How a Chinese-American Artist “Cowboy” Saved Graffiti for Future Generations

The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) holds what is arguably the most important collection of early graffiti art and ephemera, amassed by Martin Wong, a queer Chinese-American self-taught painter who wore cowboy hats and, for a time, paid for his lodging in a dingy Lower East Side hotel room by working as a night porter. Drawn to the bustling art scene of late 1970s New York, Wong developed a tight network of friends in what may have seemed like an unexpected community at the time: graffiti writers, who would eventually be recognized as creating an entirely new style of art, emulated in every corner of the globe. 

At a time when society reviled graffiti artists as petty criminals, Wong began collecting their drawings, sketchbooks (or “blackbooks”), and eventually, paintings on canvas. He also painted moving, intimate portraits of the artists themselves. This was just one avenue he explored in his sprawling body of work, which ranges from detailed urbanscapes bustling with the life of the city, to surreal ceramics and scrolls influenced by traditional Chinese calligraphy. 

Before his death due to complications related to AIDS in the 1990s, Wong donated his beloved graffiti collection to the MCNY. Many of its prized pieces by renowned graffiti artists including Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Rammelzee, DAZE, and others are on view now in the exhibition Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection. 

This episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast was recorded during a live panel at the MCNY on March 10 celebrating Wong’s collection and life. Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian moderated the discussion between Wong’s longtime friend and roommate Lee Quiñones, P·P·O·W Gallery Co-Founder Wendy Osloff, and curator Sean Corcoran, who organized the exhibition. 

In front of a crowd of some 100 Hyperallergic Members and their friends, the panelists shared stories of the singular artist, his love of collecting, and his extravagant storytelling. As Quiñones recalls, Wong once said, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” 

Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection continues at the Museum of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through August 10. 

Subscribe to the Hyperallergic Podcast on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube.

A full transcript of the interview can be found below. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

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Lee Quiñones: In 1978, I created the first handball wall, mega mural, top to bottom, side to side, never had been done like that, in that fashion. He was so fascinated by that wall, he at one point said, “Lee, let’s go and excavate the wall.” A handball wall! It’s a 30 by 25 foot slab, a tablet of concrete. He’s like, “Yeah, we just go to the city and buy it from them,” I was like, “It’s in the Department of Education’s property!” He’s like, “They’ll sell it to us. And then we’ll just excavate it and lift it.” I was like, “And put it where? In your apartment? Are you kidding me?”

He had these grand, futuristic ideas, of preserving that wall. That wall was just demolished about seven months ago. And that wall was so special, because it was instrumental in bringing the next chapter of the New York school…just raising the bar.

He was so fascinated by that wall, and so was I, and thousands, if not millions of other young artists around the world. And if he would’ve done that, if we would’ve pulled that off, that wall would’ve survived gentrification.

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Hrag Vartanian: Hello and welcome back to the Hyperallergic Podcast. This episode, we’ll be at the Museum of the City of New York, where we helped organize a panel connected to their current exhibition about the collection of renowned artist and collector Martin Wong. Many people don’t know that this unassuming museum on the Upper East Side holds one of the most important collections of early graffiti and street art in the world, which includes dozens of black books and early pieces by artists as renowned as Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Keith Haring, and so many others including Chris Daze, Futura…you name it, they’re there.

Raised by Chinese American immigrants, Martin Wong moved to New York and became an integral part of the city’s art community. He exhibited at renowned galleries and alt art spaces including Exit Art, Semaphore and so many others. He became probably the best painter of brick and the material realities of the Lower East Side of his generation. The work of Martin Wong celebrates not only the intimacies of downtown New York at the time, but also queerness, otherness, and so many of the currents that were running through contemporary art during that period. He became an important voice that captured that energy and dynamic of that era.

Unfortunately, like many of the people around him, he succumbed to AIDS which, as many of us know, gutted the creative community of New York during that era. Unlike so many other artists of his generation, he wasn’t really obsessed with celebrity. He lived in a dilapidated hotel and worked as their night porter to pay the rent. He also stuffed art under his bed, in every little crevice of his apartment and so many other places. Martin Wong became not only part of the city’s downtown art scene, but he befriended so many of the graffiti writers and street artists that have become major names today.

During this conversation, you will hear from Wendy Olsoff, the Co-founder of P·P·O·W, one of the most important galleries of that generation that continues today, as well as Lee Quiñones, renowned graffiti writer, contemporary artist as well as former roommate and friend of Martin Wong. And then, finally, Sean Corcoran, who is actually the curator of the exhibition we’re talking about in the Museum of the City of New York. This event was a special live taping at the museum that we invited Hyperallergic members and friends to attend. I’m sure you’ll find it as interesting as we did and I hope you’ll be able to check out the show. I’m Hrag Vartanian, the Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Hyperallergic. Let’s get started.

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Hrag Vartanian: Thank you everyone for coming. I’ve been looking forward to this panel because the Martin Wong collection is amazing, and we’ll talk about why it’s amazing. So, this is just a great opportunity to celebrate a lot of these stories and share them with an audience who’s clearly eager to hear them so we’re going to get down to it. Sound good? So, Lee, we wanted to start with you because—

Lee Quiñones: Why are you picking on me? [Laughs]

Hrag Vartanian: I’m picking on you because Martin is this figure in the art world larger than life and has so many different facets. And I think the graffiti collection really shows a part of his life that maybe a lot of people know really well. But there’s parts of the art world in the art community that don’t quite understand how important this collection is. So, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about Martin from your own experiences of meeting him. You lived with him for a while. Tell us a little bit about the Martin Wong that we may not know.

Lee Quiñones: The Martin Wong experience, wow. You have to be ready for scandal and mischievous happenings! Because Martin was just so full of life and he was a great soul. He was always curious. He had intuition and he just was a fun artist. We met when he was working at Pearl Paint in the early ’80s and I was buying my supplies there for a couple shows I was just about to embark on with Barbara Gladstone at the time, and I was buying, for the first time, really expensive canvas and linen. And I never heard of this stuff, linen, like, “Wow,” and it was just a beautiful tela as they say. And Martin was working in the canvas department and he knew who I was. I don’t know how he knew that but there was some whispering and he’s like, “Hey, Lee, you buying this stuff? I would love to help you pick the best stuff.”

So, he introduced me to all these different linens, Belgian linens, and then these were $500, $600 rolls and he says, “I can help you with a discount.” And I didn’t realize what kind of discount he was going to give me but $500 went down to $20.

Hrag Vartanian: Wow.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah. And I have the receipts still with his handwriting. And so, I went there quite a lot. So, I think he was enamored by the fact that he heard about this particular personality or whatever, my work, and then, “Oh, wow, he’s buying art materials here.” And actually, it was strange to me buying stuff. I was borrowing a lot of stuff back in the day. I had to. But, anyway, that’s where we met.

Hrag Vartanian: So, we’ve done a podcast with Lady Pink that will come out soon too and she talked about the fact that there was a whole thing of … people just didn’t buy things because you were supposed to borrow them.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah, it wasn’t a habit, it was actually a necessity. Cans of paint back then were $1.39 each, which sounds cheap to today’s standards. But if you needed 50 cans, you needed at least $60 to $70. I didn’t have 70 cents. So, a lot of it was lifted. And some painters that were more privileged and well off through family actually lifted paint when they didn’t have to. So, it became a tradition, a rite of passage to actually lift your pain but it was, for most of us, I’m speaking for myself, it was something that I needed. It was a fixation to get those materials.

Hrag Vartanian: And so, when did you meet Martin? What year was it?

Lee Quiñones: It was probably 1983, ’82, somewhere around there. Actually a little later, ’83, because I was having my second show with Barbara Gladstone in ’84, and that’s when I was buying these larger-than-life canvases.

Hrag Vartanian: And so, he knew you in ’82, ’83 so he was really paying attention to what was going on.

Lee Quiñones: We were probably following each other, because Martin moved three blocks away from where I grew up by the Fulton Fish Market. I grew up right in the lower Lower East Side, the last project complex before the Brooklyn Bridge and then there’s the financial district. So, he lived in a hotel and I walked by there many times. I think he moved there in ’78 or so. So, we might’ve crossed paths and not even known it at that time because I always walked through there so many times. Very fast because the fish was … yeah, the scent was rather interesting.

Hrag Vartanian: But to echo, ’82, ’83, you still weren’t that famous yet so he clearly was paying attention to the scenes.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah. I’m not famous, I’m infamous, but you know.

Hrag Vartanian: Oh, okay. I don’t know, I think you’re pretty famous. 

So, Wendy, I’d love to ask you a little bit about his early experiences in New York. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about Martin in that kind of context.

Wendy Olsoff: My experience with Martin was as an artist because I had a gallery in the East Village that opened in ’83. Martin was showing at Semaphore Gallery and everyone loved his work. And Martin was a character, he was extremely brilliant, extremely goofy, incredibly wide-ranging in his intelligence. He had a great sense of style in retrospect. We thought it was funny but, actually, it was quite stylish in cowboy hats and fireman jackets. And he really seemed to be enjoying himself painting and being part of this scene. And he wasn’t really part of the East Village scene, although he was known among all the East Village galleries and the younger people because that’s where the younger, more exciting art world was and the graffiti scene was part of that.

But Martin to us was a painter, a very idiosyncratic painter and also kept to a different crowd than, let’s say, the East Village seeing that maybe David Wojnarowicz, Gracie Mansion, Civilian Warfare was part of and I think he spent more time with the graffiti artists than he did with that scene although, in many ways, he had much in common with it. So, it’s a little schizophrenic what I remember, what Lee remembers because Martin had … as we said, Martin came to New York with a history in San Francisco that none of us knew. Since he died, there has been tons of research but he had done a lot of poetry and a lot of scrolls, Chinese scrolls with graffiti-like calligraphy, he had done murals for the Angels of Light.

So, his connection to graffiti was very intuitive, I think, and he gravitated toward this type of art. But it was just, in those days, everything was slower because we didn’t transmit information in three seconds. So, if you found and met people socially and information spread slower so it’s what I remember.

Hrag Vartanian: So, what did you know about the San Francisco years, if anything?

Wendy Olsoff: Nothing.

Hrag Vartanian: Did he say anything?

Wendy Olsoff: Nothing, mm-mm.

Hrag Vartanian: He just showed up in New York and everyone’s like, “Okay.”

Wendy Olsoff: Well, he showed up in New York and, when he was living near Fulton Fish Market, he did the famous painting of his bedroom and, little by little, we just saw these incredible paintings of the Lower East Side. He hung out with Miguel Piñero and did the prison paintings. Even though Martin was older, he didn’t feel much older. He died when he was 50 which, for those days during the AIDS crisis, was quite old when most of our friends died in their 30s or younger. So, he had a real history. But he was not the type of—you can tell me, Lee, if I’m wrong—that would sit around and say, “Hey, when I was in my 20s…” He was a ceramicist. We knew it, but we didn’t ever say, “Where are your ceramics?” And now they’re shown all over the world but we had to go back to find them in his mother’s house.

Hrag Vartanian: So, Lee, did you know he was a ceramicist?

Lee Quiñones: Martin was one of the smartest people I ever met in my life. He was one of those four or five people that you just know like, “How do you know all this stuff?” And maybe he was making it up most of the time. But I did know a little bit because I lived with him for a year or so, a little bit of his San Francisco background. He was doing a lot of portraitures out there and he ended up doing some of that here on the streets, on 42nd Street when he was going there and just doing portraitures for $5 or whatever it was.

Hrag Vartanian: So, Wendy, you laughed when Lee mentioned the stories. I am guessing you have a story.

Wendy Olsoff: Yeah. Well, Martin would have a stream of consciousness and it’s a little sad story because, in his life, when he was on a lot of medication and also on drugs that he was taking recreationally and also on a lot of serious medications for illness and also needing it for mental stability, he’d call us from a payphone and he’d call collect, that’s what a lot of people did in those days, and we would just accept the charges and he’d ramble for … We would just listen to him for an hour and he’d go through crazy stories. And some of it was real, and it could be about paintings he saw at the Met, or unbelievable antiquities he was looking at and you didn’t know what was real or not real but you knew enough that some of this was really real. His intelligence was wide-spanning and he would tell these incredible stories, and I laughed just when Lee said you didn’t know if it was real or not but you tended to know enough to know some of it was real so he kept you hanging on to a story.

Hrag Vartanian: I love that. Sean, do you want to tell us a little bit about the collection? Because I don’t think people realize how important this collection is and also the jewels in it that you don’t see in other places.

Sean Corcoran: Martin was a prolific collector but a collector in the sense of somebody with purpose and someone with taste. And it could be anything from, we talked about this before, Americana and tchotchkes, to psychedelic poster art to—I just came across in searches today in my folders, pictures of Martin with his lunchbox collection. But when it came to the style writing art form, there was a particular passion there and he clearly was collecting very voraciously over the course of six to maybe 10 years. 

The collection is comprised of more than 300 paintings, works on paper, other bits of ephemera and that kind of material. But then, in addition, what really made his collection very unique was the 60, approximately … I think there’s 62 black books which are artist sketchbooks. And what’s really important about these books, is that they’re basically journals or almost diaries of a writer’s life. They’re writers working out outlines, sharing their books with friends, gathering tags and pieces from other friends, some of them have grocery lists and notes for their homework. So, it’s really a very personal object that is very difficult to pry from another artist’s fingers and he managed to do it very effectively.

Hrag Vartanian: And how about the canvases and some of the larger work, what’s so unique about this collection?

Sean Corcoran: Well, what I think is, particularly, beyond the scope, the size, there’s a lot of depth but what I find in the years of talking to people like Daze and Lee and Aaron Goodstone Sharp is to find out the story of how Martin gathered this material. And what you learn is that it was very organic, it was very personal, it’s very much based around friendships and friends of friends and networking. So, maybe Lee had a drawing by Faze, and he couldn’t get to Faze but he could get to Lee so, through the friendship and through working him, he might eventually get that piece.

Lee Quiñones: I’m still thinking over, “How did he get the Lee’s from Lee?” He’s got some gems, I was like, “How did he swindle that out of me?” But yeah, he was very ferocious, passionate. And, I’ve got to tell you, in the early ’90s, that’s when I was living with him, we shared a lot of great stories. We went out to draw out on the streets, we went up to the Bronx to draw life underneath the elevated structures of the subways, which is very lively and loud, and proud. We were poor as church mice, and somehow, we would both come up with some funds to, first, be able to acquire one of those black books and then maybe go out to eat. So, it was a great exchange that we had as artists and friendship.

Sean Corcoran: There’s a great quote in the film, Charlie Ahearn’s film upstairs, Daze says, “Martin wanted to be the Albert Barnes of graffiti collecting.” And there was a real logic to that, because, as Daze points out, most of the collectors in the early ’80s were buying lots of Kenny Scharfs, lots of Keith Harings, Basquiats. But there was a whole swath of other talented art that people were largely ignoring. And he said, “That’s where I can swoop in, I can develop my collection just like Barnes went and was buying the impressionist that no one wanted at the time.” So, Martin swooped in, gathered this material he knew was important and built something remarkable.

Hrag Vartanian: Wendy, you mentioned something. You thought that the collecting of objects was a way for him to connect with his mom?

Wendy Olsoff: Yeah, definitely. His mother’s house in San Francisco was also floor to ceiling art of Martin’s from his entire life all over the house, in every single room. And when she would come to New York to visit Martin, they would go to antique stores and buy things. It could be anything from Disney paraphernalia to gold frames, to jade rings, to chops, to prints, to many things. They were extremely close. And Florence believed in Martin, since he was in elementary school to the day he died. She believed in his genius. And Florence socially would hang out with his friends or go out to Chinese meals with all the artists. But he lived in a pretty … it was pretty much squalor down there, it was pretty dangerous. But she accepted it, and she found a way to be with him always. It was a really important relationship.

I think Martin—and we talked about this too and I don’t think you can deny it and since I brought up his sexual preferences—he liked hanging out with the graffiti artists. He painted the graffiti artists, the graffiti group of artists were incredibly good-looking and young and special, and he understood their work because he understood murals, he understood … He was fascinated and, as he said—

Sean Corcoran: They did exciting things and broke the law. They were rebellious.

Wendy Olsoff: It was exciting and fun. He didn’t hang out with art dealers and other artists who graduated from RISD or wherever. He’d hang out with these really cool guys. And it was exciting and fun.

Lee Quiñones: New York was pretty scary back then and Martin lived in a very scary building itself. I remember the landlord, I remember everything. Everything was shady about that building. But once you walked into that apartment, it was a sanctuary, it was really a temple and it reminded me of the temples in Chinatown close to where I grew up. And Martin, he just loved heroes and he looked at the New York School of Graffiti artists as heroic, young creatives that were very passionate about their work. And it wasn’t just a passing … fading fad, that it was really a vocation of their lives.

Sean Corcoran: What do you think about his fascination with outsiders? On the West Coast, he was part of—

Wendy Olsoff: The Angels of Light.

Sean Corcoran: — the Angels of Light and interested in psychedelia. In fact, in Charlie’s film, he says, “I think graffiti artists are the second generation of the psychedelic movement.” So, I feel like there’s maybe a throughline there of interest in outsiders.

Wendy Olsoff: Some kind of escapism in a way or trying to figure out … growing up as a Chinese-American to Chinese-born parents, and I think for anybody who’s a first generation born to immigrant parents, is a question of figuring out who you are. So, I think Martin, and being queer, was trying to figure out who he was so identified with these groups which makes sense. You can see the painting in the gallery—is it Sharp and Dottie in that painting? The way he painted the graffiti artists with such love and such passion and so much romance and the neighborhoods were dangerous and where he lived was dangerous…it’s hard to reimagine that neighborhood now.

He also thought he was a WPA painter. He wanted to be Barnes, but he also said, “I want someone to open my apartment door one day and see what this neighborhood was like.” Because he knew it was gentrifying, and he wanted to really show it. And so, you have all these great paintings from the basketball courts to the tenement paintings, so many. But when he paints the people living there and the graffiti artists, it’s so much romance and beauty like he really saw that in the community.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah. And I think the reason why Florence probably … the way she accepted his lifestyle and the fact that he was living in New York is that the reflection was in the paintings, where these artists that were coming from very disenfranchised family structures and rough surroundings that … he found he had the empathy in his brush, and extended to those paintings where he would put you in a vulnerable but very beautiful state, almost like saints. He painted them almost like saint statuettes of a bygone innocence, and it was beautiful, the way he expressed both women and men. He was just a shaman, he really was, he was a priest, he was God, he was everything. And I dearly miss him, I really do.

Hrag Vartanian: So, what were some of the things about his career that were unique? And anybody can answer this. What do you think is about his collection, his career, his life that still stays with you and feels very unique about his story?

Wendy Olsoff: I think the thing that makes Martin now sell worldwide, internationally celebrated among young people, international curators, collectors, the public in general is that he spoke to the future. He spoke to almost every ethnicity, every culture, he spoke to the spirit, with the constellations, and no one really understood that genius when he was making it. He was known as the guy who did those amazing brick paintings. I think that the depth of his work was unrecognized in his own lifetime. And also the poetry scrolls, his ceramics, his relationship to ceramics and bricks, the terra cotta, there’s so much there and there’s still so much being written.

Sean Corcoran: And on top of all that, just such sensitive and beautiful portraits and pieces of our city. 

Hrag Vartanian: What do you think are some of the ways that he was able to support graffiti artists? He bought their work, but was he doing other things to help support the artists?

Lee Quiñones: I remember one time, one particular time where he got a commission for $90,000 through the city for some mural installation and he was so, so excited. So was I because we were living together and, “Now we’re going to really eat really well!” We had this favorite restaurant called Lanza’s on 10th Street and 1st Avenue. It was amazing. We would go there and have these $10 three-course dinners and talk about strategy and all that stuff. But he told me, “I just got $90,000, Lee, and I’m so excited that I’m ready to go and buy everything I can.” I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, hold your horses. Chill, pause.” So, he was able to acquire a lot of pieces even behind my back when he knew that I was like, “Don’t buy that one, it’s fake,” and he was like, “Okay,” then he’d just turn around and do the deal anyway. But I remember moments like that where he made small sales and he was able to acquire, whether it’s a drawing or painting, at that time.

Sean Corcoran: He also traded.

Lee Quiñones: He did trade. And I regret one painting that I wanted so bad, it was hanging over his bed. It was a portrait of, I think, one of his lovers who was also connected to Miguel Piñero and this beautiful young man is lying in Martin’s bed with a fireman’s helmet on while holding a little puppy dog. And it’s just the most intimate, beautiful, just so passionate, I was like, “Oh, I love this painting, Martin.” It wasn’t that big, maybe three by three or maybe smaller and I was like, “I want this painting,” and we said, “Yeah, let’s make a trade,” and then I didn’t. It was one of those things that just slipped away, I was like, “Damn.” But I fell in love with the work from that painting and I fell in love with him as a person, yeah.

Hrag Vartanian: Let’s talk about the work that’s upstairs, “Breakfast at Baychester.” Tell us a little bit about how he acquired it, that one, and also about the work itself because it feels very different from a lot of your other works, the incomplete canvas.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah, Martin was the one that said, “Don’t finish it.” And I was like, “What do you mean?”

Hrag Vartanian: So, why?

Lee Quiñones: Well, my reasoning behind that was you start a work and you finish it. You arrive, you achieve something. And you say, “Yeah, there’s the conversation.” But Martin, like Wendy said, he was speaking to the future. He already knew that this painting would be much more powerful by just leaving the doors open for conversation. And when he told me that, I was like, “Why? I can’t leave this alone,” and he said, “No, I need to buy it as is.” Somehow, I don’t remember the transaction, but he swindled it off the walls of my bedroom in my parent’s apartment and ended up with that.

And that painting was very passionate for me because it was an actual location up in the northeast Bronx, up by Dyer Avenue, Baychester area of the Bronx where I found myself many, many nights painting trains up there because it was such a juxtaposed area away from the city.

You could see the city down yonder miles and miles away and it was so peaceful and the birds would start chirping in the morning and that was my alarm clock. “Get out of here now, Lee, the trains are going into service.” So, it was a special place for me, and he knew it was a special place for me. So, “Breakfast in Baychester” is basically spending nights there and breaking night. And my breakfast was the work that was coming off on the trains at that time. Again, his genius was there and I see it now, I’m like, “Wow.” I would hate this painting now if it was finished and painted in and all, it just leaves a lot open for discussion.

Sean Corcoran: And you’re being a little modest, in that you’ve shown me reams of papers, of drawings of the details of those trains. And this is, in some ways, the culmination of that work. I find it to be a really important piece in reminding visitors that this stuff doesn’t happen in five minutes. Everybody thinks graffiti writers roll into a train yard, do a piece in a half an hour, two hours, whatever, and that’s it, that there’s not study, thought, work that sometimes is years in progress to get to these points. That, to me, that piece is symbolic of the work that you guys put in that is often unrecognized.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah, true, true, there’s a process. And I started to realize that this school, this way of creating was really truly following the steps of an artist, a real artist creating sketches and preliminary drawings and figuring it all out. And I have over 40 drawings that have never been shown before in public—Sean got first eyes on it—since when I created them back in 1979, 1980, ’84. Throughout the years and I would ride the subways and count each rivet or bolt on each car and say, “Okay, there’s 20 bolts going down this way, there’s three going that way, there’s 50 going across the car,” and I would make all these schematic drawings to lead to that painting, that’s why that painting is so highly detailed. And I like to boast that I’m probably single-handedly the guy that can paint a subway car like a subway car. Sorry, guys.

Sean Corcoran: I love that.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah.

Hrag Vartanian: It sounds like he started being conscious of being a collector at some point. When he’s saying, “Don’t finish that, I want that,” that sounds like a total collector thing to say.

Wendy Olsoff: Also, Martin didn’t finish a lot of his own paintings.

Hrag Vartanian: Where do you think that comes from?

Lee Quiñones: I think he was just interested in the human condition in New York at that time and there was so many different people just loitering and functioning around the neighborhood. And he was just fascinated. He couldn’t keep his mind on one thing for too long. So, I have a running joke that if you bought a Martin piece, for the price that you’re paying for the one work, you’re getting five pieces, because there’s five pieces underneath that painting. I would walk into the house after a night out or a day out and he was working on a beautiful piece, and I come in and I’m like, “Hey, where’s that piece that you was working on this morning?” He’s like, “Oh, I felt like it needed a new direction so I just painted over it.” I’m like, “You have a whole painting over it in less than six hours?” He was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “But it was a masterpiece!” So, he would paint on the back, he would paint on the front, he was all over the place. And to me, in the tradition, you finish a painting and put it on the side. But he would go over himself, which is taboo in the graffiti school of things. You never go over your own work, you start something new, and you maybe revisit that work.

But he lived in an interesting neighborhood that was always in flux, in Attorney Park. And Attorney Park was notorious for drugs and murders. This one handball court was just standing and he was fascinated by that wall and just this life taking part around that wall. And I have a story about handball walls. [Pauses.]

All right, I’ll say it.

[Crowd laughs]

Hrag Vartanian: We’re waiting!

Lee Quiñones: Okay, so I’ll make it short. In 1978, I created the first handball wall, mega mural, top to bottom, side to side, never had been done like that, in that fashion. He was so fascinated by that wall, he at one point said, “Lee, let’s go and excavate the wall.” A handball wall! It’s a 30 by 25 foot slab, a tablet of concrete. He’s like, “Yeah, we just go to the city and buy it from them,” I was like, “It’s in the Department of Education’s property!” He’s like, “They’ll sell it to us. And then we’ll just excavate it and lift it.” I was like, “And put it where? In your apartment? Are you kidding me?”

He had these grand, futuristic ideas, of preserving that wall. That wall was just demolished about seven months ago. And that wall was so special, because it was instrumental in bringing the next chapter of the New York school…just raising the bar. He was so fascinated by that wall, and so was I, and thousands, if not millions of other young artists around the world. And if he would’ve done that, if we would’ve pulled that off, that wall would’ve survived gentrification.

Sean Corcoran: And regarding the graffiti collection, he had opened briefly the Museum of American Graffiti so he saw it as something worthy of … In fact, in an article, he said, “I see this someday being assimilated into a museum.” He actually predicted it, and it came true. But from everything I’ve been told, he really believed it should stay in New York City, because it was a New York City-based genre and that it was an essential part of New York City. And, therefore, we become an obvious place to deposit the collection.

Lee Quiñones: I remember finding out that he was inflicted with AIDS. And I didn’t even know how to approach him, because my family was affected by that. I was by Keith Haring’s deathbed watching him fade away, so it was frightening for me to see him fade away like that. But in a funny way, he was more worried about the collection than he was of his own life at that time. And I remember him, his mother wondering where can I put this, and I didn’t know where because we were so versed in thinking, “Hey, no one cares about this movement.” But Martin found a way. He found a way to bring it to the right place, and it stood here for a while before it started to garner some light. But he was very confused and very worried about where this collection would go. So, that really spoke volumes about his heart.

Sean Corcoran: Right, definitely.

Hrag Vartanian: Wendy, why do you think the collection wasn’t as celebrated during that time?

Wendy Olsoff: The graffiti collection?

Hrag Vartanian: Yeah.

Wendy Olsoff: I think it extends to now. I think there’s a hierarchical, judgmental, racist inherent quality to the art world and to the powers in the art world. It’s unfortunate because I just came back from Miami last weekend. and there’s graffiti all over the place. And I feel like it is historicized and it will be in the future but, right now, it’s just not there yet.

Sean Corcoran: The collection came into the museum in 1994. That’s almost five years to the day when the trains were declared clean by the MTA. So, it’s still very fresh in a lot of New Yorkers’ minds and there’s a lot of prejudice towards …

Wendy Olsoff: What they saw as vandalism.

Sean Corcoran: … what they saw as vandalism.

Hrag Vartanian: It’s still around, that prejudice.

Sean Corcoran: Yeah, yeah.

Hrag Vartanian: It’s still happening, yeah.

Wendy Olsoff: But I have to say too, the market has their Keith Haring’s and their Basquiat’s, they check those boxes. So, in their catalogs, they can write all about the graffiti school.

Sean Corcoran: Right, through one simple window.

Wendy Olsoff: Through Jean-Michel, whose prices are insane, and Haring. So, that’s what their interests are. In that period in the ’80s, when you had this East Village scene, you had the graffiti scene, and at the same time and you had all these events. And graffiti was a big part of it. The graffiti artists were there. And it was a very diverse, interesting time where people like Martin and Lee and the drag artists and the queer artists and the performers and Karen Finley, we were all together. And it was a group of outsiders. And there was incredible energy, and you felt very empowered. There was that magical moment, and I just don’t know that you see that like that anymore.

Hrag Vartanian: Yeah, I guess that brings up maybe how things have shifted, too. Because, even when Hyperallergic first started, we covered street art graffiti more. But then I think the scene changed, where there were more sanctioned walls, things were connected to branding … so, there’s also been a huge shift in terms of the type of work that was being created. But I’d love to hear some other thoughts about what has changed, maybe, or how you see the shifts.

Sean Corcoran: Well, certainly, in terms of permission walls, boy, you can get into the whole real estate situation in New York City and the affordability of the city, (or inaffordability of the city), and who gets space. Graffiti writers claimed space, they took it, now people are being given it with strings attached so there’s a difference there.

Hrag Vartanian: There weren’t CCTVs before everywhere either, right?

Sean Corcoran: Well, there’s risk and reward. That said, during COVID, there was a bit of a return of clandestine art making.

Hrag Vartanian: And I’ll tell you, in terms of journalism and street art and graffiti, it was hard to compete with social media platforms writing about this stuff. Because by the time it’s already been propagated, that’s where all they’re getting all the likes. So, when a journalist shows up, we’re late to the party a little bit. And then the other thing we don’t talk about, one of the reasons we were a little more hesitant about covering it, is that people would lie about doing walls. And things were being photoshopped and circulated. So, there were instances where people would go, “We just did this,” and I’m like, “That’s funny, I’ve never seen that wall or something.” And then eventually you found out that someone had just photoshopped it and was circulating it.

So, there’s been a lot of these types of things, too, unlike before. Because, before, prominent spots would get the attention. Now, you can do something in an obscure location no one’s ever seen, but you have a good photo and it circulates. It becomes a whole different game than it used to be, at least in journalism.

Audience member: Thank you all for the great discussion. My question is I think mostly for Lee. I’ve read about Martin collaborating a little bit with a couple of graffiti artists during his life, and I’m wondering if you ever collaborated on any work with him or if you can talk about that in general. And also, if Martin ever tried tagging himself for doing pieces and, if not, why?

Hrag Vartanian: Good question.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah. Answering the last one first. I remember one time Martin telling me that he got into a scuffle with a small group of graffiti artists who had come to his building to sell him something. And there was a discrepancy in the work, or discrepancy between him and these two guys, and one of them was Martin’s friend. And the guy just stepped up to Martin, just street style thuggish, and started pushing Martin around. And Martin just decked him in the face. Boom! And then he said, “I’m so excited. Wow, I really punched him in the face.” He just grabbed something out of that moment that made him feel like he was part of the community.

I collaborated on a drawing that is dear to me. It’s in my home. We were sitting at one of our favorite restaurants on 4th Street and 2nd Avenue, Frutti Di Mare. And we went there because they had three course dinners for 10 bucks as well. And we made a drawing on the placement mat that they put on the tables, which they throw away, and he was making a drawing of me making a drawing of him. So, we both collaborated and that drawing. It’s messed up, with grease from the olive oil and all that stuff. It’s a really beautiful drawing pen-wise and pencil, and we’re just drawing back and forth. And that was the only collaboration that I can remember.

Hrag Vartanian: But did he tag on the street at all?

Lee Quiñones: No, he did not.

Audience member: In the early ’80s, I’m under the impression that a lot of these different graffiti scenes were separated into their own little neighborhoods across the city. I wanted to ask you, was there a lot of cross-pollination between different graffiti scenes in New York City at this time? And was he really a part of that?

Sean Corcoran: There were certainly a number of crews that had members from several different boroughs. There were, of course, neighborhood crews or whatever, but the best of the best often plucked people from different neighborhoods. Lee, where were all the Fabulous Five guys from?

Lee Quiñones: They were from all five boroughs.

Hrag Vartanian: There you go.

Lee Quiñones: The Fabulous Five and we painted on the fives.

Sean Corcoran: It wasn’t necessarily about where you were from, it was about if you were good enough. And if you respected someone’s style then you would want to maybe paint with them.

Lee Quiñones: Yeah. There was cross-pollination, especially in styles and sharing ideas and stuff like that, and even information on where to actually create your work without any disturbances and stuff. “The layup is hot, the yard is hot, don’t go there,” that kind of thing.

But there was a lot of ethnicities that would never have come together under other conditions. And there were some that came from very privileged homes, very comfortable surroundings, and they were in the trenches with some of the most underserved, marginalized individuals. But we were all young in our own age, and we were rambunctious and anxious to have a voice in a city that doesn’t hear your existence.

Hrag Vartanian: Yeah. One last question right here.

Audience member: Thank you, great conversation. I just want to say that, the beginning of graffiti, there was drugs, there was gangs, there was destruction of buildings. And the guys who got into graffiti, this is the way for them to say, “Hey, here I am,” writing their name. And as Lee was saying, that people from different neighborhoods would see the trains and they would get together, be in a writer’s corner, there’d be all these different type of social activity that was just because there was no other way, really, for people to really interact in that fashion and that was on a lot of levels. And also, of course, with spray paint, the technology was different. You had to be fast, you’re risking your life going on the subway. The third rail, getting hit by a train … a lot of people have lost their lives that way. So, anyway, I just want you to respond to that.

Hrag Vartanian: Okay, let’s hear it.

Lee Quiñones: Wow, that’s a good question. That’s a really good question. I’ll keep it short. I think the difference now compared to then is that there was a tight-knit network. And it needed to be an incubator of artists that were trying to create a future for themselves by identity … There was an identity crisis, and creating a name that sounded fly, super strong, that was part of it. I think that the difference between that time and now is that the artists, whether they get influenced by this movement or not, whether they live in New York or not, have a sole responsibility to actually now speak for the people. The people around them. Not just themselves, because right now we’re in dire straits. The country’s challenged in ways that we’ve never seen before. I think that empires come and go but the art always survives. And it survives because the true artists in those movements are really keeping their finger on the pulse of society. And I think that’s the new writer.

Hrag Vartanian: Yeah. Any thoughts, Sean? Wendy?

Sean Corcoran: I think that’s the perfect way to end.

Hrag Vartanian: Okay. So, my very last thing I’m going to ask is, if there’s one thing about Martin that you’d like to share that’s this peculiar little thing that you think would give us a little sense of who he was as a person.

Wendy Olsoff: I just have to say, when Lee was talking about all the linen he was selling you, and these great materials—his works are not in good condition. He was painting on drop cloths on the floor, painting over his paintings—he was not treating himself at all. And there’s always 

condition reports. If you see a Martin Wong in good condition in any auction, do not buy it.

[Audience laughs]

Sean Corcoran: Oh, that’s amazing.

Hrag Vartanian: That’s pretty funny.

Lee Quiñones: That’s a good one.

Hrag Vartanian: Sean, do you have anything in your research that you’ve encountered that might stick out for you?

Sean Corcoran: To me it’s always the stories. The stories of camaraderie, the stories of adventure. Here’s a really, really brief one that has to do with Lee. One of the paintings that’s upstairs, that was in your ’84 Gladstone show, right?

Lee Quiñones: Oh, yeah.

Sean Corcoran: “A Life Takes a Life,” right?

Lee Quiñones: “A Life Takes a Life,” yeah.

Sean Corcoran: Martin apparently followed that over several years and found it later in an auction. And this just sums it all up to me: he found it in an auction, and won it, and then he recruited you to literally carry it from the auction house home. To me that says everything about the relationship, the mode in which they were working in collecting. It just says it all.

Hrag Vartanian: Lee, do you remember that? Do you remember carrying—

Lee Quiñones: I do remember that. And I remember when the painting got damaged.

Sean Corcoran: I was going to leave that out but if you … go for it.

Hrag Vartanian: What happened? 

Lee Quiñones: Well, no, because the painting was hanging in Henry Chalfant’s studio in Soho. And it was one of several paintings there. And the painting is large, as you can see upstairs, and I’m very, very anal about everything. Walking down the street, walk on the sunny side on a cold day, walk in the shadow on a hot day. And we were walking with the piece and I was like, “Martin, watch the traffic light thing.” As we were making the turn around Grand Street onto Wooster. And I am leading, I’m walking, I said, “Watch the light, watch the light!” And I hear “Kssh!” I remember screaming at him to no end. I was like, “What the…” sailor’s mouth came out, everything. And he laughed, but then he was like, “Oh, God, I guess we can fix it.” And they did. They did a wonderful job, a wonderful restoration.

But the one thing I do remember about Martin saying one time, and I think this is not him coming up with this phrase, but he says, “Don’t ever let the truth get in the way of a good story.” I had girlfriends break up with me because of Martin. I was like, “Martin, what are you doing?”

Sean Corcoran: That’s a good story.

Hrag Vartanian: Well, thank you, the three of you. This was so great and I’m so glad we were able to celebrate Martin a little bit today. So, thank you, everyone, for coming.

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Hrag Vartanian: Thanks so much for listening. You could check out Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Collection which continues at the Museum of City of New York until August 10th, 2025. This podcast is produced by Isabella Segalovich, and is brought to you by Hyperallergic members. These folks are the reason we keep bringing you these episodes and these in-depth conversations that you won’t find anywhere else. For only $8 a month or $80 a year, you too can become a Hyperallergic member. And you can support independent arts journalism, as well as receive invitations to events like the one we have documented today.

Thanks so much for listening. My name is Hrag Vartanian. We’ll see you next time.

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