

Baker, Rob. The Art of AIDS: From Stigma to Conscience. New York: Continuum, 1994.

Anonymous Queer. “Queers Read This: I Hate Straights.” In The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men  in Media, Society & Politics, edited by Larry Gross and James D. Woods, 588 – 594. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Bal, Mieke. Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis. London: Routledge, 1996.

Altman, Dennis. AIDS and the New Puritanism. London: Pluto Press, 1988.

Armleder, John M., B. Buchloh, W. Büttner, I. Graw, K. König, J. Koether, T. Ruff, and P. Kaiser. “Die 80er Jahre sind unter uns: Roundtable-Gespräch, Basel 18. Juni 2005.” In Flashback: Eine Revision der Kunst der 80er Jahre [exhibition catalogue], edited by Philipp Kaiser, 21 – 91. Basel: Kunstmuseum, 2005. Armstrong, Elizabeth A., and Suzanne M. Crage. “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth.” American Sociological Review 71.5 (October 2006): 724 – 751.

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___. “Irritierte Männlichkeit: Repräsentation in der Krise.” In Privileg Blick: Kritik der visuellen Kultur, edited by Christian Kravagna, 223 – 239. Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv, 1997. ___. “Inside / out.” In Public Information: Disaster, Document [exhibition calatogue], edited by Robert Frank, 49 – 61. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1995. ___. “Who is Speaking thus? Some Questions about Documentary Photography.” In Photography at the Dock: Essay on Photographic History, Institutions and Practices, edited by Abigail Solomon-Godeau, 169 – 183. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Sokolowski, Thomas W. “America: Where Angels Don’t Fear to Tread.” In Don’t Leave Me this Way: Art in the Age of AIDS [exhibition calatogue], edited by Ted Gott, 63 – 90. Melbourne: National Gallery of Australia, 1994. Sommer, Richard M. “Time Incorporated: The Romantic Life of the Modern Monument.” Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 1999): 38 – 44. Sontag, Susan. “The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer 1962.” In Against Interpretation and Other Essays, edited by Susan Sontag, 39 – 48. London: Penguin Books, 2009.

___, ed. Nan Goldin: I’ll Be Your Mirror [exhibition catalogue]. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996. Tagg, John. “A Democracy of the Image: Photographic Portraiture and Commodity Production.” In The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, edited by John Tagg, 34 – 59. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988. Tajfel, Henri. Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Takemoto, Tina. “The Melancholia of AIDS: Interview with Douglas Crimp.” Art Journal 62.4 (Winter 2003): 81 – 90. Taylor, Christopher C. “AIDS and the Pathogenesis of Metaphor.” In Culture and AIDS, edited by Douglas A. Feldman, 55 – 65. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990. Taylor, Marvin. “Playing the Field: The Downtown Scene and Cultural Production: An Introduction.” In The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974 – 1984, edited by Marvin Taylor, 17 – 39. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Treen, Joseph. “A Mixed Bag of Sadness and Rage.” Boston Globe, November 17, 1989. Treichler, Paula A. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

___. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. ___. Illness as Metaphor and Aids and its Metaphors. New York: Picador, 2001.

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___. On Photography. London: Penguin, 1977. Spooner, Peter F. “David Wojnarowicz: A Portrait of the Artist as X-Ray Technician.” In Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, edited by Elizabeth C. Childs, 333 – 365. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Spuhler, Gregor. “Das Interview als Quelle historischer Erkenntnis: Methodische Bemerkungen zur Oral History.” In Interviews: Oral History in Kunstwissenschaft und Kunst, edited by Dora Imhof and Sibylle Omlin, 15 – 27. Munich: Silke Schreiber, 2010. Stein, Arlene. “Whose Memories? Whose Victimhood? Contests for the Holocaust Frame in Recent Social Movement Discourse.” Sociological Perspectives 41.3 (1998): 519 – 540.

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Vaid, Urvashi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. Valentin, Joachim. “Drei: Anfang der Vielheit: Philosophisches und religionswissenschaftliches Rauschen hinter dem Triptychon.” In Drei: Das Triptychon in der Moderne, edited by Marion Ackermann, 25 – 35. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2009. Vance, Carol S. “Misunderstanding Obscenity.” Art in America 78.5 (May 1990): 49 – 55. Villa, Paula-Irene. “Kritik der Identität: Kritik der Normalisierung.” In Images von Gewicht: Soziale Bewegungen, Queer Theory und Kunst in den USA, edited by Lutz Hieber and Paula-Irene Villa, 165 – 190. Bielefeld: transcript, 2007. Wagner, Birgit. “Subjektpositionen im Avantgardistischen Diskurs.” In Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer: Avantgarde – Avantgardekritik – Avantgardeforschung, edited by Wolfgang Asholt and Walter Fähnders, 163 – 182. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Wagner, Frank, ed. Das Achte Feld: Geschlechter, Leben und Begehren in der Kunst seit 1960 [exhibition catalogue]. Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2006. ___. “Einführung: Der Versuch in einer Kunstausstellung über AIDS, das Denken und Handeln auf die Probe zu stellen.” In AIDS Worlds: Between Resignation and Hope [exhibition catalogue], edited by Aids Info Docu Schweiz, 15 – 22. Geneva: Centre d’Art Contemporain, 1998. ___. “Übers Sofa: David Wonarowicz.” Magnus 1 (October 1989): 43 – 47. Warburg, Aby. Einleitung (1929) to Aby Warburg: Der Bildatlas MNEMOSYNE, edited by Martin Warnke, 3 – 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. ___. “Dürer und die italienische Antike 1905.” In Aby Warburg: Die Erneuerung der heidnischen Antike: Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der europäischen Renaissance, edited by Horst Bredekamp and Michael Diers, 443 – 449. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998. Warner, Michael. “Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet.” Social Text 9 (1991): 3 – 17. Watney, Simon. “Acts of Memory.” In Imagine Hope: AIDS and Gay Identity, edited by Simon Watney, 163 – 168. London: Routledge, 2000. ___. “Kunst, die kämpft… Simon Watney spricht mit Douglas Crimp.” In Gegendarstellung: Ethik und Ästhetik im Zeitalter von AIDS [exhibition calatogue], edited by Nayland Blake, 32 – 35. Hamburg: Hamburger Kunstverein and Luzern: Kunstmuseum, 1992. ___. “Photography and AIDS.” In The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography, edited by Carol Squiers, 173 – 192. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990. ___. Introduction to Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural Politics. Edited by Erica Carter and Simon Watney, 11 – 57. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1989.

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EXHIBITION PLAN WITNESSES: AGAINST OUR VANISHING

*

VITALE

*

ARMSTRONG (TABBOO!)

*

DICORCIA 6

WOJNAROWICZ 30, 31, 32

ROOM 2

STEIN 28

TABBOO! (ARMSTRONG)

SCARPATI 23

LANKTON 12

THURBER 29

*

PASTOR

LIDDELL 13

ELLIS 8, 9

PELLETIER 22

*

11 HUJAR

**

TISA

18 MORRISROE

NARES 21

MORRISROE 16, 17, 15

MCPHILLIPS 14

CHESLEY 1, 2

26 SHANE

25, 24 SHANE

CYPIS 3

ROOM 1

*

DICKSON 4, 5

NARES 20

DICKSON

27 SMITH 10 FRAME

7 ELIE-RIVERA

307 307

19 NARES

INTERVIEWS and CORRESPONDENCE

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INTERVIEWS in CONTEMPORARY ART HISTORY My interviews with art critic David Deitcher, curators Dan Cameron, Marvin Heiferman, and Thomas W. Sokolowski, and artists Kiki Smith and Ross Bleckner are primary sources for the analysis of Goldin’s exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (1989) and provided me with key insights into the meaning and treatment of art in the context of AIDS. They act as a window into the New York art scene of the late 1980s and contain information about the specific relationship of art and politics at the time of the epidemic and the American culture wars. They also raise more general questions about artistic identity and the social and societal role of artists. Finally, they themselves are a comprehensive body of new material that is now available for analysis by future researchers. The fact that of those involved in the 1980s New York art world — artists, curators, and critics — only 6 of the 17 people asked were willing to be interviewed is a sign of the blatant skepticism many of those then active hold about the historicization of AIDS. For example David Deitcher, in conversation with the author, expressed his concern that analyses of the epidemic further the idea that AIDS is a historical epidemic and negates the continuing crisis for people with AIDS. Some artists, for example Nancy Burson, were rather reticent about my clearly formulated interest in researching AIDS, because they did not wish, as Ross Bleckner put it, to be associated (only) with Art about AIDS. One reason for not wishing to be interviewed may well be a more widespread desire not to be labeled. The interviews took place and were recorded between May and July 2011 in New York City. The printed versions have all been authorized by the interviewees. The transcripts of the almost 45-minute discussions have been unchanged with the following exceptions: at the request of Ross Bleckner, David Deitcher, and Marvin Heiferman, their interviews were edited and shortened. Only minor changes were made to the interviews with Dan Cameron, Kiki Smith, and Thomas W. Sokolowski: unfinished words and sentences were edited and repetitions removed for readability, as the importance of the interviews lies in their content. Some words and sentences could not be understood; those

passages are marked by an ellipse (). The interview with Thomas W. Sokolowski was conducted by telephone. It was not possible to transcribe the entire discussion due to the poor quality of the recording. My interviews with 1980s protagonists of the American art world, whom I asked about their personal recollections of the AIDS epidemic in New York, are firmly within the tradition of oral history, a common research method in American art history since the late 1950s.1 The ACT UP Oral History Project, already mentioned in this study, has conducted interviews focused on a cultural analysis of AIDS, providing a differentiated view of US activist struggles in the fight against AIDS. This growing collection of interviews with former ACT UP activists was initiated by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard. Since 2010, the interviews have been archived at the Harvard College Library; transcripts as well as excerpts are also available online. In contrast to the clearly political focus on AIDS movement protests in those interviews, the material at hand looks at the alternative art scene in New York City and the use of artworks in the fight against AIDS. All interviews were unstructured and topiccentered; an open research method that allowed the question of the meaning of art during the AIDS epidemic to act as the focal point of the interviews.2 With Gregor Spuhler, I define them as interviews with experts conducted in the name of a particular research interest — in order to broaden or expand the written sources by contrasting them with the subjective opinions of the former protagonists.3 This socio-historical approach allows for a multi-voiced and personal interpretation of history beyond a master narrative, while also generating new source material.4 One challenge of using this source material, is that statements made in personal interviews are always subjective and the interviewer is directed by a clear research interest. This dual role as producer and interpreter of source material must always be critically reflected in any interpretation and use of the statements.5 Two of the six interviews at hand were conducted with artists, a common method in writing the history of contemporary art. Since the 1960s at the latest — the journal Art in America, for example, launched its column “The Artist Speaks” in the mid-1960s — statements and texts by artists

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themselves have been an integral part of the theorization of art.6 A strong theory of the arts has been created working with the selfreferentiality of some genres such as conceptual art and with the desire of politically and socially engaged artists to transmit discursive content and opinions alongside their work.7 However interviews with members of the art world should be used judiciously as a research tool. The danger is present that artists’ statements about their work are taken at their word as the ‘authentic truth’, elevating artists to the best interpreters of their own oeuvre. Many contemporary art historians, such as Julia Gelshorn and Philip Ursprung, critique this faith in stated intentions and “uncriticizable cultural authority” (Ursprung) as well as the “fetishization of the artist’s word” (Gelshorn). They have demonstrated the ways by which an artist’s statements on the one hand serve the artist’s self-representation and self-mythologization, while also fulfilling the audience’s desire to understand the artwork and its maker.8 Despite the poststructuralist claim of the death of the author, the academic discipline of art history (happily) privileges the artist’s interpretation and attempts to thus legitimize its own analyses. While art history has perhaps distanced itself from the biographical fetish attached to the creation of legends, it continues to be fixated on the person of the artist and their living conditions.9 Rather than critical interpretations of artists’ testimony, the cult of the artist’s word to this day prevents thorough analysis of interviews or questioning the artist’s proclamations.10 Gelshorn therefore demands the relativization of artists’ statements, which should be read not as an interpretation, but as an element of the artwork.11 This is the basis of the hypothesis, put forth

by both Gelshorn and Irit Rogoff, that the boundary between artist and theorist has long since dissolved in contemporary art: In contrast to the earlier division of creativity and critique, of production and use, these procedures have for us now melded into a complex process of knowledge production. Following this logic, we can no longer ask the question ‘what is an artist’ without simultaneously asking ‘what is a theorist?’12 Consequently, statements by artists should be understood as only one of many voices that come together to create art (history) theories. If they are to be taken seriously as part of theory formation, they should not be given greater weight than other voices in the network of artistic production.13 Isabelle Graw, for example, has described the polyphonic discursivization in the writing of art history as “productive,” and therefore affirms the use of interviews with artists as a research source.14 In my analysis of Goldin’s exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing I have based my findings in part on statements made in interviews I myself conducted in 2011. Following Gelshorn and others however, the interviews are not meant to shed light on the meaning of artworks. Rather they allow reflection on self-representation and the role of the interviewee as a member of the New York City art scene and as a representative of a certain social group. Their statements both facilitate the understanding of their standing in the art world of the late 1980s and of their position in the contemporary process of historicization, where both their statements and my own analysis must be sited.

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1

2

3  4  5  6

Transcripts of these interviews with members of the art world, conducted since the 1950s, are kept in the Smithsonian Institute’s Archives of American Art and provide a comprehensive fund of primary sources (see Imhof, “Oral History”). In preparation for the interviews a list of questions was developed that was changed little over the two-month-period during which interviews took place and which was sent to the interviewees beforehand when so desired. Spuhler, “Das Interview als Quelle,” 17. Imhof, “Oral History,” 36. See also Lichtin, Das Künstlerinterview, 49. Spuhler, “Das Interview als Quelle,” 23. Blunck and Diers, “The Point of Interview.” Isabelle Graw and others have stressed the importance of Marcel Duchamp’s under-

7 8

9 10 11 12   13   14

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standing of self-referentiality, which was decisive for 1960s conceptual art (Graw, “Reden bis zum Umfallen,” 288). Gelshorn, “Der Produzent als Künstler,” 202. Gelshorn, “Der Künstler spricht,” 130 and Ursprung, “Hat das Interview die Kritik absorbiert?,” 155. Graw, “Reden bis zum Umfallen,” 298. Gelshorn, “Der Produzent als Künstler,” 197. Ibid., 210. Rogoff, “Was ist ein Theoretiker?,” 273. Blazwick, “An Anatomy of the Interview,” and Kersten, “Im Netzwerk,” 175. Graw, “Reden bis zum Umfallen,” 288. Isabelle Graw, together with Stefan Germer, in 1990 founded the journal Texte zur Kunst, in which discussions and interviews with artists comprise a focal point.

TRANSCRIPT 1: INTERVIEW with ROSS BLECKNER, JUNE 1, 2011, NEW YORK SJ Which one was the first of your artworks dealing with AIDS or AIDS-related issues? RB I was making stripe paintings in 1983 and I had read about what was then a not named and new disease. In my opinion, there are three different scenes: The art scene, the gay scene and artists that were gay. I happened to be number three. But I was more a part of the art scene because when I came to New York, I didn’t know much about the gay scene even though I was gay. And even my friends who were artists and gay did not know about the scene either. To me the gay scene was almost like a stereotype and it was something that, being an artist, had to be avoided. I just wasn’t interested. I remember, I was making these abstract paintings, and one of these gay clones – that is how we used to call them — lived not far away from my place. I used to see him on the street sometimes and we used to talk. He was very handsome, but one day he really did not look so good. I asked him: What is wrong with you? And he said that they did not know and they were doing a lot of tests on him. They had no idea, but they thought that he could have a parvovirus. That was what they told him. The next thing I know was that he was dead. So, I was making these paintings and one was called The Arrangement. I remember putting in black and white stripes as well as red and green stripes. And it just seemed like it had something to do with him, although I never knew what. But it was almost as if this red stripe was part of those things that you see all the time, like people, trees and so on. That is what those paintings were about. My paintings are a lot about things coming in and out of focus and beginning to have an identity or losing their identity. That juncture is always like some kind of () surface tension. So, I thought of him then, but I didn’t wonder why or what it was, that killed him. My paintings always had a commemorative element, a sense of loss. For some reason, I have always been very fascinated with mortality, how short our lives are. I was looking at things in a cosmological sense. Later in 1983, a friend called me, who was an artist, too. I had

my artist friends and I had my gay friends or rather gay people who I knew, but who were not really my friends because I did not do what they did. They had their own subculture and I didn’t like it then. I still don’t like it or rather it is just not what I do. There are these boys who are so overly focused on health. All they do is go to the gym and keep up their appearance of muscularity and strength. Anyway, I got a call from one my friends, Larry Stanton. He was really a good artist. I never really knew his private life. I knew he was gay, but we were artist friends. I would go to his studio and look at his work. It was very much influenced by David Hockney and I used to be very dismissive of that; like: that is gay art who cares. I always thought that if he had lived, he would have been a very successful artist. Art is art, but equal. One day, he told me that he was in the hospital and that he was sick. They said he had pneumonia, but it was AIDS. I couldn’t believe it and asked him how it could have happened. I said: You will be fine. You have pneumonia, that is not a big deal. People get pneumonia and then get better. But he died. I did a painting called Memory of Larry, which I think was in 1983. That was the first time that I was specifically dealing with this topic. I knew that the sense of mortality that I was dealing with was related to AIDS. The other one was just a generalized thing, commemorating someone whom I had hardly known. I just knew he died. SJ When did the urns and open gates become part of your works? RB Obviously, the more information was being accumulated the more I became scared. And even though I was not part of the subculture, I realized that it had nothing to do with the subculture. The disease randomly chooses its victims. I was not promiscuous, but promiscuity was not even the issue, even though people did not realize it. People were confused, nobody knew exactly what it was, so I was scared that maybe it could happen to me, too. Maybe it already did happen to me. I sometimes felt: Maybe I am doing my last painting now, even though I am only 32 or 33. It was a strange feeling of ending because no tests had been done, yet. There was fear. At that point I was in a relationship, but nevertheless, we knew that there were no tests, yet. And I think that my work took a shift at that time. In everybody’s life there is a crisis’ value that puts things into a different perspective.

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And I thought that it was also a radical shift in cultural paradigms, particularly in America where the operative artistic ideologies had always been enthusiasm, expansionism, populism and optimism; whether in Abstract Expressionism that expresses the optimistic tone of limitless possibilities and individual expression as well as the genius artist overcoming obstacles, or Pop Art, which was a celebration of the limitless potential of brand identity, consumerism, accumulation, expansionism and the American iconicity, for instance Coca Cola, Marilyn Monroe or cartoons. Basically, it was the export of an American ideology that had to do with post-industrial, post-World War Two expansionism. And in the early ’80s, I felt that this crisis put that all into question because suddenly, the limitless cultural and economic opportunities of our parents and grandparents were replaced by early mortality and the fear that science could not provide answers. I think that was the biggest cultural fear. It was not even the AIDS crisis, it was the break-down in the belief system that science had answers. Even today, when you look back, it seems so quaint: the family doctor, the answers, the stethoscope, giving you a little prescription. It felt like we were living in the Middle Ages, medically, and I think it was a fatal realization: They don’t know. We used to think they know, but they don’t. And not only don’t they know, but the politicians don’t know either, the economists don’t know, the scientists don’t know. Well, who knows? Guess what, nobody knows. It changed the paradigm. The forces that are beyond our control; that was actually a humbling revelation in the ’80s because part of America’s military or industrial ideology is that we can control our destiny. We won the war, put Europe back in its feet; we’ve landed a man on the moon and so on. There is nothing you can’t do, if you really want to do it. But then it felt like: Grow up, there is so much we don’t know. How can you even presume that we know what we don’t know? We are going through all these crises and people are still buying the same ideology of limitless possibilities. I think, the realization that the doctor doesn’t know what he was talking about is very scary to someone who is 32 or 33. That’s why I thought that I had to address that in my work. I really had to address that more directly than in my abstract work where it was just about diffusion and reorganization. I was almost looking at the world

through (), which is the way I like to look at the world and which is actually the way the world needs to be looked at because we don’t see things clearly. Because there is so much in our consciousness that is been marginalized and that is confused and confusing. So, you have to give up the fixed idea about the world and have the humility of saying that I don’t know. That I do see the world through this limited perspective where things are always coming together and breaking apart. That is what interests me. Back then, at that moment in my life, I needed to express my own fear and panic, but also bring it artistically to other people and show them: This is what is going on. I am not a political activist by nature, but everybody has to define activism on its own terms. And that is what I was trying to do: to define a kind of personal activism that I hoped would send out a message that things are not as they seemed. But on the other hand, I didn’t lie down in front of the Federal Drug Administration to get faster approval of experimental drugs. I eventually did go onto a research board and became the president of a research organization for 15 years. I don’t want to lie on the street; I am just not that type. So I had to find my own way to do it. And I did it by doing the work, continuing to be a painter. And being a painter had to do with formal qualities, too. I did not want to make political posters, I wanted to make beautiful paintings that brought something out of them. Maybe that was the way to get people into them. To get something out of them was to get the beauty in them. SJ Let’s talk about a later work of yours, The Tenth Examined Life. Is the medical crisis of AIDS part of the painting, too? What had changed in your work? RB It had to do with the images I was looking at. I had a notebook and I cut things out. This is from a magazine reproduction of a cell and this is the painting I made from that. SJ What made you work about the medical side of AIDS? When you compare it to the mortality paintings or the stripe paintings with the falling birds, there is such a big difference. RB It was a learning curve from my earliest paintings. They were intonations of nature. One of the earliest pictures was called Photosynthesis. I was always interested in the process of one thing becoming another. On a formal level, there is always a process of consciousness and the macro- and micro-versions. It is always the big question and the little detail; whether

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it is looking up in the sky, in the dot paintings and seeing the stars. Or think of viral reproduction; how small we are in the biological process. They don’t care who you are, they don’t care what you do, you are just a host. Later, I got involved in an organization called American Community Research Initiative on AIDS (ACRIA). They did research for medical purposes and they collaborated with researchers. So, I started learning a lot about the medical aspect of all of this and that started getting into my work. I feel like the variations in my work are always done from the documentary to the romantic and miracle. On the one side, it is very lyrical, but then there is also the aspect of documentation like the picture I just showed you, the picture of a cell dividing, under a micron, an electronic microscope that I was looking through. It is the fear and the fascination. In 1987 or 1986, they started testing. I got tested and I remember thinking that I had a reprieve. I was tested negative and I thought that after all those years of fear I got a reprieve. It is almost like someone telling you we are all going to die. And now someone is telling you that you can live. Every day you realize that you have to appreciate it. It did never occur to me, but now it occurs to me very clearly. When you are younger, you think getting to be 80 is natural. Your parents get to be that age but you see how people diminish. It is like only the lucky ones get into their 80s or 90s. I mean, life is such an obstacle course. It is basically an obstacle course and we know so little. In 50 or 100 years, I am sure, people are going to look back and say: I can’t believe people died of cancer and that they went through those big machines to receive chemotherapy. It’s like putting leeches to take the blood out. The cure was worse than the disease. They killed themselves to make themselves better. That is where we are in science now. The cure is worse than the disease; that’s true for 80 % of the things that people eventually die of. So, in a funny way, we are still in the Dark Ages. We look back and we laugh. I am sure there was a time, if you had a broken bone, they chopped your arm off and they tied it up and hopefully it healed and didn’t get infected. But the life span was 30 or 35 or 40 years, now it is 70, 75, 80, and then it will be 100, 120, which presents other problems, of course, but that is another issue. SJ Let us go back to your works again. Do you have one work, which seems to be the strongest on AIDS-related issues?

RB Yes, it brings both things together, like this painting here from 1987, Knights not Nights. It is a play on the Middle Ages, of not knowing. I did a whole group of these, Nights without Knights. But I like this one in particular because it has the hands, all the little baby hands, and they are trying to grab on; like hope, stars, like wondering, not knowing, being stuck in the Middle Ages, being night, but having light as well. That was after I got my reprieve. This is called Remember me. The words are written in there, they are raised, elevated, before I painted the painting. If you look, you can see ‘Remember me’. And this one is called Remember them. SJ I discovered your works for the first time in the catalogue of the group exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art about AIDS. RB I vaguely remember it. SJ It was in 1992, curated by Thomas Sokolowski and Robert Atkins. It was a travelling exhibition and it started at Grey Art Gallery at NYU. I looked through the catalogue and your painting seemed totally different from everything else in the whole exhibition. And I wondered about the diversity of this Art about AIDS, as they called it in the group exhibition. I see all these different artworks and artists put together in one exhibition. How did you feel about that? RB It is like different approaches to a shifting paradigm, to a shifting sense of values. I am not David Wojnarowicz and honestly, I always hated and I still would hate anyone to say that I was a gay artist, period. SJ But did they push you in any direction like this? RB No! Because it is not like being a gay artist. It is an artist who is trying to come to terms with the world around him, who happens to be gay. Of course, it comes into it, but from my angle, it is a more romantic way, and not as overtly like beating you on the head with a political slogan. There is plenty of room for all of that. I love a lot of that work. I think it is great, but there are so many ways to talk about a subject. There are so many different approaches and that is what being an artist is about. Being an artist is about finding all the different aspects, all the different sensibilities that describe our world. There are not just people doing David Wojnarowicz, there are not just people doing Ross Bleckner, but there is an infinite variety. I like the people from Canada, the General Idea people. They are great, they contributed a lot

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to literature, to theory, history etc. I probably haven’t done as much as they have. SJ I was born in 1983, so I haven’t experienced those years myself. But I have been reading about them and your name comes up with others like David Wojnarowicz, Gran Fury, General Idea and so on. RB But it is completely different. I was an out, gay male artist whose work dealt with those issues even if it was slightly from an oblique way, and people saw that. I feel like I relate more to Felix Gonzalez-Torres than I do to David Wojnarowicz because I brought the sadness back into it. There is the politics and the anger, but there is also the beauty and the romantic (), the feeling of loss and sadness that I think is in his work and that makes it so profound and moving. I am not emotionally moved by David Wojnarowicz’s works. I respond to it intellectually and politically. It is like a different kind of a movie. SJ When we talk about Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whom I like as well, I think what is interesting about his position in the AIDS movement is that his individual works are very universal, very open, dealing with grief and loss etc. On the other hand, he was a member of Group Material and was also very strongly connected with the AIDS crisis. RB Absolutely! The same is true for me. That is why I became active in AIDS research, and my work with ACRIA is a really important part of my life. I was the president of the board; I put that organization together. It was my other career, in a way, for 15 years. It just wasn’t as political. We worked with doctors, we worked with scientists, we worked with hospitals, we worked with universities to get grants for people who were doing research. That is what ACRIA did. We raised a ton of money. I got hundreds and hundreds of artists to give work to auctions, and it is still a very vital organization. I am still on the board of advisors. I brought people on the board, brought all the artists into it, the fashion people, the events I created, plus, I gave a ton of my own work to it and to other causes. But to this day, I find the () of being a gay artist a little problematic because that is not what I am primarily. I happen to be gay and I am an artist. I was glad to skip over all the identity politics movement of the ’90s. Now Felix was more an artist of the ’90s in that way, in that era. He was also 10 years younger than me. SJ When we speak of the different communities, was there ever some sort of AIDS-related

art world? What did AIDS do to the separation of the art world and gay art? RB That is a very interesting question. I would suggest to read Susan Sontag about that issue. It was the plague years. People have a natural talent to separate themselves. And unconsciously, I tried to do what I did. I tried to keep it scientific and to keep my art emotional and personal. But I was always afraid of being identified as an artist who had AIDS, even though I wasn’t. It was a weird thing. People who were sick had a reason to become more politicized. Obviously, they had more investment in health, their own health and drugs. My investment was more long term: Do you find a cure? How are we going to get away from this? And then there was always that undiscussed issue of what the market plays. I always wondered what kind of effect the market had. If people think I am going to die early, does that make my work more valuable? There was always such a weird stigma and that is what Susan Sontag discusses: the stigma of being in the world of the sick. Suddenly, you are marginalized because you can’t compete anymore, you don’t have the strength, you are the other, outside, the game is over for you. You put them aside into a hospital, into a home or you just feel sorry for them. I always felt that this is creepy. SJ On the other hand, HIV/AIDS-related artists had a very strong self-representation. When you look at other affected groups, like drug addicts, the creative gay community had a strong representation and a lot of money. RB Well, they are privileged! They are a privileged group of people. SJ Why? RB Why? Because that is their background. They are overwhelmingly white, urban, they know how to politicize their causes, they know how to create community. A bunch of drug addicts doesn’t know how to do that! Black people who are drug addicts and sick are dispersed all over the place. And who the government tries to marginalize in the first place have no outlet. All these people had friends in powerful places. It is almost like they had the network of dealers. The art world is also an economic force and they became a cause célèbres because there was a celebrity cache. A lot of fashion designers had AIDS. It wasn’t just art. It was art and fashion and culture and dance. That is what gay is. You would not sneak into the door of an AmFar benefit like you would slip into an AA meeting.

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SJ Would you even go so far to say that groups like ACT UP tried to keep themselves away from drug addicts or other groups that are affected by AIDS? Do you think they somehow separated themselves to keep up this privileged group and their representation? RB I am not aware of that as a conscious thought, as a kind of organizational strategy. I don’t know. I think, it just happened because that is the way political movements work. They start with like-minded individuals and then eventually, if they develop power and steam, they can bring in the margins. But it starts as a group of gay guys in a room. The outreach has to start later and the economic power base begins to build up. SJ Since you spoke of Susan Sontag and her comparison of AIDS and the plague or syphilis, I have been thinking about the idea that the time of the AIDS epidemic could be compared to fin-de-siècle 19 th century. Do you think that makes sense? I think, I see that in your art. RB Of course, I do. I mean the fin-de-siècle is a chronological fact. I don’t know if enough history has actually passed from then to now to make any comparisons. SJ You have been speaking of romanticism. That is definitely something that you find in the arts of the 19 th century. RB What you are referring to in terms of a cultural phenomenon, is not the fin-de-siècle, it is when romanticism crosses over into decadence. There is a decadence associated with that expression and that is a hard word to describe. You could say, any self-involvement in an age of crisis, any romanticism is decadent. It just depends on how you define things. I would say that through all our history, there are different strings that work together and also compete with each other. SJ Did you actively respond to the 19 th century in your art? RB A little bit. But that has to do with how do I make this thing beautiful? And there is also a microcosm to formalism. If I am looking at a Manet painting, I am looking at a flower. It is this kind of sadness-in-the-stomach feeling you get from it. Because it is a beauty that is ending. It is about something that is to be gone soon. And as soon as an experience is converted into memory, it is gone. So, there is always decadence to that because it is about loss. You lose experience when it gets converted to memory. The artists that I looked at, besides Manet,

were romantic artists like Redon that have that sense of fading things. And I think, that sense for some reason has a decadent connotation to it because decadence is about when things can’t hold up anymore. It is like the final guess. I mean, politics is decadent. Wall Street is decadent. That is real decadence. I think, the art world unfortunately stigmatizes simple words that actually express humanity. The word beauty is a heavily stigmatized word, only in the art world. In any other world, when somebody says something is beautiful, it actually means it is beautiful. In the art world the subtext says it is not good. When they say it is beautiful they don’t add t-o-o, like too beautiful. But you can feel it. It is interesting. SJ Since last year I have been noticing a new interest in David Wojnarowicz and in artists who are closely related to the AIDS epidemic. There are other artists like Felix GonzalezTorres who had some sort of a come back in 2006 / 07. And then there are artists like Nan Goldin or you who pretty much continued to be in the canon or on the market. RB Well, it is merely because we are both alive and still working. SJ Why do you think there is this new interest in AIDS-related art, 30 years after the crisis? RB Yes, because it is a historical (). It is a () point in the history of the 20 th century. There is no question about that. SJ But why now? RB Because it is long enough ago that it is history and that people like you, who are born in 1983, are now going to college and looking at things from a historical perspective. You need 20 years between something being a crisis to something being an issue of historical investigation. Maybe that is when things can actually be solved quite honestly. Because during the crisis, there is too much hysteria and confusion. I just went to see The Normal Heart for the first time. I had never seen it. I know Joe Mantello, I know Larry Kramer, and I know Joel Grey. I thought it was great. It was so powerful and moving. I went on opening night and Larry Kramer was there. If I was him, the () that 25 years has brought him is actually very awesome. Everything he said was true, everything. Nobody would listen. Why wouldn’t they listen? It was not because he was angry. They just dismissed him as being angry, as being over the top. Because everyone was too confused and nobody knew what to listen to. 20 years ago,

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it might have been seen as a very angry play. There are people yelling at each other, over each other’s heads or through each other; and now, when you look at it, you actually see the humanity of it. And you see that everybody in their own way was trying to figure out what was going on here. That becomes very human. I saw the confusion at that time because () to see it for the first time was like a history. I had no idea that this is how the Gay Men’s Health Crisis started. That’s what they talked about, that they were all at each other’s throats like that. But it is so interesting. Back then, I never wanted to see

it; and the reason why I never wanted to see it is because I heard all that bad stuff about it. Just like angry people screaming at each other. I don’t want to go to a theatre to see a bunch of angry people screaming at each other. But I went to see it now. It is actually one of the best plays I have seen on Broadway in a really, really long time. You went to see it? SJ Yes, I went to see it. It was great. RB Yes, it was great. I was very, very impressed. Joe Mantello was fantastic. SJ Thank you very much.

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TRANSCRIPT 2: INTERVIEW with DAN CAMERON, JULY 11, 2011, NEW YORK SJ How would you describe your position within or outside the AIDS movement in New York? CD I don’t really see myself as having been inside the AIDS movement at all. I mean, I knew some of the very first people who died of AIDS in the art world. Bill () is maybe a name that comes up and I actually knew him quite well. A lot of the early deaths from AIDS in ’83, ’84, at that time were deaths that have impacted my life very closely. I got involved in certain things. But what I didn’t get involved in, were any of the art related activities and movements within the art world, () like ACT UP and other groups. I would sometimes go to meetings. SJ But you were not involved. CD Not at all. At that time, I think, I had this feeling in ’84, ’85, that the most important thing to do was to be escortive, to write about issues, to be witness, to sort of function best, whether I could, as someone who is responding within the art world, but who is also part of the population community that’s the most affected. My feelings about taking an activist stance, I think, were very complicated at that time, because I think, I was like everyone else, you know, quite confused, disoriented about a lot what was going on. So, there was a part of me, I know, that was trying to continue my life, move forward with a certain urgency in terms of presenting normalcy. Not that a crisis was erupting, but that I could continue to do what I thought I needed to do to address the AIDS-situation in whatever many, many, many ways. I’ve been involved from being at the (), to being to marches and demonstrations, which I almost always was at. I like good street demonstrations and going to certain movements. But that’s not the same as being part of the movement like so many people were. SJ Is there one particular artwork that comes to your mind when you think of AIDSrelated art or AIDS-activism? CD Well, I think a lot about the mortality rate in that group of artists. In fact () to think about the artists who have died of AIDS. And who is that group? Within the art world what that absence can signify, almost like World War One in a way impacted certain groups. See what

the connections are in that group. Lately, it’s almost as if I’m thinking a lot about Robert Green who has died, an artist that I actually had that much relationship with, while he was alive. And I find myself thinking more and more about him, now that he’s gone. And thinking a lot about artists like (Jass) or (Joe Bringage) or even Bruce Connor (), whose work was very much involved with kind of (blame) and certain ground work within the art world for understanding their identity. I think a lot about Jack Smith and his work. Because I worked with () quite a bit in the early ’90s. One thing that I was really aware of was what he was doing, especially of his raw material and then what ACT UP was doing. The timing actually is very interesting because I did an exhibition at the New Museum. It was sort of my territorial debut. Literally, as the exhibition was closing, the very first mortality figures were starting to be reported, the very first deaths. So, it’s almost as if it was this moment just before, you know, all hell broke loose. The Reagan administration’s silence about the epidemic as it kept growing, and refusal to even say the word AIDS in a public situation. I’m just kind of reflecting on that now. I think a lot about those kinds of activist works. I also have been thinking a lot about Ed Ruscha, but obviously I’m always thinking about David Wojnarowicz, always. () the two East Village artists I’ve been most closely connected to. Mark was an activist, but he was an activist in a very different area. He was interested in kids, in graffiti, in sort of expressions of alternate cultural identities. Wojnarowicz was interested in getting a defensive cardial () disturbance a long way. Wojnarowicz to me is the () genius of the East Village, more than any other artist. And I think that his transformation, the interruption of his life from the day he discovered, that he got his diagnosis until the day he died () pre-() and post-() is the most dramatic one that I can see, where you certainly realize: This is not just an artist who’s making AIDS an essential issue, he is also dealing with societal homophobia in a very specific way. And he’s also doing what artists have done since the beginning of time, which is making work about their impacting death. You know, how does the artist represent mortality. And I think that he was very much profound in doing that. And I also think about artists who were not necessarily recognized so much as artists. I mean,

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Klaus Nomi was a very big deal in the East Village at that time. And for us as well as the German speaking world, his death was the first public one (). And it was very shocking to a lot of people because he was sort of the face of new wave in a way, whatever that was. To my mind more () someone like Keith Haring who would be a much more obvious person who represented that. I never related to Keith Haring’s work, as much as I liked him. So, I mentioned Jack Smith. I was interested very much in () kind of musicians, people who only dwelled part-time in the art world, but who also have been caught up in the crisis. You probably know that figures, but there is Nicholas Moufferage who was in many ways the inventor of the East Village. He was a columnist for the East Village Eye and was really the first person to say journalistically: There’s something exciting happening here and this is what it means. And naming the names and giving the names a face, who really provided the first published guide to the East Village, () which meant that kind of being out for him implied a certain taking of risks. It was very curious, opulent, moving art like stitched art. You know, I think of Francesco Vezzoli. He’s someone who was important in my life because for a moment there, he was the absolute essential sort of lineage () to what was happening. And then he faded and then he was gone. Arch Connelly, you know Arch Connelly’s work? He would kind of create shelves and tables, furniture, but they had this really biomorphic feeling. I mean, completely gay, they were just encrusted with all of this kind of fake pearls and costume beads and things. He was part of FUN Gallery. I think it’s not known about FUN Gallery. It’s kind of being more and more erased that it was also one of the first spaces where totally gay artists, including Keith Haring, but also Arch Connelly (). For a moment those two figures had been side by side. At FUN Gallery one saw a very out, upfront expression about being gay in the work of artists like Arch Connelly and Nicholas Moufarrege. All of them are gone. They all are kind of missing. And so, when you ask about art about AIDS, it’s more the people I knew whose art seemed to represent, in the pre-AIDS era, a kind of flowering of a flamboyant, over-stylized almost a provoke depiction of gay sensibility who were completely caught by surprise by AIDS. They just were gone. () You have people like

Wojnarowicz whose work was almost entirely about that subject. SJ There’s such diversity when you think about artists dealing with AIDS. Do you think it makes sense to separate between art that is made collectively and art that is made individually? And was this distinction made in the late 1980s as well? When I look at group exhibitions, there is Felix Gonzalez-Torres hanging next to Gran Fury next to Ross Bleckner next to Nan Goldin in the same show. CD Yes, but they actually were part of the same generation. So, that’s an important thing to remember. Yes, I think what art history has done to Felix Gonzalez-Torres is () example () be most dramatic kind of excising of the work from its context. You know, from its social control context. I think, it’s maybe a little hard for people to look at the names that are remembered from that period and understand that they were all moving in the same social sphere and there was a very small community. So even a Ross Bleckner, () he was more of a kind of () wannabe. He very much responded to () Gallery, which was very gay-friendly (). And they showed Ross Bleckner there for the same reason they showed Sherrie Levine, sounds really twisted but — Because of the gay aspect. They thought it was the gay reading of the work, which didn’t come across. Oh my God, this is really gay. Like the idea that Sherrie Levine would function as a sort of a Judy Garland figure to East Village gay artists. That was something the mainstream art world could not and wouldn’t been interested in. You know, this kind of sub-cultural reading of a mainstream art figure. Felix was completely on the scene. As I remember, Felix really, really enjoyed the anonymity that being part of Group Material gave to him. I mean, Tim was doing his () parallel practice, Julie had nothing, which is (), which is a great thing. But she was not that artist, she wasn’t making stuff. And Felix was for years just assimilating between (). He was everwhere. He was on the scene. There was no sense that he was not part of the idea. And then the feeling of crisis, that hung over the art world for several years, meant that it was more like anyone who is (). And it reminded me of nothing so much as the contemporary art world response to the intervention of the US military in Central America at that time. () El Salvador, obviously Nicaragua as well, and it was a lot of unrest in

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our community. Same thing is happening in the art world because for a long time, AIDS wasn’t perceived as something that had been affected everybody. It’s hard to explain historically, but for a long time there was a group and there was everybody else. And it took several years for everybody to identify with the situation, well into the ’90s, I would say. So, yes, I would say that we had this pre-AIDS (), in which expressionist painters are hanging out with conceptual artists and photographers or spending time with young musicians and that is exactly what was happening at that time. SJ That’s interesting because I think it’s very hard to find a similar visual language, something that all AIDS-related art in the exhibitions shared. CD I don’t think that was really the point. I mean the Artists Space shows, I can’t remember all of them, but sure I have the material for all them — I have to go back and kind of refresh my own memory a bit to see how I interpreted this. But I certainly went to every exhibition. And I was struck by this idea that it very much was about trying to get the attention of the rest of the art world. Time to say () up-town: Notice us. And it’s bigger than it seems. Once AIDS reached that kind of saturation within culture, within general culture, of course there was a corresponding transformation in other parts of the art world. Everybody was sympathetic, I mean, once that happened, the activities of groups like ACT UP began to see more specific to the political, () local politicians involved. But there is also a corresponding, and I think AIDS brought it with it, a corresponding, new urgency to the civil rights movement, activist movement. () I can’t remember all, but there were some amazingly vibrant activist groups that burst out. I mean, Group Material for example; one knew almost everybody in the group as an individual, all those Brad and those Tom issues. But when they got together and they did a work that was something entirely different. And Gran Fury, when they got together and made their actions it was going much for, I think, a lot of people almost like fluxes or something. In a group, identity is something that also means something. But primarily it’s these excellent artists and very committed citizens throwing everything they have into this movement, a social movement. SJ I’m at the moment working on Nan Goldin’s Gilles and Gotscho series and Nicholas

Nixon’s photographs of People with AIDS. When you take these photographs, I think they have more or less the same content. Of course, they work very differently on a formal level. But their work deals with dying and the process of disappearing. Do you think it makes sense to compare these two positions? CD I think, it’s an outsider or insider position, honestly. I mean, Nicholas Nixon, I don’t () take away what he has accomplished but (). He came to it almost as a virgin. He came to it because this was happening and he went to it, he went and found it. With Nan Goldin, it’s like she’s having fun with her friends and suddenly they start dying. The perspective is really a very dramatic one when it’s somebody who you love that you’re documenting on the other side of the camera. I think Nan is very similar to Peter Hujar. She is very much about () just people with AIDS. You know, these are people who are central to my life. And there they are dying. () I don’t see any connection between Nixon and the subjects of his photographs. They’re not people he actually knew. What is of interest to him was that they’re dying of AIDS. SJ So, do you think when I talk about artworks like Nixon’s or Goldin’s, I have to consider their artist’s position within the AIDS movement? How much biography is necessary? CD I like the whole picture. SJ Can you tell me a little bit about the art community and the AIDS movement? How did they interact? CD I think, in most social situations, I mean there are some exceptions, but I’m more of someone who doesn’t want my own personal investment in something to completely dominate my response to — Because of the fact that AIDS was hitting my life so closely, I felt that it was () try to explain () my own position was really more of someone who is gay and in the art world and part of what was happening. At the same time, I felt that I needed to be more of the ones on the frontlines convincing the art world, the art community. Not the ones who were creating () More of the ones who were trying to () issues to the rest of the art world. I felt I needed to write things and do things, but I wasn’t really an activist in the sense of writing. I would sign — not organizing marches, show up for one. I think that’s a really dramatic difference. I would say, there was a group of about between ten and twenty percent, the active art world or community that were completely ()

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and totally committed to responding in a most visible and tangible way to the epidemic. Because ignorance and lack of public knowledge was becoming a serious back () and the spread of the disease (), government’s indifference slowing down research and not allowing things like condom distribution to take place. So, this kind of urgency, sort of energy on the part of the most committed was definitely for a big part of the art world kind of a turn-off. You know, () people for humanitarian reasons, but then it implicated a political perspective, so maybe people didn’t want it to be seen as being public-related at that time. I mean homophobia in the art world has historically been always very quiet. It’s always a () self-censored position, so everybody knows how gay it is, but for a very long time, nobody wanted to really be gay. You know, take a position of being publicly — and AIDS really had this secondary factor for some people of bringing them too closely into orbit with the socio-cultural perspective that they felt maybe exposed them, made them uncomfortable. And then I think for a lot of people, it’s simply a matter of it being someone who knew it. And as soon as it happened to someone who knew it, it changed. And one of the reasons, I think, the relationship of the art world to AIDS changed, is that, I would say between ’83 and ’86, a lot of people who didn’t really take it that seriously in the beginning were affected in an intimate way. You know, then their lives became more involved as a result of that. There were a lot of people who also were panically running to the other direction. They felt that if they simply went into shell or hit or remove themselves from what was going on, that it wouldn’t touch their lives. And that I think is part of this self-censoring aspect of the art world. But you had people, like the director of () Gallery, Nathan (). I mean, you couldn’t be more up-town but who is president at the lead of the GMOC [Gay Men of Color] and was very involved with (). SJ When you think about AIDS activism and the art world in the United States compared to Europe, to Germany or France, I think, the US-American AIDS activism is very unique and different from Europe. CD I think that AIDS came along in a time when activism () — Vietnam War hang up completely and obviously from Watergate. You know, the end of the ’70s and the very early ’80s were kind of famously time, the end-up, you

know. Trying out new lifestyles, I mean, Studio 54 that was really the symbol of the late ’70s in New York. I think that the combination of media and money and drugs and a huge mental crisis kind of made New York at that time a sort of a compressor curve for street activism. Because it really affected groups that were quite prevalent in New York at that time, which were () drug users, gay men with multiple partners, people who had bisexual relationships. New York nightlife quite famously mixed all those classes and groups together, which I think also meant that the onset of the ’80s was much more dramatic in New York than maybe in other places. And I think that you have those cultural factors with the problem that the American healthcare is so horribly structured and doesn’t serve its customer base. I mean, the need to respond to AIDS was a case that really had to be made very, very (). It wasn’t at all clear that the government was going to make the right decisions. They needed pressure. I think, in Europe the epidemic didn’t hit as overwhelmingly and as quickly in some populations, and I think that a lot of governments were already reconsidering issues of gay, not gay marriage that came much later, but certainly like kind of gay rights. And I just feel there was a less overtly homophobic response from Europe than there was from the USgovernment, which meant that the indifference of the US-government, the Reagan administration, antagonized people much, much, much more than it was going on in Europe. They were clearly placing themselves as the enemies of people who were affected by AIDS. They said: We don’t care because you’re all gay and minorities and (). We don’t care of dying. That was offensive to certain people. And I don’t think you had that abroad in quite the same degree as you had it here. SJ The health care system, especially in New York, was a very big issue. CD I had worked in Europe a lot and yes, when you get a medical condition diagnosed () treated and you’re essentially going to benefit from the current knowledge and the research in the medical profession. Here, if you have a great doctor who is just very expensive and he has access to the best research that’s how you get superior caring if you go to a clinic. You know, now, if you don’t have insurance, you’re not going to necessarily be facing a medical system

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that’s structured to meet your needs. And this is a decade after the AIDS epidemic () a lot of reforms to be placed. SJ When you talk about the decade after AIDS, I think there seems to be a new interest in art dealing with AIDS. CD I think that’s true. SJ At MoMA they show the wallpaperpiece by General Idea. How do you explain this new interest? CD I think, it’s kind of a safe distance principle. You know, it took a certain time for the art of the ’70s to be noticed. You know, you got art in the streets, looking at the street graffiti right now in Los Angeles. I think that we’re now exactly 30 years from the ’80s, which means a new generation that wasn’t part of that era has come up now and expressed their own interest in it. There’s been a lot of revisionist historical scholarship () in the field and that always generates a lot of interest. I think that there has been a kind of lack of understanding like this really was, as you described in the beginning, an art historical period. And I’m very interested in it. And I was part of it, but I’m more interested in it lately than I have been in the walk of time. And so I feel, I’m sentimental whenever () generally the Zeitgeist of the high cultural institutions, I would say. That’s sad. I think, in the case of MoMA, I think the case can also be named, let’s say, controversy because they were very noticeably absent from the entire () and they are definitely trying to rewrite themselves back into the history, into a more positive way. Because they would have been a classical example of an institution that didn’t (). You know, you had reeks over here (), but also the institutions were not involved in the first time (). They do have the responsibility for the more official reading

of art history, are now interested in it again. They’re now saying: Okay, it’s time. Yes, the thing you mentioned is that the epidemic has not gone away or even diminished, but I think the degree to which people are affected in the art world (), it’s a different situation. Anyone, not anyone, but almost anyone who is sick or dying right now, is probably someone who has been diagnosed for ten, fifteen years or more. And they’re being kept alive through medical developments. () When someone like him dies, it becomes a ter rible revisiting of everything that was felt 25 years ago. When it happens now, it’s no more isolated. And that’s a very big difference. Now that the panic has died down in society at large () notably affected () most heavily employed gay men. Since we’ve come out on the other side () there are still people who are sick and there are still people who are dying, even in the art community, but it doesn’t manifest itself in the same way. It’s almost as if the possibility of objectivity can (). The other thing that I think is interesting to me, is that the conceptual aspects of AIDS activism — You know, this was political activism on the part people who (). Anyone who is actually working in a conceptual idiom, these were their students () doing Gran Fury. And so I think () is an overall new evaluation we are giving to conceptual art, obviously, and performance. Kind of post-object art. So, I think that you cannot separate the response to AIDS in a part of the community like Gran Fury from the history anymore. It seems like part of the development of conceptual art overall. SJ That’s a very good thought. I mean, I was born in 1983. I’m exactly part of this new generation. CD Yeah, they died and you were born. SJ Thank you very much.

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TRANSCRIPT 3: INTERVIEW with DAVID DEITCHER, MAY 23, 2011, NEW YORK DD I will be happy to answer your questions if I can. The first question was: When did I first hear about AIDS. I think, there were various stages in becoming conscious of AIDS. I had met a guy at a bar and I had gotten to know him a little bit and we had enjoyed each other’s company. Then I saw him one day in the street. He looked different. We used to have sex together and it turned out that he was the first person I knew who became sick and died of the syndrome. I don’t even think that at that time there was a widely accepted name for it that was widely used. In 1982, I traveled to Germany with my then closest friend, and during the flight I noticed he had little scars on either side of the base of his neck. I asked him, what are those scars on your neck? And he replied: Well, I had swollen glands and the doctor didn’t know why, so he performed a biopsy. Shortly after returning from Europe, Bill learned that he had been diagnosed with ARC (AIDS-related complex), an early term for someone who would later go on to develop the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. At the time, I was working on my dissertation and he was curator at a museum in Ohio. We’re talking about Bill Olander with whom you might be familiar. Well, we went to documenta in Kassel and had a great time together. SJ So, that was in 1982? DD Yes. It must have been in the fall of ’82 when he told me that he had ARC. I remember that telephone call. After Luc Montagnier discovered and named the virus, Bill knew enough to understand that his days were numbered. But the first man I knew who would die of AIDS was a man who worked administratively at the Metropolitan Museum who I’d met at a bar. My first close friend to die was the artist Rene Santos. Rene was a brilliant, talented guy. We understood so little back then. I remember getting a call from Rene when he told me he was suffering from Shingles — a neurological problem caused by the Herpes virus, which was common among HIV-positive men at the time. A lapsed Catholic, Rene referred to Shingles as his ‘stigmata’ because it looks and feels that painful. At that time, I didn’t know of the connection between Shingles and HIV. I had fallen

out of touch with Rene for a time, and then one morning in 1986 my phone rang and my then partner answered, as I was in the shower. When I came out of the shower he told me to sit down. I did and he then told me we had just heard from Brad Baker, Rene’s partner, who had called to inform us that Rene was dead. Rene never did any artwork relating to AIDS. Rene died only less than one year before ACT UP was formed in New York. I joined ACT UP during the spring of 1987 with Bill. My involvement with ACT UP reached something of a peak in 1989, which was a very big year for ACT UP actions. In 1987, Bill invited members of ACT UP to conceive of a design for the New Museum’s window on lower Broadway. That became Let the Record Show, which came about as a result of Bill’s having seen and been moved by the black poster with the pink triangle and the slogan “Silence = Death.” That inspired him, and me, to learn about and join ACT UP. Bill and I joined ACT UP in traveling to Washington D. C. in 1987 for the great March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Of all the protest marches I attended, that one was the most moving. I have a (to me) terrible snapshot of myself on that march with two friends. One was Bill and the other the Australian-born critic and art journalist Paul Taylor — who was not so much an activist, but an extremely intelligent, stylish man who co-founded the journal Art + Text. The novelist Lynne Tillman surprised us all by leaping into the march in front of us and taking this picture of us marching together. I have an expression on my face that I can only describe as hysterical, by which I mean not funny but crazed; more fearful than happy. Now when I look at that picture, I can’t help but being struck by the fact that I’m the only one of us three who remains alive today. It’s a hard picture for me to look at. It was an arduous morning and the afternoon of the march took a lot out of Bill, who was already weakened as a result of his illness. Once the march reached the rally on the Mall, I had to get him home. We couldn’t wait for the busses so we headed for the Metro to take us to the airport and a shuttle flight back to New York. On our way to the Metro station, we happened upon the Names Project AIDS Quilt, which then consisted ‘only’ of 1920 panels. I would see it again at which times it had become far more monumental. SJ Were you mainly an AIDS activist at that time?

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DD Well, I can say that AIDS then dominated my life, but I never was “mainly an AIDS activist.” AIDS was everywhere as a source of fear and anger, as was the anti-gay violence that the presence of AIDS exacerbated among already homophobic Americans. After ACT UP was formed, it provided an important galvanizing place to go every Monday night at seven. Attending those raucous meetings offered a way, at least temporarily, to not feel helpless; to feel strong as a community. I remember when my former classmate Douglas Crimp publicly identified himself as an (AIDS) activist within the context of an art historian’s convention. It was a striking moment that caused me to wonder if I could say the same about myself. I remember getting into arguments with members of my family when I would visit them in Montreal to the extent that I was then identifying myself as an AIDS activist. It was within the context of the AIDS crisis that I found that I could have a writer’s voice. I had been writing before 1987, but without any satisfying sense of conviction. I was just doing academic work. But in ’89, when Bill died, I was approached by Jeff Weinstein, who was then the art editor at the Village Voice. He had also been friends with Bill and Bill’s partner Chris Cox, and when Bill died in March 1989, Jeff asked if I’d be willing to write an obituary for the Voice. Have you read it? SJ Yes. DD I wrote two obituaries. The first one was for Bill and the second one was for Craig Owens. SJ So, did the AIDS crisis ever stop for you? DD After the introduction of combination therapies, many things changed. Not only for people who are HIV-positive, but for everyone affected by AIDS. It’s a very curious thing, the curve of gravity. The worst time was through-out the early 1990s — a period of hopelessness and desperation. But when the combination therapies were introduced — not suddenly, but gradually I realized that I could read the New York Times obituaries and notice that the dead people were dying in their 80s and 90s instead of in their 20s and 30s. That became a marker for many, who did not have to attend memorials every week. I wasn’t losing friends any more, at least not to AIDS during the later 1990s. It was a period of in some ways destabilizing change because people who had been confronted by the likelihood that they were going to be dead soon had to figure out once again how to deal with the challenges of living.

SJ When you think in global terms, of course, AIDS has never stopped. DD That is true. SJ Thank you for sharing these personal things with me. I would like to ask you more about some visual statements. Are there any artists or collectives whom you would immediately classify as AIDS-related art? DD There are many artists and artists collectives who come to mind in the context of the cultural responses to AIDS. Gran Fury, of course, would not otherwise exist. General Idea did some of their most pointed and poignant works in responding to AIDS. And there are so many other artists who created remarkable works in the context of the AIDS crisis, and whose works either helped to mark the enormous cost in lives lost; to give cultural shape to our need to grieve, or that helped to construct counter-narratives to the mainstream construction of AIDS and of people with AIDS, or all of the above. Among the most important figures are some of those you’ve already named. David Wojnarowicz is a prominent figure in this context, not just because of his visual art, but because of his powerful writing. Similarly, Group Material’s many important variants of the AIDS Timeline. I’ve lately become disturbed by the ahistorical way in which certain people have been discussing Wojnarowicz’s work as a result of the Hide / Seek exhibition in Washington D. C., and the suppression of video footage known as Fire in My Belly. Hide / Seek included a video that the press has continuously referred to as the work of David Wojnarowicz. What the exhibition included, however, was footage by David Wojnarowicz from the Fales Collection at NYU — repository for David’s papers and other materials — that Jonathan Katz, curator of Hide / Seek, edited and to which he added an audio track that David never put there. Katz has said that he believed no visitors to the National Portrait Gallery (first venue of Hide / Seek) would stop to watch a video with no sound, and therefore decided to add a soundtrack. He added the sound of ACT UP members acting up. David’s footage from his never completed film project, Fire in My Belly, has no sound track. So now the press keeps referring to the censorship of David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in My Belly, by which they are referring to a work that includes footage shot by David that, with its audio track,

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might just as well be considered a work by Jonathan Katz. SJ He labeled it as David Wojnarowicz’s video? DD Well, I have never seen the labeling. SJ I have seen the footage. DD Have you seen the catalogue and how is it entered? SJ I think, it is David Wojnarowicz, but I am not sure. DD I imagine it is. It would be good to clear up all these details. I attended a panel discussion at the International Center of Photography where I teach. Among the panelists that evening was Jonathan Katz (the younger) and in the audience was Jonathan Katz (the elder) who is an important figure in the emergence of queer histories. He edited the Gay Almanac, which was an important book of fragments gleaned from the history of literature, making available a cache of inspiring evidence of a history with which queers can identify. It’s an important source book for any person who wants to learn about gay history; that there even is such a thing. But Katz the curator was on the panel along with Marvin Taylor, founder of the Downtown Collection, and executive director of the Fales Rare Book and Manuscript Collection at NYU, and a number of other people. Amy Scholder, a book editor who knew David and edited his journals was there. The panel discussion addressed problems related to historical misrepresentation. Nayland Blake, the chair of the ICP-Bard MFA Program in which I teach, himself an artist who has done important work in relation to AIDS, opened the discussion. He spoke about how the issue of censorship is all too familiar for lesbians and gay men because our history is constantly being denied or erased or distorted. Then he noted how unreliable the internet can be, given its status as an invaluable, ever-expanding source for all kinds of information. When you google “Fire in my Belly”, the first result is a YouTube video that is called Fire in my Belly, which is a badly edited version of the footage that David left behind, incomplete, and silent, and to which this whoever posted the footage has added a soundtrack. This time it’s a fragment from Diamanda Gallas’ Plague Mass. It is a powerful piece of raw vocalizing. The person who posted this version of Fire in my Belly on YouTube added Diamanda Gallas’ voice. Amy Scholder also knew both David and Diamanda Gallas, said that they were acquainted, but never

worked together. So, one might ask how such material gets on the net. On the panel Marvin Taylor said he lent silent footage to Katz. And Katz said: I edited the footage and then I decided that no visitor to the museum would want to spend time looking at silent footage. That’s why I added the soundtrack. Next, Joy Episalla did a presentation, during which she read a famous fragment from David’s writing, a text in which he describes his desire to take the body of a loved one who has died, bring it in a car and drive at breakneck speed to Washington D. C. where he would crash through the gates in front of the White House and throw the body on the lawn. That statement inspired the model of the ‘political funeral’, which to some degree proliferated during the most hopeless years of the AIDS crisis during the first half of the 1990s. If you think about it, the entire episode of Hide / Seek is very problematic from many points of view, which only begin with the matter of censorhip. But in the Times, I recently read that the Museum of Modern Art has acquired the piece that was censored from the National Portrait Gallery. So I wonder: Did they acquire the piece that Jonathan Katz made? Because if they did, they did not quite acquire a work by David Wojnarowicz. It seems that too few people care about the precision when it comes to the authorship of that work and what it comprises. Maybe I am a little too focused on such details when I should be focusing instead on the question of censorship. I know that what was being censored was the footage that David shot but never had the chance to complete as a work of art. SJ It is interesting that the first visual statements are from Gran Fury and General Idea. Do you separate these collectives from individual artists? DD This is a curious question which I want to answer carefully. The question about collectives versus individual art making in this context has at times been highly charged. I don’t know if you read the piece I wrote for Artforum in 1989 about David Wojnarowicz, Ideas and Emotions. SJ Yes, I read it. DD I have not read it for a long time, but my motivation in writing it was to some extent informed by the issue that you raise. By then there had been collectives who for years were working within the context of the AIDS crisis and the activist response to it. The

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important special issue of October includes an introduction by Douglas Crimp that included a formulation that I found upsetting. He was addressing foolish statements that art historians had made, statements like the one he cites by Robert Rosenblum who had made statements to the effect that art cannot save lives, and instead singling out transcendent works of art that were being produced within the context of the AIDS crisis; and sounding rather happy to mark the arrival of a kind of renaissance for a certain forms of art. Crimp correctly asserted that there is art that can save lives, by which he was referring to the activist responses to the epidemic. He famously went on to assert that we don’t need a renaissance, we need art that can save lives. He then added that if we are fully to support art that can save lives, it will come at the cost of the Idealist conception of the work of art. When I first read that part of Douglas’s original introduction to the October issue, I was struck by it; struck by the either / or binary he had put in place. At that time, I’d gone through a period of feeling conflicted about my ongoing interest in bourgeois art objects because I love art that interests me, and always have. I don’t love the fact of the bourgeois art object’s commodification, but I do love certain paintings and have no objection to the fact that such objects get bought and sold. In 1989, when an editor at Artforum asked me to check out David’s show at P. P. O. W., and I was blown away by what I saw. Here, in a commercial art gallery, I saw works of art for sale, in many cases hanging on walls in frames. And yet they were entirely capable of helping to transform the gallery into a public space, even to help construct a public. I’m thinking about works like Peter Hujar Dead (1988), as well as the entire Sex Series for Marion Scemama. And I thought: Wait, why do we have to choose between art that can save lives and another kind of art that we have to sacrifice in order to support the life-saving work by collectives? I wrote about that objection in my essay and this angered Douglas. I now see that I made one error, but that I got one thing right: my error was in thinking that David’s work was consistent with the idealist conception of the work of art, and to the extent that his work deployed montage esthetics it is not idealist. But I was right to insist that the binary was unnecessary and counter-productive. There are plenty of paintings that adhere more or less

to the idealist conception of the expressive subject that don’t recall the works of the historic avant-garde, for example, John Heartfield. Many others objected to the implication that there is a correct way to respond to the AIDS crisis; a more and a less appropriate way of dealing with loss. SJ Do you think it would make sense for my research to separate works into collective and individual artworks? DD No. But in a sense as a historian of art, you cannot help but note that this bifurcation occurred. You certainly can use this opportunity to question it, however. Especially, since it is so many years later you can question the validity of maintaining that split, and assess its legacy. In certain ways the split continues to reverberate in different ways. Recently, I was reminded of it because Tom Kalin and other founding members of Gran Fury approached me to ask me to review an interview I conducted with them in 1990. They asked because of the Gran Fury exhibition that was to take place somewhat later at 80 Washington Square East Gallery, part of NYU. In organizing the Gran Fury retrospective, they are publishing a book as well, and my interview was their first and they wanted to include it. The memories of those earlier years rushed back. The Gran Fury interview was published in a book called Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture. Tom Kalin mentioned that they needed to shorten the interview for the new catalogue. They’d have to re-view it, edit it, and I’d have to approve of the new edit, or not. He mentioned that it was the first interview that anybody had conducted with Gran Fury. I hadn’t realized that. There is a paradox at work: institutional structures have altered over the years. Institutions — museums — that once would never have shown such art, which in this case was mostly intended for demos and actions or for galvanizing a public, was being embraced by art museums. Gran Fury, for example, was invited to participate (not without controversy) as part of the Venice Biennial. But this relates to another of your questions. SJ Let’s bring it up now. DD Sure. Like the exhibition that Helen Molesworth helped to organize at Harvard and which then came down to White Columns. Your question is: Why is there a new interest in cultural reactions to the AIDS crisis again. I am not sure that I know how to answer why.

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I think, to some extent younger people, who never lived through the horror of the North American AIDS crisis are wanting to know more. Then there is the idea that Sherrie Levine once articulated in a very different context, which she referred to as “longing for the passion of engagement.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, which derives from one of her artist’s statements; but I’ve always found it remarkable. She is addressing her own project, After Walker Evans (1981), which both manifests that long-ing and insists on — or anyway accepts — her removal from such engagement. The Walker Evans pictures were, of course, shot in the late 1930s during the Great Depression and arguably were shot from a position that bore witness to such passionate engagement. I personally have no nostalgia for the years we’ve been discussing. But I am an educator, and a lot of people who were deeply involved within the AIDS activist movement are educators too. Our students who read about and hear about that period wonder about the nature of their own fights against an unjust system. I had that impression while attending the extremely crowded and energized opening of the AIDS exhibition of White Columns. SJ Have you been at the talk with the cocurator Claire Grace on Saturday? I felt a strong nostalgia there, and there were a lot of AIDS activists who really wanted to fight (again). This is interesting, because for me the AIDS epidemic in the United States is a historical period at this point. My research does not have anything to do with fighting. It is really more a part of history that I am reworking, and I have the urge to do it because I see there is a lot of writing about it, which I think is not really dealing with it in a proper way or in a scientific, reflective way. I am not working on AIDS-related art because I want to fight, but I want to make it public in an appropriate way. DD I recently was on a panel discussion at Participant, an alternative space on East Houston Street where they mounted an exhibition of work by the artist Hunter Reynolds. Hunter Reynolds was an early member of ACT UP, which is where he and I met. The panel discussion was supposed to address his work with a number of issues, and there was an audience for it. I was surprised that there was such an audience and that the majority of the audience members whom I noticed were former — and current — members of ACT UP. I think, part of

what draws people together this way, certainly for those of us who are old enough to have been there and to have lived through it, is some sort of desire to experience the sense of solidarity, the possibility for a coalition that crystallized in those years. That coalition was quite diverse and came from different social sectors. I don’t think that the people who attended that panel discussion, for example, or the people that I saw at the opening of the show at White Columns, are eager to relive those experiences. But I do think there is, if anything, a kind of nostalgia for that kind of critical mass, which has to do with politics and identity and community. My own students don’t seem overwhelmingly interested in fighting, at least not for anything that they delineate clearly. One can feel nostalgia for something one has never experienced directly. But there are many ways to think about that. SJ That makes sense. I think there has been some sort of nostalgia about the ’68-movement in Germany at the universities. This feeling of: We would like to have done this if our parents hadn’t done do it already. This is maybe similar. DD Your next question is: What do you say about the ‘quality’ of the works in the group exhibitions? Which artists are still present in today’s canon of art? It is tough because a certain kind of work can be immensely successful within one context, within an activist context, and in another context it can be alien and not make much sense. I mean, of course, there are many works that stand out in retrospect like the works you brought up earlier, for example the grid of black and white photographs of Peter Hujar after he has died. It’s an incredibly powerful work. But ‘quality’ is a term that I feel ineffable; to difficult to define, and ultimately it may be that context defines it; to say nothing for now about the subjective nature of how ‘quality’ gets defined differently for different people. SJ I am thinking about exhibitions like From Media to Metaphor. When I go through the catalogue, there are a lot of names that I have never heard of and when I google them I don’t find anything. For me, looking at the catalogue in 2011, it seems that there is no differentiation between David Wojnarowicz, who has a very broad body of work, and artworks that are very narrow in the way you can interpret them. This could be one example for ‘quality’ — which really is not the best term to use —, having the

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possibility to really open up the interpretation. So, I am wondering: Was there a feeling of this huge diversity back then? Or did they just include everything that was related to AIDS? Was AIDS the only issue that mattered to get all the artworks into one exhibition? DD I am not familiar with the exhibition that you mentioned. It is a blind spot for me. SJ Well, let’s take Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, Nan Goldin’s exhibition then. DD Well, you also mentioned The Indomitable Spirit, which Marvin Heiferman is very clear about that he was collecting works that didn’t necessarily function in a direct way. He was aware of how other exhibitions, like Nicholas Nixon’s show, were so justly criticized. It is hard. The first exhibition that took place and the one I was first aware of was out in Ohio. It had a very flat-footed title. It was Jan Zita Grover who organized it. SJ Artists respond to AIDS? DD Yes, I wish I had not lost my catalogue to that exhibition. I had a copy. I just cannot believe that it is gone, but it is. I think that in the case of that exhibition, things were selected in a two-fold way; one was which art was the most politically effective agitprop and then maybe on another level which of that art also functioned arguably in some poetic way. And I can think of another example, it is not a group show, but two videos from 1989 that are very telling in their different approach. One was Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, the other one is Isaac Julian’s Looking for Langston. They were both produced in 1989, they are both canonical works. Back then I was saying that Tongues Untied is so concrete and specific in what it is addressing, it may not age well. Looking for Langston is such a poetic work that it might age better. It is a real issue. Ultimately, I stand by both works, which I respect and admire enormously. SJ I know. This was important for my writing on Felix Gonzalez-Torres because he is so open and his works speak of dying, loss and grief and sexuality, but not only in relation to AIDS. DD And very rarely was he literal in addressing those topics. You mentioned AIDS and aging and dying. It was always oblique. And when it was not oblique, he didn’t like it. For example, there is a red billboard he designed. It says in white letters in English and in Spanish “Health Care is a Right. No Excuses.” I had shown students this billboard over the years and then I was writing something and wanted to make

references to it. So, I called my friend Julie Ault and she said: You know, Felix rejected that piece. I replied: Thank God you told me this. Felix was very particular about deciding which pieces would be admitted in the Catalogue Raisonné that Dietmar Elger edited, which by the way is riddled with mistakes. SJ Is it? DD They may be small mistakes, but there are mistakes. What is left out, what gets included — those decisions can seem very arbitrary sometimes. And that billboard was very specific, so he must have disavowed it because it was too specific, too concrete and ultimately artless. SJ This might be one of the major questions when you think of AIDS-related art: How open are the artworks? I experienced that when I was comparing Nan Goldin’s series of Gilles and Gotscho with Nicholas Nixon’s photographs. It is very obvious there. It is in the photographs, in the way light and shadow is used. Nixon composes the people sitting alone inside, and the windows are closed. This limits the interpretation. Nan Goldin doesn’t work like that. DD Yes, I think that comparison makes sense. There is an essay about Nan Goldin written by Liz Kotz. She argues with Nan’s work and the claim that she is so humane and so connected. I was disturbed by those photographs, actually for the same reasons that Liz Kotz names. It was curious for me that she could draw a distinction between Nan Goldin’s work and Jack Pierson’s work and that her support of Jack Pierson’s work was predicated on a very old-fashioned argument. It is a very post-modernist argument that Nan Goldin is too rooted in the conception of the expressive subject and Jack Pierson’s work is so much more informed by a post-modernist understanding of subjectivity as socially constructed. But we are going off subject again. SJ Let’s move to the art community. Would you speak of an AIDS-related art community? DD I think that there was an AIDS-related art community, and we still connect, briefly, in passing, at occasions like Hunter Reynold’s panel discussion at Participant. I also have problems with the concept of ‘community’, which is a term that requires a lot of unpacking. SJ Was there a separation between an AIDSrelated art community and a ‘regular’ art community? DD To some extend there was a distinction. An AIDS-related art community, if we can use that

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expression, would have included the collectives. SJ Is that the only difference? When you think of the alternative art community, there was — in my sense — a very narrow network of artists, curators and activists in New York. DD There were ties between them, an overlap. I remember, some of the first fundraisers for AIDS research and AIDS service organizations like GMHC were held at places like Leo Castelli Gallery. There was a good deal of overlap but I don’t think it is helpful to distinguish between the two. SJ Of course, I am thinking about the group exhibitions and about activists, artists and curators who worked together very tightly. This is something I am interested in: Why do they pick special artworks and who is picking whose artworks? DD It is a strange thing because sometimes, like in The Indomitable Spirit, there were artists in the exhibition who didn’t belong in any directly social way within the putative category of an ‘AIDS-related’ art scene. But AIDS dominated the entire art world during the period when so many people were getting sick and dying, and it dominated our thoughts as it also inhabited the unconscious of each person the epidemic affected. I think that is the point. You cannot isolate one part of the art world and say that it exists separately from the AIDS-related art world. They were the same world, but yes, there were those whom the epidemic did not touch so directly who could act as if it did not concern them. SJ I have one statistic you are probably familiar with from the March on Washington, one of the big ACT UP demonstrations. They found out that the majority of the people were young, well-educated, white urban men. So, would you speak of the art world as a cultural elite? Were artists working on AIDS mainly white, urban, well-educated males? DD Yes, that is true. SJ Why? DD Well, because gay men were initially afflicted the most by the crisis. We were deeply affected by it, and the fact that we were white, middle-class, educated people made it possible for us to consolidate to form a group with the kind of articulateness and creativity that organizations like ACT UP were able to attract. I am thinking about Tim Rollins and K.O.S. Recently, I wrote an essay for a book about their work. I singled out the many instances in which the group generated works in relation to the AIDS

crisis, for example, the big paintings based on readings that they did together, like The Red Badge of Courage or The Journal of the Plague Year or the series of white paintings based on Schubert’s Winterreise. All these works had a connection to the AIDS crisis, certainly for me. The members of K.O.S. came from families that were also afflicted with AIDS, which as you know can be transmitted in a number of ways. There is a documentary video that somebody made about Tim and the kids. It’s quite good and narrates the story of one kid who learns that a relative of his is infected with HIV. These are members of a mostly Latino community from the South Bronx — the poorest congressional district in the United States. And their teacher, Tim Rollins, was himself a closeted gay man or a closeted bisexual man who knew innumerable people who were gay, sick and dying. He was himself deeply affected by that. Nevertheless, it is a difficult question because it requires that one knows statistics and what was going on outside the world to which I belonged. Being one of those well-educated, white, middle-class gay guys, I don’t know enough about lives I don’t live. SJ Has that been an issue? Have you ever been thinking: We are only this group of people and where are the Blacks, where are the Latin people? Was that something on your mind in the 1980s and 1990s? DD It was on my mind, but in a very odd way. I was aware that in ACT UP, there were people of color, people from different classes, but the most vocal people tended to be white, and middle-class — but not entirely. We were aware of that because AIDS affected drug users as well as gay men and straight people, too. As a crisis, it made it possible for sectors of the society, which don’t have much in common, to come together because they shared a common interest. It was a temporary coalition, which is the nature of coalitions anyway. But we were not beating ourselves up as a group about the fact that we could not form a permanent kind of alliance. I believe it is Judith Butler who has written about coalitions in this way; that their value resides in their transitoriness; one should not discount the value of coalitions because they don’t last forever. Nothing does. SJ So, was there an elite within ACT UP? DD Of course. There were people we turned to for their special kinds of wisdom because they were really experienced at organizing,

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really angry and smart. They were those who knew the science of HIV and AIDS better than others. And there were others who knew how to work with visual culture in ways that helped to further the goals of the movement. These individuals constituted a kind of elite. Actually, that question does not interest me very much. SJ Let’s go back to the 19 th century. I think, there is a strong connection to the atmosphere of the end of the 19th century in different ways: The feeling of apocalypse, or fin-de-siècle is something that comes up in a lot of texts about the AIDS crisis. This is how I became aware of the use of terms that have a long cultural history. There are several titles about the term apocalypse. DD Are you also thinking about Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors? SJ Maybe. Is there another fin-de-siècle at the end of the 20 th century? DD Well, there is a work of art called Fin-desiècle by General Idea, which is one of the more poignant works I know to have been done within the context of this crisis. It is an incredibly wonderful installation that occupies a huge amount of space. The piece consists of large panels of Styrofoam, which have been configured at angles to conjure up the memory of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting The Wreck of Hope (aka: Sea of Ice, 1823-24), and is lit by the coldest white fluorescent light bulbs overhead. On one of the Styrofoam panels are three stuffed artificial baby seals — a self-portrait of the collective, two of whom are now dead from AIDS. SJ There is another thing that reminds of the 19 th century, which is the idea of sickness connected to the artist’s creativity. I am thinking of Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg and the topos that being sick is supposed to raise your creativity. TB has been reinterpreted as a positive force in this way. Is this moralistic charge of TB anyhow comparable to AIDS? DD My initial reaction is that such thinking disturbs me. It almost brings back Crimp’s objection to Rosenblum’s remarks. It’s a heavily mystified formulation. This sort of logic also makes me think about a work by Mike Kelley called Pay for your Pleasure (1988). He paid a sign painter to paint large painted banners that line a long corridor. Each banner is a monochromatic portrait of a figure from the history of art and literature (Wilde, Gide, Jarry, Baudelaire, Artaud, etc.), which also includes a phrase each one uttered relating genius to madness

or criminality. At the end of the corridor, inside a Plexiglas box, is a painting of a clown that Kelly bought from the Amok Bookstore in Los Angeles. The painting is by John Wayne Gacy, a famous American serial murderer who liked to paint clowns. What I love about the piece is that here is an actual murderer and here is his pathetic art. It’s a work of revenge against art lovers who buy into the mostly foolish clichés that locate inspiration in sickness. This is my way of alerting you to the risk involved in taking this idea too far in your work. A more promising avenue for further investigation relates to the division between agitprop and individual works of art. The statement to support art that can save lives requires abandoning the Idealist conception of the art object that relates very closely, perhaps deliberately so, to the final sentence in Barthes’s The Death of the Author, in which he maintains that the birth of the reader — the heightened appreciation for the role of the reader / viewer / spectator — comes at the cost of the death of the ‘Author’. I am working on a book that in part has to do with such issues. But my book is more about affect and emotion and the emergence in the mid and late 1980s of art that evokes emotion, but does not resort to expressionistic rhetoric. Especially in Felix’s case, such art was informed by Minimalism and Conceptualism. SJ I think Felix Gonzalez-Torres will be very important for my work and I mentioned Ross Bleckner. I will have an interview with him tomorrow morning. DD Say hello from me. We went to college together. SJ I will. I wrote the first chapter about photography, about Nan Goldin, Nicholas Nixon, the photographs that are part of the work in Steve Johnson’s collection and the three photographs of Hujar’s head, hand and foot. And I wrote about Ross Bleckner’s artworks, especially The Tenth Examined Life that deals with microscopic images. It is from the late ’80s or maybe 1990. DD In the ’80s he was painting memorial urns and heavily ornamental fences and chandeliers in dark interiors (clubs, I thought), and mostly black paintings with small spots of green light. Gary Indiana wrote about those spots as allusions to Kaposi sarcoma in his reviews for the Village Voice. SJ I know. And I am also interested in Zoe Leonard.

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DD Her Strange Fruit installation is a really important work for me. I went to a reading yesterday where Zoe read one of David’s writings. It was quite beautiful. Yes, her work is important. It is odd because the first work by her that I saw was at the peak of ACT UP. In ’89 she did a video installation with her then girl-friend. I wish I could remember what it was called. The Gay Center in the Village just opened at that time at its current address and they invited artists to come in and do pieces to mark this occasion as well as the 20 th anniversary of Stonewall. Zoe worked with her girlfriend and made a very simple one-channel video that is divided up between scenes of the two of them at home being domestic, being

intimate, taking baths and footage of the demonstrations that were going on at the same time. It was a little bit like private in public. I used to have a VHS-tape of it. It was charming, yes, it was a very charming piece of work, but that was before Zoe became Zoe. It was before she started taking black and white photographs in that very occasional manner she took them. Those photographic works often describe a certain kind of involvement and interest in various aspects of the body; whether the body as a scientifically examined thing or the bodies of her close friends. It is curious how as an artist she didn’t really do much work that was directly connected with the AIDS crisis although she was a very active member within ACT UP.

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TRANSCRIPT 4: INTERVIEW with MARVIN HEIFERMAN, JUNE 28, 2011, NEW YORK SJ How would you describe your position within or outside the AIDS movement, especially between 1985 and 1990? MH In the 1980s, I was working as an artist representative, writer and independent curator. I represented Nan Goldin’s work and others, and also worked with photographers and artists including Peter Hujar, Richard Prince, and Sherrie Levine. I organized exhibitions for places like P. S. 1, as well as for galleries and art museums. At that time, and as a gay man living in New York, AIDS was inescapable. It was impossible not to see what was happening or experience first-hand how AIDS was affecting our lives. I was not a member of any AIDS organization at that time, until I got a telephone call, probably around 1988, from Joseph Hartney. He was a commercial photography representative in New York and was starting a not-forprofit organization called Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS. At the time Joe called, I was in the midst of organizing Image World, an exhibition for the Whitney Museum of American Art, but was interested in what Joe told me about Photographers + Friends. When I was talking to Joe, it became clear to me that creative communities in many fields had been much more active and organized in fundraising and awareness projects to fight AIDS than people within the photography world were, maybe a reflection of how straight the photography world was at that time. The design, fashion, and art communities were holding one benefit after the next; it seemed that everybody was doing something, except for the photography world. In the 1970s and early ’80s, I had been involved in running two galleries — LIGHT Gallery and Castelli Graphics — that represented art photographers and artists who used photography in their work, so I had quite a few contacts, as well as a love of and respect for all kinds of commercial and reportage imagery. So, when Joe asked if I’d work with him and the group of people he was pulling together to figure out what was possible, I knew I had to do it. The Photographers + Friends project was a turning point for me, and helped me understand how I could use photography to do something

consequential and in ways that would reverberate beyond the worlds of art and art photography. That is why I got involved. The goal of the organization was to use photographic images to raise money, and we did that by organizing an ambitious project called The Indomitable Spirit — a not-so-great title, but one that Joe had literally dreamed up, and which did communicate that sense of fighting against something, of trying to stand up to something that seemed tsunami-like and overwhelming. We were intent on reaching out to a wide range of people working with and in photography and figuring out what activities would be most effective in terms of creating dialog, but even more importantly in raising significant amounts of money to support patient care and education projects. Doing an exhibition was one way to go. The other was to sell art works. At that point, fund-raising auctions were increasingly common. Artists were constantly being asked to donate works to them and very often did. Because this was the first time anyone made an effort to reach out to the photography community as a whole, which was seldom done because there is, in truth, no single ‘photography world’, we got good feedback and buy-in from a wide range of people. Who we reached out to was based upon who we knew, whose work we valued, whose place in the various worlds of photography was indisputable, and who we could get to. Looking back, everyone we asked to participate said yes. I don’t remember anybody saying no. The question we asked ourselves was how to construct a project that could represent the varied perspectives and talents of commercial photographers, photojournalists, art photo graphers and younger artists using photography. We tried to bridge all that by accepting that the goal of the project would not be a concisely curated exhibition about the relation-ship of art and AIDS. We were, in a way, echoing what the activist artist group Gran Fury was saying in some of their public art works: Art is not enough. Our goal was always to raise money. So, we put out a call to the top people in various photographic corners to respond to the project’s theme and they gave us a lot of artwork to show and sell. An exhibition of work for the project opened at The International Center of Photography that opened in 1990 and traveled to six venues in various forms. I was the curator of the project and of the limited edition

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portfolios that we produced and sold, and worked with a terrific group of very dedicated and talented people on the various aspects of the project, which required a lot of good will, outreach and project management. On the exhibition front, if I were able to go back and do the project again, I’m sure I’d do it differently. But the point is that we did it. We accomplished what we set out to, and in the first couple of years of the organization, we raised over 2 million dollars that went to education initiatives, patient care organizations, and needle exchange programs. Work by close to 100 people was made for or included in The Indomitable Spirit exhibition and when that was over, we auctioned off everything in it at a sale at Sotheby’s. We produced two limited edition portfolios over a two- or threeyear period that were sold to museums and collectors and that raised even more substantial amounts of money. It was an incredible experience. The people who worked on it were very passionate about the project. We all felt like we were doing something. In addition, I worked on other projects that, in quite different ways, addressed issues around AIDS. For the Image World show at Whitney, that Lisa Phillips, John Hanhardt and I co-curated, we invited Gran Fury to do a piece in the windows of the Whitney, and another as part of a citywide billboard and bus signage project we did for the show. That was great because that group, to my mind, was probably the smartest and most effective in getting AIDS activist messages across through art. In 1989 or 1990, I worked on with Nan Goldin and Allen Frame to produce the Electric Blanket, an outdoor event, an evening slides show of works by all who submitted them and which were projected on the surface of Cooper Union in Greenwich Village. SJ Let us talk about the function of art. I know that there was a discussion about whether art about AIDS is supposed to only raise money. And you actually distinguish between the art world and the world of photography. Can you say a little bit more about that? MH Well, the disjuncture between the art photography and art worlds was already evident to me and others by the end of the 1970s. I was, and still am fascinated by the history and perception of what was called art photography at the time. By the end of that decade, you saw the rise of a completely different kind of use of photography by artists who had little or no interest in photographic history as it was

written and presented in art photography galleries or by the photography departments of art museums. A growing group of artists were doing whatever they wanted to with photography as a medium, and that free-for-all quality was starting to be more widely felt by the late 1980s and when we did our project. Something else to keep in mind is that in the ’70s, there was virtually no market for much of this work (or for art photography either, for that matter). Critical interest was just starting to build in appropriation work and as widespread questioning of the nature of photographic representation would only become widespread throughout the 1980s. And so by the time Photographers + Friends was up and going, the good news was that some of the works donated to or produced for the project were sought after, certainly something we were mindful of when we decided who to ask to be part of the portfolio project. The portfolios had to be marketable; that was their goal. SJ When you think about the exhibition The Indomitable Spirit, are there artworks that stand out, that are representing what the exhibition is about? MH I would not pick out any one single work as being representative. What was interesting to me were the different ways in which photographers responded to our request and did, or did not, directly engage with the issue. A photograph by Alon Reininger, a photo-journalist who was documenting AIDS, functions in a very different way than works by artists who use photography to different ends and for other audiences. We approached people and what was fascinating was how they responded to our request. We said here is our theme, do what you want to. Everyone was earnest. Some people responded in predictable ways and some in unexpected ways. Some people, based on their personal practice, experience, and exposure to AIDS, were perhaps more thoughtful and engaged than others. This was a project which, when you step back and look at it now, reflects a range of photographic approaches or responses to the call we put out; it reads sort of as a survey of how photographic images functioned in the culture of the time. Obviously and in retrospect, there were people who could have been in it and should have been in it. But keep in mind what we were trying to do was bring together a diverse community — people from commercial photography, fashion photography, photojour-

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nalism, art, and art photography. It was never meant to be a tightly curated or didactic project. SJ I went through the catalog and kept thinking: What could have been a criterion to pick the works? MH The project was, in a sense, a reflection of how photography works and the community of image makers who use photography in different ways and to different ends. If we were going to do photography based fundraising project, the question we had to ask ourselves was: What did photography mean at that point? Our goal was to bring together as many photographic perspectives as we could to raise as much money as we could. As important to us was deciding what to do with the money we raised. And keep in mind that there was a tremendous amount of research, effort and vetting involved in figuring out what organizations were doing the best work, and which ones to fund. In that sense, the project was bigger and more complicated than other AIDS related art project in its goals and scope. That is why Photographers + Friends had a board and people working on it that included not only photo and art world people, but lawyers, AIDS activists, and people familiar with the fundraising, foundations, grants reporting, and social service communities. SJ When you think of other AIDS exhibitions like Nan Goldin’s show Witnesses or Thomas Sokolowski’s From Media to Metaphor, I still have the feeling that your exhibition has a different approach to AIDS. Can you compare Nan Goldin’s exhibition and yours? MH No, because I haven’t looked at it in a long time. But remember that I worked directly and a lot with Nan. I produced the Ballad of Sexual Dependency and edited the book. I knew Tom Sokolowski and David Wojnarowicz and respected their work. Our project was conceived of differently, in terms of audience and goals. SJ It was interesting for me to read your introduction in the catalogue. You use these words ‘fight’, ‘anger’, words that were used in other exhibitions as well, like From Media to Metaphor which shows a huge diversity of works. They showed Gran Fury’s printed timeline in October and Artforum and Ross Bleckner’s paintings. I think this exhibition has quite a different perspective, even though you talk about ‘anger’ and ‘fight’ as well. It seems as if it steps back and is more thoughtful, silent. Would you agree with that?

MH We asked people to respond the notion of indomitable spirit. We asked gay and straight image makers to participate, people who did and who did not have direct exposure and / or experience with AIDS. The project was not shaped by my going out as a curator and saying: I’ve selected this or that particular work. I asked people to step up to the plate, and to work with and help us. I asked them to give us something they thought was appropriate. This was a project about response, and what linked the diverse group of people who participated in it was photography. Photography is the keyword. Photography can mean many things, and be used variously, and the project reflected that. Some people did fault the project for not being political or consistent enough; but focusing on politics or being aesthetically consistent was not what we set out to do. SJ I am working with a separation between collective artworks like Group Material and Gran Fury and individual artworks like Ross Bleckner’s, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ and Nan Goldin’s work. Did this separation exist in the late 1980s and 1990s? Do you think it is appropriate to distinguish between collective art and individual art when you think about that time? MH I think it is an interesting distinction to make. Individual artists have certain interests and personal skill sets to express themselves and try to hit their goals. I often work along to support that, but also like to collaborate with people and I know that when you do, you think through options differently, you set different goals and come up with different strategies than you work as a single person. The option of working collaboratively on Photographers + Friends was a good one. SJ What do you think about Nan Goldin’s and Nicholas Nixon’s work? I have been working on her series of Gilles and Gotscho and on Nicholas Nixon’s series on Tom Moran. What can you say about their different approaches? MH Their practice was very different. Nick came out of a large-format photography, black and white, topographic photographic tradition. Nan comes from another place; her work was more personal and emotional than Nick’s. Her notion of what photography could be was more flexible. She made prints, they became slide shows, where images could be resequenced and re-contextualized with every new showing. Nan photographed people she had been and would continue to be intimately

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involved with over decades. She and Nick had very different operational strategies driving their work. I don’t know how long Nick worked on his AIDS pictures, but you could argue that Nick was a visitor to that world and Nan was embedded in it. SJ Did you see Nicholas Nixon’s exhibition at MoMA? It was called Pictures of People and they showed some pictures from his People With AIDS series. MH The show was in the ’80s and John Szarkowski was still there? SJ Yes, he was at MoMA until 1991. But the curator was Peter Galassi. MH The switch from John to Peter was interesting because the photography department at the museum was so stamped by Szarkowski’s vision of the medium that it continued its ‘modern’ and formal take on things. I haven’t looked at Nick’s pictures since then, but remember how upset people were by that work and know that MoMA is a big and often justifiable target. They certainly got a lot of things wrong in the 1980s, when they were in denial and unsympathetic toward much of what was going on in photography. SJ Are people arguing about the works or are they arguing about the positions, like Nicholas Nixon’s position towards AIDS? Can you actually only speak about art, or is it more important to speak about the position individuals have in this politicized context? MH I think you have to listen to and respect the arguments about politics, suffering, empathy, and photography. And if you were representing people in their weakest state, what does that do, and for who? Just as people were trying to figure out how to deal with AIDS, people were trying to figure out how and where to picture and represent the AIDS crisis. Confrontational art worked for some, but scared others away. Depending on which community you came from, what levels of awareness or engagement you had, what sense of people felt they should do, could do, would do … it was tricky. SJ Do you think all these different reactions, e. g. anger, grief and so on, were out there altogether, or do you see some sort of chronology? MH If you took a step back and look at things in a longer period, I am sure you can track cultural awareness and responses to the AIDS crisis on a timeline. And you could also feel by the late 1980s and certainly by the ’90s, there was a sense of movement fatigue. I saw that

happen with Photographers + Friends, we did our big exhibition in 1989, the portfolios were made in 1991 / 1992, Joe Hartney died in 1991, and after that came a change in leadership, and the organization went into decline and dissolved some years later. SJ When did the AIDS crisis in the United States stop? Did it ever stop? MH The AIDS crisis hasn’t stopped, it continues around the world, as do issues and arguments around it. There are millions of people infected and millions have died. SJ Susan Sontag wrote about the cultural metaphors of AIDS, the plague, and syphilis. When you think of art, is there any historical period that is comparable to the AIDS crisis? MH AIDS is a disease, and it certainly triggered cultural anxiety-responses. People were being demonized or victimized for being gay and that made them fight for their rights and the right to represent themselves. Photography sometimes clarifies, and sometimes complicates that process. Is the goal to document what’s going on? Is the goal to create metaphors? Is the goal to create a place to confront the unthinkable has become the reality you have no choice but to deal with? Or is the role of imagery to give you perspective or to force you into the here and now and the attendant problems of that? Because we rely on photographic imagery to do so much for us, the answers were, and still are, far from obvious. But what was unquestioningly important was that people began arguing about and seizing control of their own representation. Gran Fury is really interesting because they stepped out of art world parameters to focus on public art projects. But look at Felix GonzalezTorres and his work, which, on the other hand, is introverted, quiet, personal, intimate, and small scaled, and effecting and effective in a different way. SJ I think, it would be important to go from Gran Fury and ACT UP all the way to Felix Gonzalez-Torres. On the other hand, I cannot cover all the different topics that they are dealing with. MH Of course, it is too much because it is such a big issue. From your perspective, it is probably better to narrow it down to a spectrum of works whose audiences and goals are range from private to public, from quiet to noisy. But an important thing to keep in mind is that all of this took place in a visual cultural far bigger than the art world. AIDS was a story pictured

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in newspapers, magazines, and on television. One single Benetton advertisement on the subject of AIDS triggered more worldwide controversy and conversation than all AIDS related works shown in art contexts combined. SJ As far as I can see, the artistic reactions to the AIDS crisis are very specific in America. Nothing that happened in any other country can be compared to this. Do you have any idea why those reactions to AIDS — from Gran Fury’s activism to Felix Gonzalez-Torres — were happening here, not in France or Germany? MH That is an interesting question, and I can’t answer or hypothesize about what went on in Europe, Asia or elsewhere. What I do know is that New York often feels like a small place, and in its concentrated creative communities,

AIDS was unavoidable and scary. And health care issues were huge: Who got sick? Who was going to live? Who was going to die? How were any of us going to take care of ourselves or each other when nobody knew what is going on in the first place? Also, the United States have a history of repression around sexuality, which further stigmatized AIDS. And that stigmatization of it made people angrier. People were being victimized for their sexuality and that made people even more furious. Twenty-five years after the Stonewall Riots, people weren’t going to be told to shut up or be made invisible. And so a movement developed that made enough noise and became visible enough to make things happen.

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TRANSCRIPT 5: INTERVIEW with KIKI SMITH, JULY 8, 2011, NEW YORK SJ I am working on the artistic reactions to the AIDS crisis in New York … KS Okay, wait a minute. First, which I never knew before, but a friend of mine who’s an art historian explained it to me () PhD-candidates or whatever are coming to me and they are always saying statements and saying: Would you agree with that? And he said it’s because you have to fit into a system of art history (). Like a university system of art history is not something I am interested in fitting into. I’m not interested in fitting into your life or your prepositions or your discipline because to me, this is a kind of mapping, it has some usefulness, but it’s a mapping that’s reductive. And it tries to presuppose that that is something that can lay over everything. And rather that it generating from the experience of people, it tries to make people fit to this shit. So I’m not agreeing with any sentences about anything nor (). You know, I thought most of my stuff that has anything to do with AIDS, I can say 90 percent of the time to my perception it wouldn’t necessary be directly, there is a very few things that are directly in relationship to that, but most of it’s not at all and so I don’t want it (). And a lot of my things are construed as having something to with AIDS. The impetus had nothing to do with it whatsoever. You know, there are very many artists who very directly addressed AIDS in their world — David Wojnarowicz and many other people — but I addressed things about the body at a certain point in my life. You know, when I was in my late 20s to mid 30s or something like that. But it is not something that I do so much anymore. You know, it’s like how in Germany they would say, you are feminist and they are always trying to reduce you that your work has a didactic agenda, which I would say very few artists’ work has. Didactic agendas were experience-based. So, anyway, I’m just qualifying that and I’m not fitting into … Because I was so upset hearing that. It’s just like philosophy, it’s really like an evil thing in general because it is trying to quantify people’s lives that are much more complex and much more holistic and much more everything than () people have to only cite what has been written before and I thought

that’s a bad trick because that negates the whole rest of the world. You know, it only stays with this very small institutional lies. I can only answer my things because I see that really a lot. You know this girl was talking about melancholy and then she kept saying: Would you agree with that? And I see they’re trying to coerce you to agree with things. And I kept saying: What the fuck is this about? So, anyway, yeah, it’s really bad. SJ Ok. How would you describe your position towards the AIDS movement in the late 1980s and ’90s in New York. KS I don’t have a position. My personal life was certainly impacted not by the AIDS movement, by the disease. The disease impacted my life as it impacted many other people’s lives. As a person, because for me it was essentially a personal experience, it was played out. The ideologies around the body certainly were played out in the society, in relationship to the social agendas and how that played out. And some, of course, were extremely reactionary. We’re talking about putting people in camps and things like that. And then people were very activist. You know, for myself as probably something in between, like I wasn’t in ACT UP or doing things. I mean, I made things for ACT UP, I made multiples and someone made a quilt project and I made quilts for people that died. It didn’t addressed AIDS, but it was a way that I synthesized for myself the experience of loss and thinking about it in relationship to being in a body. SJ Did you make the quilts for the Names Project? KS Yeah, I made quilts for several people that died from AIDS. I made one for David and I went down to Washington where they were laying it out on a great lawn. I think it was the first time that it was really shown as a large project. And then I made pieces. There was a box, benefit for ACT UP. I was involved in other political movements at that time where I was concentrating my energy. So, I didn’t participate in ACT UP, it’s the same thing with WAP, which was a women’s movement at that time. It maybe came out of that that I was involved in other politics, so I didn’t participate in much of those activities. I was certainly aware of the activities and David Wojnarowicz and I had a point where we were extremely close for several years. At that point, we were less close, but certainly we kept in contact

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with one another. And we had people ill at the same time. So, I made those things and then I made this thing for this ACT UP benefit, which myself, Nancy Spero and various people participated in. And I made a series for Queer, which is another organization for research. I made maybe an edition of unique pieces to be sold. Since then I have for the most part of a year given things to them and to some other organizations. I suppose that most of my interest in giving things or doing something has been towards research. But for those situations, I didn’t make things to address AIDS. But then I made another quilt and I used images that I made for dolls I was making. I probably made them in about 1986, a piece called Lucie’s Daughters and then I used those images later to make large drawings of women. One was a large drawing starting with one person generating up to multitudes. Nan Goldin made an exhibition at Artists Space called Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing. And then I made a piece where I sew little flowers on (), I mean just little bundle pieces of fabric for hearts on them. So, I exhibited that but it must have been after 1983. I had an exhibition in the Clocktower. At some point, I had come back from Germany and I went to Leiden to the museum and the museum was closed. And so I came home and started making my own () and out of that I made paper bodies based on Japanese paper balloons. And then, I had a show in the Clocktower. I think, I had been in a group show. I made these figures that were based on Japanese paper balloons, so the whole body was like an envelope, like a floating envelope. You could sculpture them and make it three-dimensional. So I was doing things about different systems and I had done a lot of works about fluids in the body, but they didn’t really come out of that. It certainly came out of the idea that the body is a socially understood organism and is being controlled by different constituents within the culture. So, anyway, I made this body and I had it hanging up high in my house, I had a higher ceiling then, and I hung it up high to get it out of the way. And then I thought, that’s like the people that have died, in general people that have died, but also in relationship to AIDS. It is the presence of their absence. But at the same time all figuration occupies space in the same way that humans do. If you make an image of a human, like how an

icon functions, it is beyond of being a representation of a person. It takes up the similar kind of psychic space, just the form without having any content whatsoever, if you just have the form of a human being. To me, that’s why art is a functional language or medium. And then I had the idea to make more of those figures. The Clocktower, I guess, invited me to make an exhibition and then I had the idea to make a larger piece out of that piece and I made about nine figures and hung them very high. The Clocktower space is very high and so they all hung hovered, separate. And then I had very large red drawings, probably about eight, nine feet square. I made them like blood. It comes from Thomas Aquinus. He wrote about angels, he wrote about when form becomes separated from the matter, something seizes to be actual. So to me, the form of the body was the paper figures, like an envelope, which were gone and then the mattered body was these big red drawings. SJ You already spoke of David Wojnarowicz a couple of times. I know it’s a personal question, but would you tell me a little about your artistic relationship to him? KS We met in the early ’80s, maybe after ’82/83. I mean, there are books written about all that stuff, but I think it was about ’83. And we knew who each other were somehow, we knew of each other’s existence. And then we met at something called The Speed Trials, which was at White Columns, an alternative space, and I think it was the first time or one of the first times when Sonic Youth played. It was just the first time I saw Sonic Youth and another band that I was fond of. So, we met and then we said we would meet again and I think we met the next day. He was doing a project about one of the abandoned piers where he had asked artists to come and make things. So he took me over there and asked me if I wanted to make something and then pretty much from that day on for about two years, we were absolutely inseparable. We had breakfast practically every single day and we went on one big trip down to North Carolina, to the outer banks of North Carolina. And we made some collaboration in relationship to things that were at the pier. We got money from Artists Space. We said we were going to make these prints and then put them up on the streets, which I don’t think we ever did. Well, I know, we never did. But we made prints in an abandoned pier. There

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was probably a pile of this, at least as high as the ceiling, maybe twelve feet high. That were the records from Belleview, from people, men probably, would been incarcerated. And one of the psychiatric tests that they did was asking them to draw a man and a woman. And we took those images and made them into prints. That was Rajah. I guess, I was in therapy at that time and I was fascinated by the Rajah prints, which my therapist didn’t use, but she had some. And so I borrowed them. Anyway, we did that and then I taught him how to silk screen. Because he made pieces that were silkscreens on supermarket posters. I think he had made stencils first. It was when we were at war with Nicaragua. He had small books about farmers, like companeros in ditches, you know, dead in ditches alongside the road. And he used those images and I knew how to silk screen. We had an artist group called COLAB and we had artist multiple stores where I was making things and silkscreen. So I taught him how to do that. We certainly talked about art a lot. I asked him at one point — I went to Mexico and when I came back, I made this print called How I Know I’m here and it was my first edition print, which was published by Joe Fawbush in my print book, Printed modern. It must have been about ’84. So, I wanted specific photographs of myself and I asked him to take photographs of myself. And I used them to make these prints. One of them I used I had my tongue in the floor, attic floorboards with cracks in that. And I said: Oh, take this picture of me with my tongue in the floor boards. And then I made another print for benefit for BAM. And then I made another piece, which was on the cover of the Whitney Biennial, the second Whitney Biennial I was in. The first show I had was in The Kitchen, which was maybe about 1983. And I had made a piece of women who had killed their partner or whatever who had been perpetrating domestic violence against sometimes children or sometimes adults. The piece was called Life wants to live. And I thought: Well, this is not like a great solution, but it’s still life over death. And during that, a man I knew had access to a person with a medical testing lab. I went originally there for some reason and I saw sperm. They tested sperm, like slowmoving sperm for fertility issues. So, I had gone for that and for him to take my blood,

because I was using my blood for work, for things about violence. David and I went and we ended up making X-rays of us beating each other up. We made print on muslin of ourselves covered in blood. That was my work. You know, some stuff was his work where I helped him, like I gave him snakes that I had made as puppets. That was collaboration, but for me, I just gave him something to use for his work. I made these big prints of our bodies in blood, covered in pig’s blood. And I made a film for that installation of us handling a super-ray camera back and forth covered in blood. You know, just details of our bodies, and then I also took close-ups of our body photographs that were covered in blood. Then I used those pieces and I made a cross. I made four light boxes that made a cross with wires, all the electrical wires hanging down. And then I showed it to Whitney. I was asked, just several years ago, to make a print for AIDS benefit. I made a print of a () spider, like a plastic spider, and then an octopus that I had from France. It used to be a place where you could buy bits of animals and David bought me a piece. Well, I thought he bought me that. But it turned out my sister had bought it because my sister lived in France. I had thought he bought it because David had a very good humor. He was extremely intelligent and had extremely dry humor. So I used things I had made with him, sort of asked him to participate, helping me make things. And once he used these snakeheads that I had made as I had worked at a youth center in New Jersey and we had made all these puppets. And I had made these puppets of snakes, which I liked a lot. And somehow he liked them, so, eventually I said he could have them and then he covered them with his own imagery. But to my mind that was always his work because it’s his impetus to it rather than mine. I just facilitated it. We certainly talked about () art. He was very ambivalent about the art world because he had been, a writer, had a band and at some point started making things. I think, when I met him, he was making stencil paintings on trashcans and on buildings. He had this little Burning Down The House one. And he was very funny, I was saying that he was very Catholic, because he would take the garbage cans because they were all fucked up and he would always buy a new one to replace them. He was very

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responsible to the situation. That would always make me laugh. I asked him to give one to my niece, which she has, which is very beautiful. And we made some books. He used a text of something I said to him. And, maybe in one of his books he used a text of mine. And then another time he asked me to be on a show, which was about artists’ letters. I think, I made an image, one of these blood images of my foot and then he had writing over it. If I think about it, there are a lot of different things that came out. I’ve actually made things that had to do with him like The One and the Winning definitely had to with AIDS. I don’t know, that was probably after he was dead. I actually can’t remember. SJ Let me ask you a different question. I have noticed a new wave of interest in museums and in galleries that show David Wojnarowicz or other artists that deal with AIDS again. What do you think about that? KS I think, there is an enormous interest (). But there is an interest in a lot of the ’70s and ’80s activist movements. I think, because art now — and I just came back from Venice Biennale — art now is embracing a social content, which it seemed less interested in for a long time before and it is also looking at groups like Group Material, COLAB, a group I was in, ACT UP or WAP. WAP had a big show. My assistant is going to a school and everyone is making work in a way in relationship to conceptual work or post-conceptual work of the ’70s. You know, certain things come up again because they haven’t been used up, because many things get sort of saturate the culture and then there’s always other strange things that nobody’s paid any attention to for a long time. SJ So, do you think that there had to be these 30 years in between? KS Well, I think, in general that happens. It’s just a cyclical nature. Younger people look to what is not eaten already. Lots of young sculptors in my mind are looking at Picasso now, whereas five or ten years ago they didn’t even know who Picasso was, anymore. You know, things saturate and then they disappear and then they’re revived. I think that’s just the nature of people’s interest. It’s basically energetic, it’s an energetic response. Something has vitality to it that it has lost. I think, that people are very much interested in social, how social issues are manifest visually. There is enormous social change at the moment in the

world that is very apparent. And then there have been incredible paradigm shifts in the last 20 years. I mean, certainly one from the Internet, social, if you look at the Mid East, climate change. You know, there are many things that have impacted people’s consciousness and there has been enormous innovation in the form that art takes, certainly video, but also just formal languages. SJ I have one last question. I think that there’s a difference in artistic reactions to the AIDS crisis here in the United States, especially in New York, compared to Europe. KS Well, I think, if you look suggestively at who died in concentrated areas, New York would be tremendous. Certainly, New York and San Francisco had very large gay populations, a very large actively conscious gay community that was very conscious of itself because it had had political, social movements, Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, much more so than in Europe. Feminism is something that had its impact on American culture much greater than it still has in Europe. I always cite that five years ago, the New York Times said that women in Germany were paid the second worst in Europe after Greece. So it’s really pathetic to me that there has not been more … They’re more traditional societies, we’re a more dynamically moving society. But certainly in 1988 there was practically no research when AIDS had been conscious for several years. Within the general populations people were conscious one way or another mostly because of kind of hate-mongering in the society and from people’s personal lives being affected. It was just something very apparent, but at that time there was practically no research done on women who had completely other symptoms. At that time too, they were still saying: There’s () and then there is AIDS, like there was some sort of pre-AIDS. It was a very frightening time and very hysterical. And within the art world, there is a tremendous gay population because there has been a long-term acceptance of the gay population and certainly many of the very important artists of the second half of this century and probably earlier were openly gay. So, those issues had been fought already in America. I’m sure in more traditional societies and in parts of more traditional societies within America, it took ten years for them to

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be addressed, more over in African-American communities, there was much more hesitance to speak of AIDS overtly. It was first seen as a sexually transmitted disease and then as, drug transmitted, you know, intravenous drug transmitted disease. So, we had anti-slavery movement, or the abolish movement, which we weren’t as fast with as many European countries with the Suffragette movement. And then we had Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and then we had the women’s movement and then we had the gay liberation and we had also all the political anti-war movements. So, all of these movements taught people how to be socially active. Everyone I know practically went to the poor people’s campaign in Washington. We went to every feminist campaign — women fought for reproductive rights — all these things were very overtly fought for. And it gave people a political practice. I’m not saying that the generation of ’68 in France, Germany and many other places didn’t have political activism. Certainly they did. I mean, you have certainly more developed communism and socialist parts of the governments in European countries, but I would still say a lot of times the social interaction among people to me is more old-fashioned. So, I think in Europe, people’s idea of a private life is much more private and much more separated professionally for people. They have their professional lives and then they have their private lives. And in America, they always say Americans have this superficial friendliness and it’s because people, when they were colonizing this country, had to band together very quickly and make affinity very quickly to show that they weren’t threats to each other. Because of that we have this superficialness, but we also don’t see the personal as being so personal. To me, in America there’s some kind of understanding that that personal is more a sociological (). Things get really out in the open, spoken about. I mean, at some point it’s insufferable, but at the same time there is an understanding. And I think very much comes from the feminist movement that private is political. You know, what happens in your kitchen is a reflection of what happens in the world. You have a very strong macro-concept and micro-concept. If you have violence within families, you have violence within the culture.

So, I think that both things do also very much impact why we have a lot of openly gay artists here. And we have more artists than other countries. I think, we also tend to have in general more affinity with one another as artists because in America, we don’t have a tradition of visual language. You know, we’re much more dubious of visual things in our culture because of our () background. I think, artists see themselves as a minority culture that we take seriously and therefore have a way that we see each other together. I think in Europe, because it has a longer history and because people tend to have a more homogenous society — this is my fantasy about Europe that it’s more homogenous — the way that people individuate is through separating themselves from other people. They say: I am this stance, I don’t talk to that artist because they don’t represent the same things, I don’t acknowledge their work, and therefore I don’t acknowledge their personhood. Whereas in America there’s so much diversity that you say: It’s in my interest to make affinity with other people. So you can have a large community of people. I remember, there was a big trial once concerning something in the art world. And a friend of mine was friends with the DA, the District Attorney. And the District Attorney said that the art world after the mafia was the most closed world she had ever seen, that artists would not speak out against other artists. You know, and I think that is in a general sense true. Because we don’t see it in our interest individually or as a group to make separations. And I think that is because we see ourselves as a marginalized culture, one that is very much under attack in simplistic, stupid ways. Then there are several other things in relationship to AIDS, which I can tell you. Eleanor Hartney, who is an art writer, wrote a book about the right wing attack. It’s really something worth reading, it’s about the right wing attack from the government like Jesse Helms and all these people that attacked artists and gay artists specifically. What she realized was that it was attacks on Catholics — she is actually Catholic — that it was still a Protestant problematic relationship to Catholicism because Catholics make images of the body. We have a very complex relationship to the body and we are always trying to assess that out, like get rid of the parts that don’t work and keep

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the parts that are interesting to us. If you look at Andres Serrano, David Wojnarowicz, Bob (), myself, Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, practically all the artists that were attacked were Catholic. So this comes out of still a colonial anti-icon worshipping culture. So, you have movies, but you have very little public embracing of artwork. I mean, there’s the Metropolitan Museum but they have very little contemporary art there. So, contemporary art is always something that is attacked here. When they want to vilify something, the first thing that is vilified is art. It’s one of the first things where funding is cut. You know, there used to be funding of the arts and it’s extremely little compared to what there was. I think, in Europe it’s changing too, the support of arts. You know, I think that AIDS — and I think probably for myself there’s lots of ways that AIDS as a disease impacted — certainly impacted my life a great deal. My mother’s dealer died. My sister’s dealer died. My dealer died. All our gallerists died. And each individual certainly has enormous ways that they impact society. If you think how many people died and people are still dying. People still have very relaxed relationships, but it also changed, it changed a

lot of other weird things. You know, my generation was relatively sexually promiscuous or sexually active in a way that doesn’t exist for my assistants. Because we came from a time period where contraception of the pill was invented. There were really sexual revolutions because of that, in general but because of that. And I think, AIDS changed all protocol. My sister and I studied to be emergency technicians, you know, people that work on ambulances around ’86. And I think it would be completely unrecognizable now, like () CPR. () But things radically changed and in interesting ways, too. Where it was really understood that the body is a social as well as personal place of cultural dialogue and control, fights for social control through bodies. At that time, I was involved in prison, things about prison. We had more people in prison than anyone had ever had as a society in the history of the world. And we had more people in prison at that time, under a million. It’s just apparent when society is being bombarded by all different belief systems. You have these theoretical belief systems being played out in social policy and in people’s personal lives.

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TRANSCRIPT 6: INTERVIEW with THOMAS W. SOKOLOWSKI, JULY 1, 2011, NEW YORK TS One person you should meet is Robert Atkins. I just met him two days ago. He is now in Palm Springs, California. The reason I say this is because Robert Atkins, myself and a fellow by the name of Gary Garrels, now a curator at the San Francisco Modern Arts Museum, and another fellow Bill Olander and other people of the organization Visual AIDS, we were probably the earliest people — not artists certainly — but people in the art world who wanted to use art about AIDS. Because we either were curators or directors or people in marketing etc. and to present that art we were also be using the essence of marketing () because at that point when the movement () just began the only images that one saw were the images of people who were dying (). The issue was, even though AIDS was a death sentence literally, that people with AIDS are no monsters and now AIDS is a chronic and not a deathly disease. () The office manager and then director of Visual AIDS Patrick O’Connell worked with Artists Space in New York, at that point a very activist spot. () SJ How would you describe your position within the AIDS movement in the late 1980s and ’90s? TS There were photographs of sick people in the press and Nick Nixon’s work () pictures of famous ballet-dancers in the press who looked like dying Jesus (). Against these images in the press we founded the organization Visual AIDS to () and to have images, like for lectures you need appropriate images to visualize AIDS. () Visual AIDS was growing and getting a lot of attention (). We were meeting once a month (), we started calling people and many people were very receptive ().Visual AIDS was growing (). On a meeting in May 1989, I had been to London, the December before, December 1, which is World AIDS Day, and all I saw in the papers were only numbers, so many had died of AIDS (). So we decided we needed a more direct activist reaction to it. So we thought, let’s take December 1 and on that day we have a moratorium and call it Day without Art. () As a metaphor because in the future when many people continue to die and no one writes about

it, criticizes it and no one cares (). And so we said, let’s call our colleagues, and it became a national event. () Some institutions didn’t want to close their doors (), it seemed too audacious to them. () At the next Visual AIDS meeting we came up with the idea that said: Ok, do something, if you want to close your doors, fine, if you want to do a special exhibition, fine. I remember the Metropolitan didn’t close but they took a very famous painting off the wall which was Picasso’s painting of Gertrude Stein and then put this placard on the wall instead and it said something like, if you came to the museum to see the famous painting and you missed it, just imagine that (). It was a metaphor of loss and these big () with condoms were at their information desks (), big deal for the Metropolitan Museum. It was quite audacious, amazing (). People did performances in galleries, and Visual AIDS gave ideas to more conservative institutions () it was all during the summer of 1989. () All organizations of the art world were behind us, which made a very strong feeling. In August, we had 60 or 70 institutions and then it clicked and by the end of () we had 600 institutions, from Metropolitan Museum, to Getty Museum, all over the country, it was extraordinary and Visual AIDS presented a 10-page paper saying, the Met is doing this (). And then we were creating street protest around the museums and there were certain charity things, and one museum brought in people who were sick and put them in the lobby and let them talk about AIDS, others that were maybe more traditional talked about illness as shown in artworks throughout history. () The Jewish Museum said: We cannot do something on Friday. () So they did something the night before, as the first event of Day Without Art. () In the auditorium the Rabbi took us through the history of AIDS () and the history of Jews coming from Garden Eden () to the time of the Holocaust and people () talked about their personal experiences with AIDS (). The Rabbi spoke about the Holocaust (), AIDS as Holocaust in a way, and the Rabbi said: And then Visual AIDS came (). It was beautiful and we all just cried. () Every major TV station began the evening news by saying, today is a Day Without Art, major broadcast companies all over the country covered it. () The idea of the Red Ribbon was to show solidarity (), a couple of weeks before the Tony

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Awards, which are in New York () for the theatre community and are watched by millions of people. Someone of Visual AIDS had connections to the Theatre League, so every person who was going to receive an award or was going to make a presentation wore a Red Ribbon (), the English actor Jeremy Irons walked up with a Red Ribbon. () They would not say anything about it, they did not want to be that political but the next day all columns in every newspaper would talk about the Red Ribbon. () And then the Ribbon took off and became the symbol of the AIDS crisis. () The next thing () in the following year was called Day without Lights where we got all of the lights turned off. () Someone knew the wife of the Mayor of New York City, so every theatre, every bridge () to make a point that AIDS is among us, AIDS is a plague among us. () Some people in ACT UP thought that they were much more activist (), they hated the ribbon () but the ribbon was also for less activist people, also outside New York (). () The mother of a friend who died of AIDS had all of us wear ribbons at his funeral at a Catholic church and explained what the ribbon was all about (), her knitting club made ribbons. () The project Electric Blanket which was a public presentation on a building in New York and then all around the world () projecting images of people with AIDS, () hundreds of slides from () Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe (). With From Media to Metaphor we wanted to show the range of art about AIDS (), it began simply with documentary and () then more metaphorical things, how it changed and grew. () SJ When we talk about the AIDS movement and the art community, was there some sort of interaction? TS () Many people at that point in the AIDS movement were people from the art community, () a lot of people in the art world are gay people and a lot of those were younger gay men who had a very politicized focus. And people behind Gran Fury were artists and many people in ACT UP were coming from the art world. () They made dramatic demonstrations and the notion was to make political protest as street theatre so that it is going to have more visual impact than a loud shouting. () They had a style, a certain type-face, () used that type-face all over the country (). Yes, the interaction of the art world and the AIDS movement is true and what an artist does when becoming sick and most people getting sick were artists, Wojnarowicz,

Mapplethorpe, filmmakers, dancers, musicians, they wanted to use art as the actual grammar and syntax of protest () and that came together in brilliant ways. () After Visual AIDS a group came up which was called Classical Action, and then Dancing for Life, () Fight AIDS. () Every aspect of performances and music were used, so Day Without Art grew and the dance community, music, theatre community got involved. () There was even a Day Without Television, () networks in New York City showed a clock for minutes on screen. () Notion that AIDS is inescapable, that there is not one place in the world without noticing AIDS, that you can’t go any place without contacting AIDS. SJ Were the representations of the AIDS movement and AIDS activism a specific phenomenon in the United States? TS () Even if you had health insurance, the first drugs were $2000 a month or so, so ACT UP was trying to get the prices down (), now it is $100 a month. () And America has more hostility, more fear because of the sexual nature of contagion than in Europe where it is much more maturity. () Larry Kramer pointed out the promiscuity of gay men () sex combined with drugs and alcohol. () His book Faggots was about that and was actually written before the AIDS crisis. () He was not saying, don’t be sexual, but many people in the gay community said, how dare you to try to push us back in the closet. And that was not what he was saying, he was just saying, be careful. And when the AIDS crisis came he was like, I told you so. () SJ Talking about exhibitions, I distinguish between collective and individual artworks because of the diversity of art about AIDS. Has that separation been made during the late 1980s and the ’90s? TS () I see no problem putting things together. Collaborative works () due to the fact that they thought their presentation would be stronger if they showed a plurality of voices. () SJ Speaking of the diversity in media, content and different approaches, what were the criteria that were important for you choosing different artworks for your exhibition? TS It was always about quality () in terms of craft, like Peter Hujar (), there were aesthetic reasons. () Other works were very raw, like Wojnarowicz, not beautiful but unforgettable, () all was about mortality. And the whole point was to empower people with AIDS that goes back to the notion of collectives. ()

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EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE with SUSAN WYATT, MARCH 2 and 21, 2012 FROM: SUSAN WYATT SUBJECT: RE: ARTISTS SPACE EXHIBITION ON AIDS DATE: MARCH 2, 2012 TO: SOPHIE JUNGE

Hi Sophie, Your questions demand a long reply, and I don’t have much time, so I will do the best I can. I have a lot of material on the show myself. Some day, I will have to go through it and give it to the Fales Library or the Archives of American Art!! I don’t remember about Robert Vitale. The name rings a vague bell, but if he is not in the catalogue, he was not officially in the show. There were a lot of things happening at once, and he may have tried to piggy back onto the show in some way. There were also a number of events that happened, so he may have been involved in Visual AIDS or ACT UP or some other group that was peripherally involved with the protests and supporters for the show. We may have also had a video program at the same time. I don’t remember that right now. We had an ongoing series of video exhibitions which happened concurrently with our exhibitions. If you know anything about his work, I might be able to remember something about it. The show was curated by Nan Goldin and she worked with the artists she chose on selecting pieces for the show. Some artists put in a number of smaller works and others had one large work. These choices were made by Nan and the artists. There were some space limitations also which dictated what could be in. I don’t think there were any problems fitting the work in, as the show was in a nearly 5,000 square foot gallery. There were several artists who were ill, and it is possible that one or two of them only had a few small works to include. Nan worked with the artists in the show and together they made all choices for what works to include. That was our standard policy at Artists Space. We asked Nan Goldin to organize the show because we had a track record and interest in having artists organize exhibitions.

We had not had a photography show in a few years, and thought it would be good to have a show focused on photography, so we decided to ask Nan, as an important photographer with some reputation to select some artists in which she was interested. I don’t exactly remember how the topic of AIDS came up. I had become involved in a new organization that was recently formed called Visual AIDS, that was planning activities to involve the art community in raising consciousness about the AIDS crisis. They were planning to hold for the first time a “DAY WITHOUT ART” event on December 1, 1989. In thinking with my staff about how we could participate, I think we must have discussed this with Nan and she suggested that the show be about AIDS which she felt had so strongly affected the community of artists that she was a part of. We liked that idea, and applied to the NEA for funding. I wrote the application to the NEA. My staff and I worked with Nan on the concept for the show and we suggested several artists she might consider because we wanted to make sure that artists of color were included. Artists Space had at that time a long history of artists (that is better known artists) choosing unknown artists to show. Selecting Nan as the curator was part of that regular feature of our exhibition program. Other artists selected group exhibitions over the years, and Artists Space started with a series of shows of well-known artists choosing artists who did not have commercial gallery representation. Nan did not show her work in the show for several reasons. We had a strict policy at the time of showing artists who did not have commercial gallery representation. I don’t remember now if Nan was represented by a gallery at the time or not, but she was most definitely a well-known photographer at the time. We did not select Nan to show her work, as her work would not have been appropriate for our program which was focused on presenting emerging artists who had not shown their work in commercial galleries in New York. Nan’s work for our audience and our programming objectives, was well known by our audience and had outlets elsewhere at the time. Showing Nan’s work given our programmatic objectives to show emerging artists and artists who were not known did not make programmatic sense for us. We thought that Nan would have a good eye and would know

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interesting artists that she could support for a show, and that would be appropriate for the emerging artist program we presented at Artists Space. We thought she would bring together an interesting show of new and unseen work that would dovetail with our program priorities. We also thought her name and reputation would attract people in the art community to come and see a show of emerging artist/photographers that she believed were doing good and important work. Nan chose the artists from her community. Originally she wanted to call the show “The Family of Nan.” It was a very personal selection. We did suggest a few artists she might consider because we were concerned that it included artists of color. Her selection was her choice. She chose artists she felt close to and whose work she wanted to support and have an outlet in a reputable gallery. Other artists we asked to organize shows for us used different methods, including using our slide registry of unaffiliated artists. Nan did not do that, she chose from her circle. That was a valid choice. We asked her because we thought she would make interesting choices and would put together a show of good work that had not had been exhibited much elsewhere. As far as works being for sale, our policy was to have a price list if the artist was interested in selling work. We took no commission on sales, and would facilitate putting the potential buyer in touch with the artist directly, if someone was interested in purchasing work from one of our shows. Our purpose was to support artists, particularly emerging artists, who would be the ones showing at Artists Space. We paid artists fees to show at Artists Space and we also helped with installation, framing, construction, equipment or other costs, as our budget would allow. We would work with the artists doing major installation projects to determine a budget to assist them to realize their project. In addition partially supporting creation of the work (particularly installation projects that would

not exist after the show), every artist showing at Artists Space was paid a fee for lending work to one of our shows. As Director of Artists Space, I supervised a curator, in this case, Connie Butler (who is now a curator at MoMA) who worked more closely on projects and installations with the artist curators and artists who were showing at Artists Space. I was aware of the general outlines of the show. I wrote the project descriptions for the successful NEA application we submitted for support of the show. I was the person who was actively involved in Visual AIDS and discussed that with Nan, which is how Nan got the idea to do the show on AIDS. By the time the show opened, I had a huge controversy on my hands, and I could not be involved in the hanging of the work. Connie Butler worked with Nan on the specific installation of the work. The choice of artists was Nan’s alone. As to my impact on Artists Space, I would refer you to a documentary book that Artists Space published some years ago which has an interview with me. I was a prime participant in developing Artists Space’s program over many years. I worked there for seventeen years, under three different directors and spent six years as Executive Director myself. There were a number of programs which I developed during my time as Director. They include an active, curated video program which also had a video rental component; increasing the participation of artists of color in our programming; showing international artists; showing art-ists from other parts of the country; a series of shows by older artists whose work was not known or whose careers had been eclipsed; publishing catalogues and brochures for all our exhibitions, including the video programs, and more.

I hope this is helpful. I would be curious to know what your work is focused on. Best, Susan

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FROM: SUSAN WYATT SUBJECT: RE: ARTISTS SPACE EXHIBITION ON AIDS DATE: MARCH 21, 2012 TO: SOPHIE JUNGE

Hi Sophie, I did receive your email. I do not remember about Robert Vitale. The jpeg you sent was very small and hard to read, but I don’t think if it was bigger I would remember. I don’t know if you have been in touch with Nan Goldin. She may remember about Robert Vitale. I think he must have been a friend of one of the artists in the show who had recently died, and perhaps one of them decided to include his work with Nan’s permission. I don’t think he was an  official part of the show because if he was, we would definitely have included him in the catalogue. I don’t know if you will be discussing the controversy our show caused and the fact that it was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. As you may know, NEA tried to withdraw a grant they had given us for the show. The grant withdrawal happened in the context of the controversy caused by NEA

funding for an exhibition and grant to Andres Serrano, and an exhibition of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe which they funded. Those grants were criticized by several powerful conservative politicians, so NEA was seeking to prevent further criticism from that sector by not funding projects that might become controversial. The enormous public outcry over our grant withdrawal put political pressure on the NEA, and they restored our grant. During this time, there was another exhibition about AIDS at the Berkeley Museum in California. It was created by the artist collective Group Material, and was called “AIDS Timeline”. Officials of the NEA were concerned about that show and visited the Berkeley Museum, just as they visited us before our show was defunded. The director of the Berkeley Museum visited the Witnesses show and told me that the public outcry over the withdrawal of our grant had spared them the same fate. You should be able to find information online about the Group Material exhibition if you are not aware of it. I believe it toured to other museums and may be documented in various publications.

Good luck with your dissertation! All Best, Susan

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CREDITS

p. 154 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 31 p. 155 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 32

p. 10 – 16, 18 – 24, 68 Courtesy Artists Space, New York

p. 156 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 39

p. 65, 69 ACT UP New York Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

p. 157 Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983, 35

p. 66 – 67 Photo Courtesy of The NAMES Project Foundation

p. 158 Newsweek, April 18, 1983, 80

p. 71 © TABBOO! Stephen Tashjian

p. 159 Newsweek, July 4, 1983, 20; Newsweek, May 7, 1984, 102; Newsweek, Aug. 12, 1985, 27

p. 73 – 77 © Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery p. 72 © Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsen Group/ ProLitteris 2014 Photo © Munch Museum

p. 160 Cover Newsweek, Jan. 13, 1986 p. 161 Cover Newsweek, Aug. 8, 1983 p. 163 Courtesy of the Artist and David Zwirner, New York / London

p. 78, 80 Gran Fury Collection, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

p. 164, 167 Estate Mark Morrisroe (Collection Ringier), Fotomuseum Winterthur © Estate Mark Morrisroe

p. 78 © Dona Ann McAdams

p. 168 Estate Mark Morrisroe (Collection Ringier), Fotomuseum Winterthur © Gail Thacker

p. 79 © Visual AIDS p. 81 In: Bordowitz, General Ideal, 96 p. 82 Courtesy of the Artist and Nathalie Obadia Gallery

p. 169 In: Atkins and Sokolowski, From Media to Metaphor, 42

p. 83 In: Wagner, Das achte Feld, 239

p. 170 Katz, Hide / Seek, 227

p. 85 http://www.ppowgallery.com/available_ work.php?artist=14#image2035-hi (last accessed May 12, 2016)

p. 171 Newsweek, Aug. 12, 1985, 28 p. 172 Newsweek, Jan. 30, 1984, 50

p. 148, 149, 165 In: Matthew Marks Gallery, A Double Life, 47, 74 – 75, 103

p. 173 New York Times, Dec. 23, 1985, B8

p. 150 Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung F. C. Gundlach, Hamburg © Estate Mark Morrisroe

p. 174 Newsweek, Aug. 18, 1986, 46

p. 151 Collection Brent Sikkema © Estate Mark Morrisroe

p. 177 In: Galassi, Pictures of People, 109

p. 176 In: Nixon and Nixon, People With AIDS, 12

p. 152, 166 Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P. P. O. W Gallery, New York p. 153 New York Times, Feb. 4, 1988, B1

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p. 179 In: Pagnucco Salvemini, Toscani, 45, fig. 26 p. 243 The People‘s Choice, Courtesy Group Material & Four Corners Books

p. 244 In: Wagner, Das achte Feld, 209 p. 245–247 In: Blinderman and White, David Wojnarowicz, 26 p. 277 bpk/Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Jörg P. Anders

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is based on my dissertation, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing — Zur Bedeutung künstlerischer Auseinandersetzungen mit AIDS in den USA, accepted by the University of Zurich Institute of Art History in 2013. In 2015, it has been published in German under the title Kunst gegen das Verschwinden: Strategien der Sichtbarmachung von AIDS in Nan Goldins Ausstellung Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing by De Gruyter. It was completed within the Media History of the Arts doctoral program and received research funding from the University of Zurich from 2010 to 2012. I would like to extend my gratitude to the university for this generous support. Many people contributed to the realization of this work. I am very grateful to Professor Bettina Gockel for her support of the project from the beginning and to Professor Anja Zimmermann for acting as co-advisor. Both gave invaluable critical and constructive help within the review process. For help with research in New York, I would particularly like to thank Lisa Darms from New York University’s Fales Library, Jamie Stern from P.P.O.W Gallery, Nelson Santos from Visual AIDS, Amy Lien from Artists Space, Claartje van Dijk from the International Center of Photography, and Chelsea Haines from Independent Curators International. I am also much indebted to my interview partners Ross Bleckner, Dan Cameron, David Deitcher, Marvin Heiferman, Kiki Smith, and Thomas W. Sokolowski for the openness with which they met my questions. Vladimir Cajkovac, Sander L. Gilman, Kristina Hinrichsen, Rudolf Käser, and Sarah M. Schlachetzki as well as my colleagues at the Institute of Art History, Patrizia Munforte, Fabienne Ruppen, and Miriam Volmert, all engaged in discussions with me and gave helpful suggestions. Thank you. My exchanges with Lukas Engelmann and Beate Schappach during our many years of working together have greatly deepened my understanding of HIV and AIDS. They have earned my particular gratitude. For critical readings, editing, and correction of the manuscript I am greatly indebted to my mother Gisela Junge-von Olshausen as well as Sandra Gnauck Al-Ameri, Anke Jaspers, Patrizia Munforte, and Simon van Wijk.

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I would also like to thank the Dr. Carlo Fleischmann Foundation for the generous printing subsidy that has enabled the publication of this work. Further thanks are due Laura Radosh for the translation, Anthony Heric for editorial work, my picture editor Christiane Ludena, and Katja Richter from De Gruyter for managing the publication. Büro 146 in Zurich was responsible for the wonderful design and I would especially like to thank Tiziana Artemisio, Anne Stock and Maike Hamacher for their creativity and cooperation. Last but not at all least, I would like to thank my family and Pirmin Koch for their support and trust in me. Zurich 2016

IMPRINT ISBN 978-3-11-045150-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-045307-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-045152-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress © 2016 Walter De Gruyter GmbH Berlin / Boston Layout: Büro 146. Valentin Hindermann, Madeleine Stahel, Maike Hamacher, Zürich with Tiziana Artemisio Typesetting: Anne Stock Printing: Beltz Bad Langensalza GmbH, Bad Langensalza ∞ printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

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