Martin Wong

Private Collection, New York

Thence by descent from the above

Delaware Fine Art Auction, 2 November 2017, Lot 160

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

“Wong’s hybridity was between not only the fundamental fractures of subjectivity but generational divides as well. His art brings together the optimism and idealism of the psychedelic ’60s, the nihilism of the No Future ’70s, and the cynicism of the urban ’80s, never one more than the other. The richness of this work lies in the frisson between a stunning realism and a rather more dreamy romanticism. His work was born of his tenure as a street portraitist in California, informed by the drawings and poetry of his lysergic late-’60s/early-’70s youth, and enriched by the eruption of his freak identity as a gay Chinese American participating in the radical and bedazzled theatrics of San Francisco’s gender-bent troupe the Cockettes. By the time he arrived in the burned-out rubble of New York’s downtown to join the nascent East Village art scene, Wong had developed a steady hand, a woolgatherer’s imagination, a poet’s love of language, a street artist’s populism, and an insider’s understanding of subculture and counterculture.”

Carlo McCormick, “Carlo McCormick on Martin Wong,” ARTFORUM, March 2016.