Pedro's Lament

A complex and powerful work, Pedro's Lament (1984) demonstrates Wong's ability to engage the viewer simultaneously on multiple levels--visually, emotionally, and intellectually. Pedro's Lament was inspired by Wong's passionate and stormy relationship with Pedro Rodriguez, an amateur boxer whom he met in 1980 and with whom he lived for several months.

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On the lower level of Pedro's Lament, Wong insets an entire sketchbook, opened to a pen drawing of Rodriguez made in 1982. The book is placed behind glass, enclosed in an actual gilded frame, and attached to the fictive brick wall and wooden frame painted by Wong. Recalling the display of a relic in a Catholic altarpiece, this presentation of Rodriguez's portrait serves to suggest the importance that Wong accorded to their relationship. However, one is dependent on biographical information about Wong to understand the nature of his connection to Rodriguez. As in Secret World, the artist is here very protective of his privacy.

On the black surface in the middle of Pedro's Lament, Wong transcribes a tirade by Rodriguez, who used a variety of endearments, pleas, and threats in an attempt to persuade Wong to give him money for drugs. As Wong explained to associates, the tirade recorded here so disturbed him that he ended his relationship with Rodriguez shortly after it occurred. While the writing surface recalls a school blackboard, it also serves as a dark sky for tenement buildings with gilded windows (immediately below the inscribed tirade).

Adding to the complexities of Pedro's Lament are three trompe l'oeil elements: a relatively thin, inner wooden frame, encompassing both the black surface and the tenements; a brick wall, built up around the inner frame; and a large outer wooden frame.

Collaboration with Miguel Piñero

Both personally and professionally, Wong considered his relationship with Miguel Piñero to be one of the most significant events of his life. A former drug dealer and burglar, Piñero (1946-1988) began writing with serious intent during his third imprisonment for armed robbery (1971-73 at Ossining Correctional Facility), and he had become an award-winning playwright and poet by the time he met Wong. Describing himself a poet of the streets, Piñero wrote eloquently and powerfully about the experiences of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York.

Wong met Piñero in 1982 at the opening of Crime Show, a group exhibition at ABC No Rio, which included two "paintings for the hearing impaired." Striking up a conversation, the two men immediately felt a strong bond with one another, and, within a few weeks, Piñero had moved into Wong's apartment. During the year and a half that they lived together (1982-84), Piñero subsidized Wong's rent and paid most of his other expenses.

With the freedom to focus intensely upon his art, Wong was able to develop a very significant body of work, which was presented in his first solo exhibition, Urban Landscapes, held in 1984 at Semaphore Gallery East. Wong also credited Piñero with introducing him to aspects of the East Side that he did not know and with enabling him to become more fully integrated into its Latino community.

Wong made several images of Piñero, including the tall, narrow Portrait of Piñero (1982), which depicts the poet writing in a notebook, opened on a ledge that also serves as picture frame. Above and behind Piñero are several of the brick tenement buildings that were beloved by both artist and writer. In the dark sky at the top of the picture, hands spell out some lines from Piñero poems.

Purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art shortly after its completion, Attorney Street: Handball Court with Autobiographical Poem by Piñero (1982-84) is the most famous of the numerous paintings that Wong created in collaboration with Piñero. Graffiti, sign language, letters, architectural motifs, and trompe l'oeil elements (including brick and wooden frames) are densely compacted together in what Wong described as a "landscape without a view."

Wong had considered Attorney Street: Handball Court to be substantially finished when Piñero asked him to record the graffiti applied by one of his young followers to a playground wall. Subsequently, Wong added a lengthy transcription from one of Piñero's poems, as well as several of his own declarations, spelled out by hands in Sign Language. Wong's pronouncements--such as, for example, "It's the real deal Neal I'm going to rock your world"--attest to his absorption of the street culture of the Lower East Side.