In 1978 Wong moved to New York, where he began to paint the neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan. Stanton near Forsyth Street is one of his signature Lower East Side cityscapes, in which brown-brick tenement buildings rise amid abandoned lots, refuse, and graffiti-covered surfaces. Two small figures appear in the foreground: on the left is a self-portrait of the artist, and on the right is Miguel Piñero, the Nuyorican poet and playwright who was Wong's frequent collaborator and romantic partner. The artist's stylized fingerspellings, a recurring visual idiom in his work that is appropriated from American Sign Language, scroll across the upper part of the painting.

Gallery label from

Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now, November 17, 2011-February 17, 2014.

Medium Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions 48 x 64" (121.9 x 162.6 cm)
Credit Gift of the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art; Steven Johnson and Walter Sudol; and James Keith Brown and Eric Diefenbach
Object number 863.2011
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Martin Wong

Martin Wong

American, 1946–1999 4 works online

Born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in San Francisco, Martin Wong rose to fame in New York City during the 1980s for his striking paintings of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

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