68. David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992)
“All my life I’ve made things that are like fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world. As far as I’m concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous. What exactly is so frightening about the human body?”
David Wojnarowicz—high school dropout, one-time hustler, and celebrated artist of the 1980’s—was one of the first artists to emerge from the East Village in the early part of the Reagan era. Over the course of his career, the artist grew increasingly political, suing (and beat) the anti-pornography American Family Association for misappropriating his images. Even eighteen years after his death he managed to cause a furor, when someone from the Smithsonian decided to pull his A Fire In My Belly video from the Hide/Seek show in late 2010.
