Archives

Celestino Antes Del Elba

Posted on

1967

Signed with inscription

1st Edition

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Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban writer who, despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and was later persecuted by the Cuban government. His significant body of work includes Pentagonia, a set of five novels on the “secret history” of post-revolutionary Cuba. Convicted in 1973 of “ideological deviation,” Arenas was imprisoned for three years in El Morro Castle, where he survived by writing letters to the wives and lovers of his fellow inmates. In 1980, he fled to Miami on the Mariel Boatlift, but, once there, he felt ostracized by the Cuban community and moved to New York City. After battling AIDS for three years, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol. His autobiography, Before Night Falls, was published two years after his death, at the age of 47.

G.E.

Earth Life

Posted on

1985

Signed

Self-published (1st Edition)

Sold.

A poet and performer known for his political edge, Essex Hemphill openly addressed race, identity, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and the family in his work, voicing issues central to the African American gay community. His first collections of poems were the self-published chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986). His first full-length collection, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992), won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award. His work is included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993).

In 1983, Hemphill participated in the performance poetry group Cinque with Wayson Jones and Larry Duckette; their work was later featured in the documentaries “Tongues Untied” (1989) and “Black Is … Black Ain’t” (1994).

Hemphill died of complications from AIDS in 1995.

G.E.

Unaltered Photograph of Lê Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger

Posted on

c. 1980s

Signed and titled, l.l.

Screen print on paper

12.25 x 11.75 inches

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Arthur Russell moved into a San Francisco Buddhist commune at the tender age of eighteen, where he met poet laureate Allen Ginsberg, beginning a lifelong collaborative working relationship with the Beat icon. In 1973 Russell relocated to the Lower East Side in NYC, and he became the musical director of the Hell’s Kitchen avant-garde performance space, The Kitchen. Russell’s prolific recording output, which included a multitude of genres and styles, remained relatively unknown during his lifetime due to his artistic ambivalence and uncompleted revisions. Nevertheless, Russell found some success in downtown’s avant-garde music scene during the frenetic disco era. Along with his solo work, Russell collaborated on Dinosaur L with downtown musical impresarios Julius Eastman, Peter Zummo, and Nicky Siano. Russell died of AIDS at the age of forty in 1992.

G.E.

Ronald Reagan Accused of TV Star Sex Death

Posted on

1980

Xerox print

8 x 10 inches

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The early 1980s Xerox art movement included many downtown heavyweights, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring. Of the pool of artists utilizing this new printing medium, Haring produced pieces that were some of the most easily recognizable. Using Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique, he would juxtapose photographic imagery alongside rearranged headlines from the right-wing New York Post to convey shocking, yet often humorous messages. These Xeroxes were from Haring’s first public guerrilla art wheatpasting project. Like his more well-known subway chalk drawings that soon followed, this work was abandoned by the artist on NYC streets with few examples surviving. Haring eventually switched from cutting up Post headlines to inventing his own personal iconography.

G.E.

Humiliation Victim

Posted on

1980

Signed and dated, verso

Xerox print

8 x 10 inches

Sold.

The early 1980s Xerox art movement included many downtown heavyweights, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring. Of the pool of artists utilizing this new printing medium, Haring produced pieces that were some of the most easily recognizable. Using Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique, he would juxtapose photographic imagery alongside rearranged headlines from the right-wing New York Post to convey shocking, yet often humorous messages. These Xeroxes were from Haring’s first public guerrilla art wheatpasting project. Like his more well-known subway chalk drawings that soon followed, this work was abandoned by the artist on NYC streets with few examples surviving. Haring eventually switched from cutting up Post headlines to inventing his own personal iconography.

G.E.