La vida
Wong, Martin (1946-1999)
- Yale University Art Gallery
[Museum inv. no.: 2006.52.47]
Item location
Description
Commentary from museum website:Martin Wong’s La Vida is a large, celebratory depiction of the poor, vibrant, largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood that was the Lower East Side—or Loisaida— in the 1980s. Evoking the portrait drawings the artist made and sold for a living early in his career, La Vida is populated with the faces of local residents, artists, musicians, and poets —as well as popular figures such as film star Mr. T (visible on the lower right). These characters fill the tenement windows, which Wong renders brick by brick in a fashion characteristic of his oeuvre. Many are clearly identifiable as members of the artist’s social and artistic community, including graffiti artists DAZE, Sharp, LA2, as well as poet and writer Amiri Baraka. Perhaps most importantly, Wong’s lover, collaborator, and supporter, poet and playwright Miguel Piñero, appears in the painting three times. Made only a few months after Piñero’s death, La Vida is not only a powerful and playful depiction of a neighborhood, but is also a joyful commemoration of the poet and local figurehead who insisted in his A Lower Eastside Poem: “… let all eyes be dry when they scatter my ashes thru the Lower Eastside.”
Iconclass
46A221urban life
46A2211
city dwellers
48CC753
more than one musician with instrument - CC - 'concert champêtre'
48C734
percussion instruments
48C732
string instruments (plucked)
48CC756
popular music, street music - CC - out of doors
Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Maracas [3031]Bongos [2515]
Cymbals [2451] (hi-hat style)
Guitar [3237] (two)
Conga [2529]
Washboard [3060]
RIdIM images
Image URLs
image link 1Bibliographic references
Ramirez, Yasmin. Sweet oblivion: The urban landscape of Martin Wong, exhibition catalogue (New York: New Museum, 1998) 32–47, ill. no. 26.Smee, Sebastian. "Rooms with a view: Martin Wong takes a page from Hitchcock’s 'Rear Window'", The Washington Post (April 22, 2020).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/entertainment/martin-wong-la-vida/
Simpson, Bennett. Blues for smoke, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. (New York: DelMonico ; Prestel, 2012) 105, 198, ill.
Chaffee, Cathleen. Eye on a century: Modern and contemporary art from the Charles B. Benenson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2012) 156–57, 177, no. 74.