Martin Wong is known for his paintings of gritty cityscapes, including New York's Chinatown and Lower East Side, and for championing graffiti a legitimate art form in the 1980's and 1990's. Wong was a respected and prolific painter in New York's downtown art scene in the 1980's. In addition, Wong cultivated both working and personal relationships with graffiti artists and enthusiasts.

Born Martin Victor Wong (although he sometimes playfully lists himself as "Martin Genghis Wong") in Portland, OR, on July 11, 1946, Wong was raised by his Chinese-American parents in San Francisco. He graduated from George Washington High School in 1964. Wong was involved in performance art in the 1970's, but focused almost exclusively on painting after moving to New York in the early 1980's.

In addition to his painting, Wong experimented with poetry and prose, much of which he recorded on long paper scrolls. Highly anecdotal and semi-autobiographical, Wong's writing features an exuberant and fanciful stream-of-consciousness style.

Fascinated by New York's renegade graffiti artists, Wong befriended such spray-can virtuosos as "Daze" (Chris Ellis), "Lee," "Laroc," and "LA2," among others. Wong forged a particularly strong and enduring friendship with Daze, and helped publicize his work, as well as the work of other graffiti artists, in exhibitions and through the Museum of American Graffiti. This grassroots institution was devised to showcase the vibrant panoply of contemporary graffiti art.

Wong's circle also included arts journalist Theresa Herron, Steve Hernandez, "Magic Sam," artist John Ahearn, "Lady" Joyce Ryan, Barry Blinderman, and Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington of the PPOW gallery. Also significant in Wong's life were his mother, Mrs. Benjamin Wong Fie, and his "Aunt Nora" (a.k.a. Aunt Ellie), Eleanora Tam. In artistic terms, one of Wong's most significant relationships was that shared with poet and playwright Miguel Pinero, whom Wong met in 1982. Affectionately referred to by Wong as both "Mikey" and "Mickey," Pinero was considered "Loisaida's reigning outlaw poet" (Sweet Oblivion, 35). A some-time roommate of Wong's, Pinero collaborated with Wong on such paintings as "Attorney Street Handball Court" (1982-84) and "Little Got Rained On" (1983). Pinero's text was incorporated into the paintings such that Wong's imagery serves as evocative illustration. Pinero also appears not infrequently in Wong's paintings as subject - "Portrait of Pinero" (1982), "Penitentiary Fox" (1988), "La Vida" (1988) - where he is typically depicted reading or writing.

In the span of a decade, Wong achieved considerable recognition and success, with a formidable arsenal of solo and group exhibitions to his credit. Wong is most closely associated with downtown galleries Semaphore, Exit Art, and PPOW, but his work has also appeared at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the New York Historical Society. Wong died in 1999, after a protracted battle with AIDS.

Sources/Related Material:

The Clones of Bruce Lee [videorecording]: the art of Martin Wong. (New York: Pow Wow Productions, 1995)

Martin Wong [videorecording]. (New York: Pow Wow Productions, c1998)

Sweet Oblivion: the urban landscape of Martin Wong. (New York: Rizzoli Books, c1998)

The Martin Wong Papers are a part of the Downtown Collection at the Fales Library, New York University. The Fales Library is the primary special collections division of the NYU libraries, housing nearly 200,000 volumes of English and American literature from 1700 to the present. Strengths of the collection include the development of the English and American novel, with an emphasis on the Gothic and the Victorian novel. The Downtown Collection, of which the Martin Wong Papers are a part, is a comprehensive collection of printed materials, archives, and other materials related to the Downtown New York scene from ca. 1975 to the present.

The Martin Wong Papers are comprised of over 100 sketches and drawings, more than 30 sketchbooks, correspondence, poetry and prose, biographical documents, source material, audio and videocassette recordings, photos, and graffiti tag-books, graffiti-related materials and parts of Wong's personal library.

Source material includes magazines, postcards, posters, memorabilia, and a vast collection of Wong's snapshots. Biographical material features Wong's curriculum vitae, copies of newspaper and magazine profiles of Wong, business cards and addresses of associates, and publicity materials related to Wong's exhibitions. Wong's poetry and prose contains a significant portion of the biographical material - much of it anecdotal in tone. The graffiti portion of the archive is comprehensive and includes sketchbooks, illustrations, text on graffiti (authored by both Wong and others), publicity material pertaining to graffiti exhibitions, and materials pertaining to the graffiti film: "Wild Style." Of particular interest are the numerous examples of tagging found in both the sketchbooks and other artwork.

A zealous collector and graffiti enthusiast, Wong amassed a considerable cache of graffiti material in the 1980's. The Martin Wong Papers also document New York's downtown arts scene in the 1980's and 1990's, with particular emphasis on Wong's participation and recognition in the gallery scene.

SERIES DESCRIPTION

Series I: Correspondence contains a box of documents ordered alphabetically by correspondent's last name (in most cases). Where surnames or complete names were missing, first names or nicknames were used. The series contains letters, postcards, holiday and greeting cards, and memos of both a personal and business nature.

Series II: Artwork (sketches, drawings, sketchbooks) is comprised of 2 boxes of artwork plus additional oversize material. Because of missing chronological or titular information, the files are ordered in random order.

Subseries A contains a box of Wong's artwork, including sketches, drawings, and sketchbooks.

Subseries B contains a box of art by other people, among them John Ahearn and Mark Kostabi (copies only). Two portraits of Wong are also included.

Series III: Source Material is by far the largest series, and is comprised of approximately 4 boxes of imagery (not including oversize) inspirational to Wong. Magazines, posters, invitations to gallery events and parties, memorabilia, and graffiti materials comprise the series. Where possible, the series has been ordered alphabetically by theme - themes include boxing, prisons, firefighters, Chinatown, and sign language.

Series IV: Biographical contains 1 box of material related to Wong's life and personal history, and additional oversize material. The series includes Wong's curriculum vitae, artist profiles, a copy of Wong's birth certificate and high school reunion program, and his poetry and prose.

Series V: Audio and Videocassettes is comprised of one box containing 3 videocassette recordings and an audiocassette. Topics include Wong's "Chinatown" paintings and NEA funding.

Series VI: Photos is comprised of hundreds of snapshots, most of which constitute source material for Wong's art. The series is ordered by theme: photos of Wong, photos of Wong's work, and source photos of people, cityscapes and urban life, cars and motorbikes, men in uniform, works of art and museum pieces, birds and beasts, Chinatown and Chinese imagery, and various miscellaneous source snapshots.

Series VII: Personal Library consists of nearly one hundred books from Wong's own personal collection, many of which served as source material for Wong's trademark images - firefighters, constellations, sign language, prison, and Chinatown, among others. Three items in this series also include drawings by Wong and by Daze on the inside cover; these items are marked with an asterisk. The series is comprised of 4 boxes.

Series VIII: Albums consists of a photo album of the opening of the Museum of American Graffiti containing clippings, ephemera, and photographs of the museum and the opening celebration. A number of photographs include identification labels created by Wong of individuals at the event, including a number of graffiti artists.

Folders are arranged alphabetically by subject/author heading and chronologically depending on the nature of the series. Oversized material, while included in the number sequence of the series is separated into oversized boxes.

The files are grouped into 7 series.

There is no record of materials that are associated by provenance to the described materials that have been physically separated or removed.

The Martin Wong Papers were donated by the estate of Martin Wong, overseen by Mrs. Benjamin (Florence) Wong Fie and assisted by Wendy Olsoff and Peter Broda, in December 1999 and January 2000. Most of the materials in the collection were retrieved from Wong's Lower East Side apartment; additional documents were donated by Mrs. Wong Fie from her personal papers.

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); collection name; MSS number; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.