The back of a Martin Wong painting unlocks the history of graffiti art | HOW TO SEE

This short documentary tells the unknown story of how the back of this painting got covered in graffiti. Before Martin Wong's painting "Houston Street" became part of our collection, rumors circulated about another artwork on its back. When our team replaced the stretcher, they had a chance to study a hidden piece that hadn’t been seen in over 40 years. We invited graffiti artist Sharp (Aaron Goodstone) to the conservation lab to see the painting for the first time since it was shown in 1983. He and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn (Wild Style) share their personal memories of Wong, the impact of his friendship and art, and this intense period in downtown New York. Conversations with conservators, photographs and research discoveries from Wong’s archives, and Ahearn’s video footage of Wong painting in his cramped apartment studio unearth lost paintings and the hidden and moving story of Wong’s “Houston Street.”
The artist Martin Wong bridged the graffiti art, poetry, and gallery scenes; his drawings and paintings depict the streets and characters around him on the Lower East Side of New York City, where he moved in 1978. It was a period of creative liberation but also financial struggle and the rise of the AIDS epidemic. Wong was a magnetic figure on the underground scene: openly gay, generous, and wildly creative. Whenever he sold work, he put the money back into supporting other artists, building an enormous graffiti art collection (what he called “aerosol hieroglyphics”), which he showcased in his short-lived Museum of American Graffiti. “We might see his work in the same kind of constellation as Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat -- art that was often both for and about public space, the street,” explains curator Michelle Kuo.
Wong’s “Houston Street,” 1986 is a major work. At eight by thirteen feet and hung to touch the ground, it forms an eerie trompe l'oeil double of the rolling gates that secure shops at night along the block that it is named for. When the painting recently entered MoMA’s collection, its stretcher had to be replaced and conservators and curators had a chance to study something they only had an inkling of: a painting on the back. In 1983, Wong painted the thirteen-foot length of the back of the canvas in his signature brick-by-brick, and then asked his friends, graffiti artists Sharp and Delta 2, to spray paint over it, tagging it like a real wall. At the bottom, he signed it as a collaborative work by all three artists, making explicit his passion for supporting graffiti art, as under-recognized as it was then and still to this day. “Even if it's not totally intentional,” Kuo says, “the idea that you would look at the front of the painting, this blocked metal wall, and then this secret on the other side is this whole other universe.”
00:00-01:21 Introducing Martin Wong
01:21-2:28 "Houston Street" 1986 in conservation
2:28-3:46 Discovering the back of the painting
3:46-5:20 Graffiti artist Sharp's history
5:20-7:08 Martin Wong in the downtown art world
7:08-8:13 The Museum of American Graffiti
8:13-9:07 Missing paintings
9:07-10:40 Martin Wong's studio apartment
10:40-11:50 Discoveries in the archives
11:50-13:20 Martin Wong's death
13:20-13:42 Stretching the painting
13:42-15:12 Martin Wong's legacy
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The comments and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speaker alone, and do not represent the views of The Museum of Modern Art, its personnel, or any artist.
Image credit correction: Patti Astor and Futura 2000 at the Art & BBQ Party, 1981 © Anita Rosenberg
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