Love Letters

I got back to New York just in time to see "Dear Jean Pierre: The David Wojnarowicz Correspondence” before it closed at the PPOW Gallery.

I'm a big fan of Wojnarowicz, as much because I admire his work as we were born just a year apart and lived in New York City before AIDS.  But Wojnarowicz spent a lot of time in France where he met Jean Pierre Delage in the Tuileries, the City of Light's much older equivalent of the Ramble.

Normandie (1980)

Wojnarowicz moved in with Delage, a hairdresser 11 years older, for several months.  Really passionate love letters that Wojnarowicz wrote to him for more than three years after returning to New York comprise the show, along with a small selection of art work. 

New York (2022)

Delage provided creative support, too.  Reproduction of a collage idea that Wojnarowicz borrowed from a French artist greets visitors to the gallery.  The man wearing the Rimbaud mask in front of the Eiffel Tower is Delage.

Wojnarowicz included Jean Genet, another of his French heroes, in an early collage.

It must be pretty intoxicating to have an older lover--a sophisticated French man, no less--believe in your art, especially one with the foresight to preserve all your letters.

Reading them, however, almost seemed like an invasion of privacy, especially because none of Delage's replies have survived.  You've also got to wonder how often Delage, whose English was self-taught, wrote back.  Wojnarowicz considered himself a writer and while declarations of love and the mundane details of his daily life--including frequent bouts of what he called the "grippe"--inform his voluminous correspondence, not everyone has the time or inclination to respond in kind.

The post cards are less overwhelming and cleverly exhibited, with the fronts visible from below in a catalog of Wojnarowicz's visual influences and taste.

I don't know how I feel about their sale. Art, after all, is meant to be shared with the world.  Love letters aren't.  Wojnarowicz greatly reduced the frequency of his correspondence with Delage after learning that Delage had slept with one of his friends.  Would he feel equally betrayed by this show?

Wojnarowicz played in a rock 'n roll band called 3 Teens Kill 4.  

After Jesse Hultberg, bottom center, slept with Delage while visiting Paris, Wojnarowicz's infatuation with his French lover ended even though he had never been faithful to Delage. Gay relationships can be tricky.

Wojnarowicz spent so much time at Danceteria, one of my favorite clubs, that he took multiple Polaroids of the staff and his friends.

Keith Haring, another New Jersey boy, albeit one with a much more stable home life, was among them.  AIDS killed Haring first, in 1990; it got Wojnarowicz two years later.  I lost David six months after that.  It was a terrible time to be a gay man.