Cynthia Carr's Fire in the Belly, a prodigious chronicle of the artist David Wojnarowicz's life (with a title inspired by one of his most well-known films), is shadowed by the certainty of its ending. Wojnarowicz was an incendiary painter, photographer, filmmaker and activist at the gritty heart of Manhattan's East Village art scene in the 1980s. He died in 1992, at the age of 37, due to complications of AIDS.
In an unflinching and incredibly humane portrait of his life and death, Carr draws from extensive interviews, Wojnarowicz's writings and her own memories of him to recount the experiences, relationships and passions that informed his work. That art is strewn with the "relics and rubble" that fascinated him and marked by themes of destruction and corrupted spirituality--and, near the end of his life, it culminated in a visceral condemnation of a government that ignored the AIDS crisis.
Wojnarowicz spent much of his adult life fighting against legislators who tried to silence him, whether by refusing to fund his art or by denying him his basic rights. Decades after his death, the fight continues: in 2010, the Smithsonian, fearing the loss of federal funding, removed Wojnarowicz's work from a landmark exhibit of LGBT art after protests by the Catholic League. The ensuing outrage, as well as the controversy over the artwork, was a testament to the provocative power of his work.
Wojnarowicz emerges from these pages as a forceful, enigmatic character, "a truth-teller who kept secrets, a loner who loved to collaborate, an artist who craved recognition but did not want to be seen." Carr's probing, masterful storytelling suggests his traumatic early life--an abusive childhood and an adolescence hustling in Times Square--was the foundation for his legendary temper, complex relationships and his artistic and existential sensibilities.
Carr, who covered art for the Village Voice for nearly 20 years, is a subtle presence throughout. She was a friend of Wojnarowicz as well as a witness to the "discovery, exploitation, and demise" of the East Village scene in which he played a pivotal role. Her clear-eyed but impassioned analysis of the double-pronged assault of gentrification and AIDS that destroyed "New York's last bohemia" elevates Fire in the Belly from biography to requiem. --Hannah Calkins
Shelf Talker: A sprawling, elegiac biography that mourns the loss of David Wojnarowicz and the art scene in which he flourished.